Meridian 59 Retrospective/Review
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 1996
If you're unaware, a little history: Ultima Online is commonly accepted as the first modern-day MMO, but this is something of a misnomer, Meridian 59 having appeared in 1996, a full year before UO's release. Despite this, it failed to garner nearly as much publicity as Origin's effort, primarily, one suspects, because it wasn't tied to a blockbuster franchise.It's a pretty good read, if only to better understand the history of the modern (graphical) persistent world genre.
There are several other possible reasons: for one, it has an odd name, suggesting an old, expensive club coupé rather than a fantasy videogame. There was also the fact that the games press was still making jokes about choking on the words "massively multiplayer" and the whole idea seemed rather quaint, until Ultima Online started drawing crowds. Finally, of course, Meridian 59 was unavoidably associated with the comedy of errors that was Trip Hawkins' 3DO venture in the mid-nineties. (It's likely Hawkins who came up with the term MMORPG in the first place, but I don't know whether that redeems or utterly condemns him.)
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Like Ultima Online, Meridian 59 is skill- rather than class-based, so you're given relative freedom to create, say, a mace-wielding fog-spawner, or a monk-like brawler with an aptitude for transforming elderberries into hearty dinners. The level of choice on offer was a little daunting, so I rolled my default: your basic meat-and-potatoes warrior. Then it was an unceremonious dump into a Raza tavern, where I was immediately compelled to go and visit the local blacksmith. Leather armour purchased and equipped, I breezed through the empty town and ventured into the tomb that was, so I've heard, infested with undead.
Meridian 59, it must be said, looks a lot like Doom - or Heretic, if you prefer, which used the Doom engine in a fantasy setting. Certain characters, like the blacksmith, are static sprites; others, like myself, other players, and monsters, can be viewed from six different perspectives, giving the whole thing a kind of pseudo-3D mien. Despite the 2004 botox jab, the game obviously hasn't aged well, and I must confess to being a little put off by this. It's not so much of a problem in cities or even dungeons, but the wilderness zones, which are essentially corridor mazes with tree textures on the walls, are immensely frustrating to navigate, and I frequently found myself submitting to the moist, pungent maw of a giant groundworm just so I could respawn somewhere more interesting.
