Section 5 of 5
How It Got Here
The incidents and decisions from MUD1 to A Realm Reborn that made the genre what it is — and what the documented record actually shows.
Section 5 of 5
The incidents and decisions from MUD1 to A Realm Reborn that made the genre what it is — and what the documented record actually shows.
The shelf — attributed and dated
5 pieces in this section
Roy Trubshaw writes MUD1 at the University of Essex
In: From Essex, 1978 to Azeroth, 2004: The Twenty-Six Years That Built the Genre's Template
Essex connects to ARPANET; MUD1 becomes externally accessible
In: From Essex, 1978 to Azeroth, 2004: The Twenty-Six Years That Built the Genre's Template
Richard Bartle publishes player-type taxonomy paper
In: From Essex, 1978 to Azeroth, 2004: The Twenty-Six Years That Built the Genre's Template
Start here
A compressed narrative history from MUD1 at the University of Essex through Ultima Online (1997), EverQuest (1999) and World of Warcraft (2004), naming the decisions and the people behind them that established the conventions every subsequent game inherited. One long-form historical piece.
Read the piece
Twenty-six years from a university mainframe to twelve million subscriptions.
Photo: MUD1 · Wikimedia Commons
Covers the Corrupted Blood incident — a debuff from Hakkar the Soulflayer that escaped Zul'Gurub via pets and spread uncontrolled across WoW's populated zones — using Blizzard's own patch notes and the subsequent academic research that treated it as an epidemiological model.
Covers the Star Wars Galaxies New Game Enhancements — announced and deployed simultaneously with no beta — using LucasArts and SOE's dated statements and the documented player-count and forum response that followed.
Documents FFXIV's original 2010 launch failure, Naoki Yoshida's appointment, the 2012 Letter from the Producer announcing the rebuild, the December 2012 server shutdown of 1.0, and the August 2013 launch of A Realm Reborn — using Square Enix's own dated public statements throughout.
Covers the January 2014 EVE Online battle — triggered by a missed sovereignty payment — using CCP's own post-battle report, which listed ship losses in ISK and their real-money equivalents.