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You young whippersnappers crack me up.

http://meridian59.neardeathstudios.com/

That's the great-grand-daddy of (graphical) MMO games, still up and running after 15 years.

Meridian 59 got released in December 1995, nearly an year before the patent was filed (November 1996).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59
http://meridian59.neardeathstudios.com/

The Realm Online was the first graphical MUDs not on a pay-per-minute service and it's still running. Meridian 59, perhaps the first first-person graphical MUD is back.

Plus you have all of the non-combat oriented MMOs. I'm sure EA's TSO is still there - a flop by EAs standards, but still a big game. EAs will continue to be a player I'm sure. Second Life, A Tale in the Desert, I'm sure there are many.

It's also worth noting that while NCSoft distributes many titles, they come from almost as may design studios. The number of large distributers may well dwindle, but that says nothing for the number of development groups.

A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties. The core of most contracts is a set of mutual promises (in legal terminology, "consideration"). The promises made by the parties define the rights and obligations of the parties.

It says nothing of an exchange of things. Further, that's silly because a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is a contract, but there's no "exchange of things" there. Just the promise that one party won't go blabbing (not a legal term) about the information another party agrees to share.

It has to be before the fact.

Which is why you can see the various agreements before you sign up for my game, Meridian 59:
End User License Agreement
The Rules of Play (in-game rules)
Terms of Service

All these are freely available for you to read before you buy our game or join our service.

If you take a moment to read our EULA, you'll see that at the top it says, "WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER INTO A CONTRACT." That was written by the lawyer that drafted our EULA.

It has to be mutually agreed upon.

That's what "I agree" means, and it's written button you click on. At the very least I figure this is equivalent to a verbal contract; verbal contracts are usually valid, but usually not used because it can be hard to prove consent of both parties without a written records (which is why signatures are usually preferred). If you don't agree, then you shouldn't use the software. Clicking "I agree" then claiming it wasn't a valid agreement is the worst option, really.

Along those lines, it has to be open to negoation.

What are you doing to that goat for the contract? *shiver* Oh, wait, negotiation. Right....

Have you ever tried to negotiate? For my company, we have contact info posted on our website. You could revise any of our agreements and send it to us before you sign up and play the game. Of course, many companies will probably reject any revisions, but that's their prerogative as with any contract negotiations. And, nobody is forcing you to agree to the EULA. In most cases you can send the software back and get a refund. At the end of our EULA, we state:

If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, promptly return or, if received electronically, certify destruction of the Game Software within ten (10) calendar days after receipt of the Game Software and receive a full refund of any license fee paid if you: (a) Do not use the Game Software, and (B) return it with proof of payment to the location from which it was obtained.

Given my counters to your objections, it looks like our EULA is a valid contract, hmm?

It comes down to this: companies use the EULA to cover their liabilities and to assert their rights. If you don't like the EULA, you have the ultimate recourse: don't use the software. There's not much software out there that is essential, so whining about how the unfairness of the EULA solves nothing. Unless you're willing to not use the software nothing will change. Think Microsoft's OS EULAs are crap? There's a few alternatives out there, I've heard. Don't like the EULA on my game? Don't play. I promise not to be too hurt by your rejection, personally. Of course, I think our EULAs

A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties. The core of most contracts is a set of mutual promises (in legal terminology, "consideration"). The promises made by the parties define the rights and obligations of the parties.

It says nothing of an exchange of things. Further, that's silly because a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is a contract, but there's no "exchange of things" there. Just the promise that one party won't go blabbing (not a legal term) about the information another party agrees to share.

It has to be before the fact.

Which is why you can see the various agreements before you sign up for my game, Meridian 59:
End User License Agreement
The Rules of Play (in-game rules)
Terms of Service

All these are freely available for you to read before you buy our game or join our service.

If you take a moment to read our EULA, you'll see that at the top it says, "WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER INTO A CONTRACT." That was written by the lawyer that drafted our EULA.

It has to be mutually agreed upon.

That's what "I agree" means, and it's written button you click on. At the very least I figure this is equivalent to a verbal contract; verbal contracts are usually valid, but usually not used because it can be hard to prove consent of both parties without a written records (which is why signatures are usually preferred). If you don't agree, then you shouldn't use the software. Clicking "I agree" then claiming it wasn't a valid agreement is the worst option, really.

Along those lines, it has to be open to negoation.

What are you doing to that goat for the contract? *shiver* Oh, wait, negotiation. Right....

Have you ever tried to negotiate? For my company, we have contact info posted on our website. You could revise any of our agreements and send it to us before you sign up and play the game. Of course, many companies will probably reject any revisions, but that's their prerogative as with any contract negotiations. And, nobody is forcing you to agree to the EULA. In most cases you can send the software back and get a refund. At the end of our EULA, we state:

If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, promptly return or, if received electronically, certify destruction of the Game Software within ten (10) calendar days after receipt of the Game Software and receive a full refund of any license fee paid if you: (a) Do not use the Game Software, and (B) return it with proof of payment to the location from which it was obtained.

Given my counters to your objections, it looks like our EULA is a valid contract, hmm?

It comes down to this: companies use the EULA to cover their liabilities and to assert their rights. If you don't like the EULA, you have the ultimate recourse: don't use the software. There's not much software out there that is essential, so whining about how the unfairness of the EULA solves nothing. Unless you're willing to not use the software nothing will change. Think Microsoft's OS EULAs are crap? There's a few alternatives out there, I've heard. Don't like the EULA on my game? Don't play. I promise not to be too hurt by your rejection, personally. Of course, I think our EULAs

A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties. The core of most contracts is a set of mutual promises (in legal terminology, "consideration"). The promises made by the parties define the rights and obligations of the parties.

It says nothing of an exchange of things. Further, that's silly because a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is a contract, but there's no "exchange of things" there. Just the promise that one party won't go blabbing (not a legal term) about the information another party agrees to share.

It has to be before the fact.

Which is why you can see the various agreements before you sign up for my game, Meridian 59:
End User License Agreement
The Rules of Play (in-game rules)
Terms of Service

All these are freely available for you to read before you buy our game or join our service.

If you take a moment to read our EULA, you'll see that at the top it says, "WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER INTO A CONTRACT." That was written by the lawyer that drafted our EULA.

It has to be mutually agreed upon.

That's what "I agree" means, and it's written button you click on. At the very least I figure this is equivalent to a verbal contract; verbal contracts are usually valid, but usually not used because it can be hard to prove consent of both parties without a written records (which is why signatures are usually preferred). If you don't agree, then you shouldn't use the software. Clicking "I agree" then claiming it wasn't a valid agreement is the worst option, really.

Along those lines, it has to be open to negoation.

What are you doing to that goat for the contract? *shiver* Oh, wait, negotiation. Right....

Have you ever tried to negotiate? For my company, we have contact info posted on our website. You could revise any of our agreements and send it to us before you sign up and play the game. Of course, many companies will probably reject any revisions, but that's their prerogative as with any contract negotiations. And, nobody is forcing you to agree to the EULA. In most cases you can send the software back and get a refund. At the end of our EULA, we state:

If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, promptly return or, if received electronically, certify destruction of the Game Software within ten (10) calendar days after receipt of the Game Software and receive a full refund of any license fee paid if you: (a) Do not use the Game Software, and (B) return it with proof of payment to the location from which it was obtained.

Given my counters to your objections, it looks like our EULA is a valid contract, hmm?

It comes down to this: companies use the EULA to cover their liabilities and to assert their rights. If you don't like the EULA, you have the ultimate recourse: don't use the software. There's not much software out there that is essential, so whining about how the unfairness of the EULA solves nothing. Unless you're willing to not use the software nothing will change. Think Microsoft's OS EULAs are crap? There's a few alternatives out there, I've heard. Don't like the EULA on my game? Don't play. I promise not to be too hurt by your rejection, personally. Of course, I think our EULAs

I seem to recall Meridian 59 being around long before that.

And before even that I remember wasting a lot of time playing Legend of the Red Dragon, Usurper, the Pit, and many many more game titles I have since forgotten.

I'd say Meridian 59 was the first, starting in 1996. Strictly it was an RPG, but presented in FPS view, and you tended not to shoot rather than fire arrows ;-)

SOE currently offers their All Access Pass :

"If you play more than one SOE game, or you want to try the other great SOE games available, SOE All Access opens the SOE game catalog to you.

SOE All Access grants access to all current games published by SOE*, which includes: EverQuest® EverQuest® Macintosh Edition PlanetSide EverQuest® Online Adventures Station Pass access, which includes the popular games Infantry Online, Cosmic Rift and Tanarus

Full access to these games for the low monthly subscription price of $21.99 is a potential savings of more than $18.00 every month over the total cost of the individual subscriptions!"


PlayNC (NCSoft) does not offer such a deal but is a central site for managing your online game subscriptions and I imagine once Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault and others are released, we may start to see some special offers from them as well.


Skotos has been offering this type of service for a long time. For one monthly fee you can access and play all 11 of the games that they offer. Only 2 are graphical MMOGs (Meridian 59 and Underlight), but the other games are very good as well.


The largest factor in offering multiple "A list" titles for one monthly fee is offsetting development (and in the case of MMOGs, maintenance) costs and bringing in enough revenue to show a good profit. The bottom line is always a driving factor in any business. However, there is hope. As technology moves forward, we will start to see more and more rapid development of MMOGs of higher quality and consequently we should start to see a wider array of offerings and price points.


I also agree that some sports games should start to appear on the scene. XBox Live will probably be a driving factor to this more than anything. Playing football online against other players is quite fun and should prove to be very popular considering the amount of sports console games sold. Now, as to whether that genre will move to PC is yet to be seen, but as I mentioned before, in SOE's All Access Pass, they combine online console and PC subscriptions into one package. A diverse product line benefits them in this case. More comapnies need to grow in the genre and diversify at the same time, but that takes time and money. Soon though... very soon.

I never understood why 3DO did so badly, their PC video games are, for the most part, great. The first online RPG I ever played was Meridian 59 which was free for quite a long time during the beta testing. Then you have Heroes of Might and Magic, and the older Might and Magic's, which were also fantastic.

Meridian 59 is available that way, too.

I have an account, but it's going to go away soon, since I noticed the other day that I haven't played at all in the last month.

Judging by the posts here, I can see that not much of the slashdot crowd really likes the current generation of online games. I agree anyhow, as every single new MMORPG is just Everquest in a different world. It's boring, anyone can see this.

There is one place left to go for it, and that lies in Player-Vs-Player combat. The problem with Everquest is that after you get to a certain level in the game, there is no where left to go, no motive to keep playing. What's left? It needs to be be PVP.

More and more games are going to have to get away from this idea that people will want to play forever to kill monsters. AI will never have the thrill of being able to know that you just did something to another guy sitting at his computer somewhere, it will never be able to call up your buddy and go on about the kill, and it will most definitely will never get the real players to be respected.

What we need is to merge the genre of MMORPG with the FPS genre, not to make it totally the same, but to have an eternal quake game that keeps your statistics and items is just what we need (not to mention want). We need dynamic leveling, where if a mage wants to be a mage he customizes all his statistics by working on only the things he needs to. Seperate HP, Mana and endurance from levels. Most of all, put the players more in control, so they control the world.

People are going to realise that fighting monsters is not what an online community is about. People need people, if only to kill.

(As a note, the thing that has been the thing that has kept Meridian 59 alive and kicking with its 7 year old doom-looking graphics is the mechanics of PVP. It still has the most loyal fanbase in the world)