Hi, I'm André Meadows and this is Crash Course Games. Today, we're going to talk about a new kind of game that appeared in the 1990s and leveraged the new internet technology to connect millions of players in the gaming world where they can talk to each other, work toward completing quests, and compete or co-operate as they please.
These games are called Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games which is too long of a phrase for me to say fourteen more times in this video, so we're just gonna call them MMORPGs https://wildernessdrum.com/. Games like these, usually found on PCs, have been nicknamed "life-games" since they lack a traditional ending. You could literally play them for life. Or at least as long as the servers are up, anyway. Today, we're gonna talk about a few of these fantasy worlds and find out why they bring us together in the real world. So slap on that tier 18 armour and grab your companion pet, make sure your expansion pack is downloaded, and let's go! [Theme Music] In the world of gaming, we have Massively Multiplayer Online Games (or MMO games) and Roleplaying Video Games (or RPGs). MMORPGs are obviously the combination of them both. These games are usually hosted on servers by the game's publishers and are constantly evolving whether the player is online or not. But before we get into that, let's talk about MUD. I don't mean mud like the kind your dog tracks in, but a MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon, which would go on to inspire modern MMORPGs. MUDs are text-based roleplaying games that have no graphics and only involve a few users. Players type in questions or commands and the game responds with written responses. Using your imagination and pretending to see the adventure is a selling point. These games are usually fantasy-based and most were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. One of the most famous MUDs, called MUD, was created in the late 1970s by Roy Trubshaw on a PDP-10. We mentioned that in an earlier episode because that's the same computer used for the invention of Galaxy Game, the world's first coin-operated video game. MUD was simple, with players typing in N, E, S, or W for the four main directions, and words like "attack" or "defend" to battle enemies. A few years later, those simple commands were replaced with more complex sentences like, "You were eaten by a Grue!" a famous phrase that many players of the game Zork encountered time and time again. This popular MUD sold over 680,000 copies in the first three games in its series in the 1980s. These games emphasised leveling-up, exploration, and monster hunting, which would become a common theme in many future MMORPGs. But text-based games have a limited audience because people like pretty pictures and in 1986, Lucasfilm Games debuted Habitat on the Commodore 64. This game could support up to 10,000 players, but users could only play the game at night and on weekends when the server was running. It's like an old cellphone plan. Also, players had to play by the hour. It's like old long distance charges. In 1991, Quantum Computer Services (which would later be called AOL) debuted Neverwinter Nights, which was the first modern MMORPG. By the time it went offline in 1997, it supported 115,000 players that paid $6 an hour to enter that world. It had fighting, leveling-up, and the ability to create guilds, or like-minded groups within the game. This would become a cornerstone of modern MMORPGs and the communities created within them. In 1997, Ultima Online was the MMORPG that brought this game genre to the mainstream reaching 100,000 subscribers in its first year and a peak user base of 250,000 active accounts in 2003. It helped that the Ultima series had been around since 1981, had 10 titles in its series, and had a huge fanbase. So this brings us to that quintessential modern MMORPG -- World of Warcraft! World of Warcraft, or WoW, has been running since 2004 and, at its height, had over 12 million active players. This game is so widespread that it's played in 244 countries and territories and its players have created over 500 million characters and 9 million social guilds. Today, WoW still has 5.5 million players, which isn't too bad considering those players are still paying Blizzard $15 a month to play the game. And the bonds people form in the game can even spill over into real life. The New York Times ran an article in 2011 documenting multiple couples who met and married thanks to World of Warcraft. And even death is also an accepted part of gaming in WoW communities. In 2006, a World of Warcraft player died of a stroke in real life. Her online friends chose to honour her with an in-game funeral. A huge number of players showed up in formal attire and left their weapons at home out of respect. A line formed so that mourners could pay their last respects to the player's avatar. But since this is a game on the internet, things went horribly wrong when an opposing faction's guild raided the funeral and killed everyone.
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