Game news What is the oldest MMORPG active today and how does it survive?
Created with the democratization of the internet in the 90s, MMORPGs have continued to evolve ever since. However, some pioneers are still active almost 30 years after their launch. How do they manage to survive and above all, who is really the oldest representative of the genre?
On the video game scale, MMORPGs, for massively multiplayer online role-playing games, are a relatively recent genre. Unlike other experiences, they require an additional element beyond their support to work: a mandatory login. To develop, we had to wait until the internet became democratized in the 90s zgo, until every household was connected to it. It was therefore from the end of the 90s that MMORPGs gained popularity, exploding with the global success of World of Warcraft.
If the genre today only has a few big behemoths that dominate the market, certain founding titles are still there, almost 30 years after their launch. Among all these games, what is the oldest MMORPG still active? And above all, how does he manage to survive now? Well the answer is much more complicated than one can imagine.
What is the oldest MMORPG still active? It is complicated…
When wondering what the oldest still active massively multiplayer online role-playing game is, I didn’t think the answer would be so difficult to find. By asking the question directly on Google, a certain Furcadia comes up first in the results. As we can read from the presentation of the Wikipedia article, it would be the oldest social MMORPG still active since it was initially launched on December 16, 1996 according to Guiness World Records. However, when we look closer, the title has little to do with an MMORPG as we understand it since the role-playing dimension really doesn’t seem very pronounced compared to the social side. So, you have to keep looking.
Until very recently, I could have quoted you The Realm Online, also launched in December 1996 and which looks much more like an MMORPG as we understand it, with combat, spells and quests. Unfortunately, the game closed its doors recently, on June 30, 2023, after 27 years of good and loyal service. Let’s look again. When you think of an old MMORPG, one of the first that comes to mind is none other than Ultima Online. The title is still active and remains a pioneer of the genre. And yet, the game seems to have been beaten by a few months by a well-known experience: Tibia. If Ultima Online was launched in September 1997, Tibia was released a few weeks after The Realm Online, namely on January 9, 1997. Since then, the title has always been updated by CipSoft and continues to exist in its own corner. But it doesn’t stop there.
By continuing to search, we can find some Meridian 59 which is available on Steam and was first released on October 7, 1996. Beyond the Western point of view, it should be noted the existence of Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, a Korean MMORPG from Nexon which was launched on April 5, 1996 in Korea, but available in 1998 in North America. And if we want to go even further, we can talk about Neverwinter Nights from 1991 or even Avalon online since… 1989! But hey, those don’t really count, because the first is only playable through private servers, while the second is more of a text-based MUD than an MMORPG. By MUD, we mean multi-user dungeon, a prototypical version of the genre we are talking about today.
If it is therefore difficult to clearly determine which is the first MMORPG in history, it is more interesting to ask how do these games that have been around for more than twenty years work today?while most current game services only last a few years.
But what is the recipe for such longevity?
To understand how these old MMORPGs manage to last so long, we will mainly focus on the case of Ultima Online which still remains the best known of the lot and which therefore provides us with the most answers. First of all, if the game lasts so long, it is firstly because it marked its time when it was launched, which gave it a solid base of players from the start. For many, it was their first MMORPG experience, discovering a persistent world that evolves even when they are not playing and in which they can interact with other players. This inevitably creates a strong feeling of nostalgia which explains why some early players still stay with the game for years.. But that’s not all.
When we look a little on the internet, we notice that Ultima Online players welcome the freedom offered by their title which allows them to form their own experience, instead of the more linear progression of modern MMORPGs. This more organic way of playing also involves the fact that the game economy plays a central role in the experience, because all the objects in the game can be created by other players and resold. And as for Tibia, the hardcore and uncompromising side of the experience is also what makes it successful. In other words, what makes the charm of its old MMORPGs is also that they were released before World of Warcraft and that they were not formatted as much as those that came out afterwards. We find an experience that is both simpler in its mechanics, but also with more originality in certain aspects, which explains their popularity with a very specific audience.
If we continue, we also note that‘Ultima Online places a lot of emphasis on player interactions, like many games of its era. Thus, users have built relationships over time with real people, which ends up creating an attachment to the title, capable of going beyond the dated graphics of the experience. In this way, the game becomes more than a game and transforms into a platform for finding friends online, like an early social network. But it doesn’t stop there. The more you play the game, the greater the investment in time and money since the title has a monthly subscription. After a moment, we end up being so invested that it becomes difficult to drop out overnight. In addition to all that, it should be noted that in more than twenty years of existence, Ultima Online has published more than 100 updates which bring gameplay, which requires constantly relaunching the adventure.
Until then, we have only been interested from a players’ point of view. If the latter are essential for the survival of a game, it is interesting to look at the developers to understand why they support such a project for so long. Reading the forums, there’s something you don’t think about that explains why so many old MMORPGs are still online today. From a purely technical point of view, these titles were developed on servers that were much less sophisticated than those used by more modern games. The advantage of a developers view weight is that these servers do not cost very much to maintain precisely because their infrastructures are very simple given their age. This is why there are so many old MMORPGs still online, and if they have subscriptions, it is even more profitable for their creators.
Nostalgia, investment, emotional attachment, originality… The reasons for the lasting success of old MMORPGs are numerous and we notice that they inspire the most popular games of our time. You only need to look at the success of World of Warcraft Classic and Fortnite OG to see that nostalgia remains a powerful driver among players. It goes to show that these old MMORPGs have a bright future ahead of them.