

The Last Survivors of Meridian 59 - omnibrain
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-last-survivors-of-meridian-59

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Tloewald
I'd heard of M59 back in my EQ days, but never even saw a screenshot of it
before, so the article was interesting.

EQ was much more a PVE game (with PvP certainly present), and as others have
said, inspired by MUDS. Having never been much interested in MUDS, we shipped
"Prince of Destruction" a multiplayer (LAN) 2D RPG in 1994 which had many of
the features of later games (including persistence between sessions). I say
this because these ideas were all "in the air", and it's silly to suggest the
EQ guys based their stuff on M59. D&D (RPG concept), RuneQuest (skill
systems), Rogue, Akalabeth, Wizardry, etc. had established the basic concepts
by 1982, and the idea of making giant servers with hundreds of players or
whatever was merely a question of execution.

One of the underappreciated aspects of EQ was the rather sophisticated (for
the time) monster AI from which a lot of gameplay _emerged_.

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syncsynchalt
Like many, I never played Meridian 59 but knew it as a major inspiration for
arguably the first popular MMO: Everquest.

Here's the earliest video I know of EQ, and it has a very M59 feel:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFKrlynZNtU&list=FLrvKUlysHt...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFKrlynZNtU&list=FLrvKUlysHtYslGY0jtMIsJQ&index=6)

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shiftpgdn
I would argue Ultima Online set the bar for MMOs long before Everquest. The UO
servers had 3000+ players online vs the 300ish of Meridian 59.

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syncsynchalt
I wasn't sure how to phrase it. The first two real MMOs (in the massive sense)
where UO and EQ, with UO coming first. That said I think modern MMOs would
claim more in common with EQ than UO.

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sshconnection
They do. Pre-patch UO was much more of a free for all. Then the 2nd Age
created a mirrored server that prohibited all but mutual combat. It took a lot
of the excitement out of it for me. The risk/reward of going to dungeons and
territorial feuds were what drew me to the game.

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nrb
Minor correction: Renaissance, not the 2nd Age, split the world into two
mirrored facets.

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incision
I never played M59, but heard about it endlessly as "the good old days" when I
played EverQuest.

Every few years I Google for happenings on the EQ server I frequented in 1999.
There have been all sorts of mergers and consolidations, but it appears a
number of people are still playing regularly 15.5 years later and still
arguing about the exact same things.

It's like dropping onto Skull Island[1].

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Island](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Island)

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eflowers
I beta tested and played M59 when I was 14-15. Was astounding at the time, and
I still remember it as great. Beta tested EverQuest after that as well. Much
like people talk about UO being transformative, M59 was just something else,
indescribable to be that age and experience something so immersive. It was so
rough that your imagination filled in so much, it was far more real than a
modern MMO.

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seanccox
Hey, me too. I burned the entire summer of 1996 between M59 and getting my
driver's permit. We had a dial-up internet connection on the same line as our
phone, so after numerous lag-related deaths caused by my mother or sister
picking up the phone, I started playing almost exclusively at night. It was
always so eerie (and, in hindsight, it seems kinda sad), sitting alone in the
basement trying not to be killed by giant ants or spiders. I was crap at the
game, but I really found myself immersed.

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danblick
I have fond memories of this game too. :) I'll always remember how at some
point it was possible to edit the game binary and create a character with
maxed out stats that could kill the strongest monster in the game (the ghost)
in one hit. :)

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omnibrain
I have fond memories reading stories about Meridian 59. "Virtual" marriages
and the likes in german game magazines. I think the publisher of PC Games,
Computec Media, had the rights to publish (and run) the game in germany. In
hindsight the articles probably were just barely disguised advertising. ;)

I was about 13-14 at the time and obviously had no pocket money to spare, so I
never played the game.

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kqr2
Link to source code for the game:

[https://github.com/Meridian59/Meridian59](https://github.com/Meridian59/Meridian59)

