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The Gamebook Writers Who Nearly Invented the MMO

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-wishes-were-epic-mounts dept.

mr_sifter writes "In the 1980s, gamebooks were all the rage, and most geeks have read through a Fighting Fantasy novel or two. You might even have heard of Fabled Lands, arguably the most ambitious gamebooks ever — it was planned as a series of 12 books, each representing a different area of the world, and players could roam freely from book to book. It was completely non-linear, and unless you died, there was no way to finish. In 1996, the authors, Dave Morris and Jamie Thompson, hooked up with game developer Eidos and started work on what would have been a ground-breaking computer game version of their books — an MMO, in other words. Unfortunately, development hell awaited. This article tells the story of the game that could have been WoW before Warcraft."

3 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. hmm, but... by KingAlanI · · Score: 2, Insightful

    always antecedents. always second-guessing.
    Nothing is (completely) new under the sun.
    Hindsight is 20/20

    --
    I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
    1. Re:hmm, but... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 3, Insightful

      always antecedents. always second-guessing.
      Nothing is (completely) new under the sun.
      Hindsight is 20/20

      Hindsight is 50/50: sometimes you learn something and sometimes you don't.

  2. Re:WoW was not the first MMO. by Dragoniz3r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Try Eve Online. It'll give you a new sense of what "bland gameplay" means.