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On The Genesis Of LucasArts' Habitat
Thanks to Oblomovka for pointing to a Habitat Chronicles post chronicling the early days of LucasArts/LucasFilm Games, including the 1984-era "pair of proposals, one for something we called Lucasnet, which would correspond to what nowadays we'd call a games portal, and one for something we called the Lucasfilm Games Alliance, which would correspond to what nowadays we'd call a MMORPG (and indeed, which looked in concept a lot like what Star Wars Galaxies turned out to be in practice, albeit 20 years later)." The eventual product, as documented by the creators, was Lucasfilm's 1986-launched Habitat, "arguably one of the first attempts to create a very large scale commercial multi-user virtual environment", but the detailed post also strays into defining the Lucasfilm ethos in the '80s, pointing out provocatively: "We were absolutely forbidden from doing any [games] that made use of the company's film properties, especially Star Wars. That was viewed as just like spending money, since these properties were, in effect, money in the bank."
But, when they WISELY used their licenses, they scored BIG time. X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Indiana Jones & Fate of Atlantis, Dark Forces, etc - those were all AWESOME games. Though others hated them, I even loved Rebel Assault.
Only when they started whoring the titles to produce "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine," "X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter," and "Star Wars: Racer" did they start to falter and cause what they originally tried to prevent: staining their cash cows...
It stayed running until Quantum Link closed its doors. Q-Link got bought by AOL (or was it a merger... My memory is a bit hazy, not enough coffee yet this morning...) Both services ran together for a year or two, but as the Commodore exodus continued, AOL killed off Q-Link in (IIRC) 1992.
Club Caribe still lives on (somewhat) as Caribe Isle in the Dreamsacpe world on Vzones. VZones uses a somewhat-updated engine of the old Habitat. There was a company in the Far East (Korea??) that had an even better version of Habitat, but it wasn't skinned for English, so I couldn't tell you too much about it.
I was on a panel at a convention some years back that dealt with this topic... If I can find my notes I'll post more history and any links that still work... This was 4 or 5 years ago.