Games

Best MMOs That Were Ahead Of Their Time

Published

2 weeks ago

November 7, 2024

Christoph Rediske

mmorpgs ahead of their time feature image

Key Takeaways

Meridian 59 introduced 3D graphics to MMOs, pioneering a technical feat ahead of its time.
Ultima Online popularized player-driven economies in MMOs, setting a standard for older MMORPGs.
EVE Online’s unique player-driven universe allows for organic wars and narrative development.

The MMO is one of the oldest and most revered subgenres in gaming, with its biggest hits living on for decades, and each new entry requiring an incredible amount of resources with no guarantee of a reward. That’s why it’s important to celebrate the history of MMOs and some of the most important mechanics they popularized or introduced way ahead of their time.

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Whether it’s the first popular use of instanced environments — or 3D environments themselves — these MMOs (in chronological order) deserve their laurels for being way ahead of their time.

8 Meridian 59

Little Known Pioneer Of The Genre

Meridian 59

Systems

Platform(s): Microsoft Windows , 3DO
Released: October 7, 1996
Developer: Archetype Interactive, Near Death Studios, Andrew and Christopher Kirmse, The 3DO Company
Publisher: Near Death Studios, The 3DO Company, Studio 3DO

Released in 1996 for PC, Meridian 59 may be a relatively obscure game these days, but when it released, it was actually the very first MMO to ever integrate 3D graphics, which was a massive technical undertaking for the time, particularly as the game allowed first and third person play.

To this day, a small but dedicated community remains committed to keeping an open source version of the game alive. MMO fans may not have played it before, but it’s treated with a lot of deserving respect for its graphical innovations.

7 Ultima Online

Hometown Hero

Ultima Online

Systems

Released: September 24, 1997
Developer(s): Origin Systems
Publisher(s): Electronic Arts

First released in 1997, Ultima Online became one of the greatest PVP MMO games of all time, earning itself a long-lasting set of fans who play the game to this day on a new and upgraded game engine with improved visuals launched in 2007. In fact, it’s got a good claim to being one of the very best older MMORPGs ever made.

Ultima Online can be credited with being one of the first MMOs to embrace a totally player-driven economy, meaning player to player trading was absolutely central to gameplay and was boosted by a robust crafting system. Player-driven economies would come to be a defining feature of many MMOs, and Ultima Online is the game that popularized it before all of them.

6 EverQuest

The Old King

Everquest

Systems

Released: March 16, 1999
Developer: Daybreak Game Company, Ubisoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment, 989 Studios
Publisher: Daybreak Game Company, Ubisoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment, 989 Studios

Released in 1999 on PC, Everquest may be relatively abandoned these days after a sequel and increasing difficulty to play, but many hold fond memories for the MMO that was folded into the Sony brand and remains relatively dormant to this day, despite being one of the best MMOs to predate its bigger brothers like World of Warcraft.

While Meridian 59 was the first MMO to introduce 3D graphics into an MMO, Everquest was the first MMO to take place in an entirely 3D game engine, revolutionizing the MMO space as players know it — and directly inspiring the visual style of industry titans like World of Warcraft.

5 Dark Age Of Camelot

Arthurian Legend

Release Date: October 9, 2001
Platform: PC
Developers: Mythic Entertainment, Broadsword Online Games
Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games (US), Wanadoo Edition (Europe), Electronic Arts (2006-present)

Considering that the late 1990s and early 2000s were a heyday of new MMO releases, it’s not surprising that some got left in the cultural dust, and Dark Age of Camelot is undoubtedly one of the discarded MMOs that deserves to be better remembered.

That’s because Dark Age Of Camelot pioneered the concept of realm versus realm combat where entire player factions are placed into combat with each other, with a lot of the narrative detailing what would happen when the realms of Hibernia, Albion, and Midgard would go to war. It was novel for its time and let players pledge their allegiance to different factions, long predating the Alliance/Horde dynamic of World of Warcraft. The fact that it offered three-way faction conflicts made for a dynamic system that few MMOs have emulated since.

4 EVE Online

Intergalactic Monopoly

Systems

Now over 21 years old, EVE Online remains one of the most feared and titanic games in the MMO market, known for its fearsome player-driven economy and real-time galaxy domination mechanics, demanding a sincerely massive amount of time, and often derided for requiring spreadsheets to play properly.

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Regardless of the criticisms, EVE Online is wholly unique for introducing an entire galaxy for players to naturally try to conquer, pirate, trade, and war over. That means all wars are purely organic, with the developers only stepping in to introduce constant new content. The players define the narrative of the game, and new stories still break when a particularly massive battle occurs.

3 Second Life

First Draft Metaverse

Second Life

Systems

Released: June 23, 2003
Developer: Linden Lab
Publisher: Linden Lab

These days, players are completely familiar with the idea of metaverses and living out alternate realities in digital spaces, but while it was imagined in fiction for a long time, no game embraced and embodied this idea quite as much as Second Life, released in 2003.

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In Second Life, players create an avatar and interact with user-created content in an entirely virtual space, with the developers often refusing to categorize the game as a game at all. This hyper-social reality is a direct precedent for games like VR Chat, and it most readily embodied the fantasy of MMOs becoming entirely new worlds where players could construct a new life.

2 Star Wars Galaxies

In A Galaxy Far Far Away

Star Wars Galaxies

Systems

Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
Released: June 25, 2003
Developer: Daybreak Game Company
Publisher: Daybreak Game Company

It was only a matter of time until a definitive Star Wars-based MMO arrived in the heyday of early 2000s MMOs, and Star Wars Galaxies delivered in spades, allowing fans to genuinely explore the Star Wars galaxy in an entirely fresh way.

It’s not only novel for bringing a popular sci-fi world to life (Star Trek Online would follow in 2010), but it also allowed players to erect their own buildings across the world, including homes, eventually coalescing into cities with entirely dynamic and organic virtual economies where players could create the items that made credits go around. It’s a great system that might not have been topped since.

1 Guild Wars

The Path Less Trodden

Guild Wars

Systems

Released: April 28, 2005
Publisher(s): NCSoft , Level Up! Games

While Guild Wars and its sequels are often overlooked in comparison to its bigger brothers in the form of World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14, it’s worth highlighting how pioneering the original Guild Wars was, preceding its competition by many years.

Guild Wars is beloved for its world and tight RPG mechanics, but it was also one of the first games to introduce instanced scenarios, meaning parties could enter specific versions of the world where they wouldn’t affect other players. That was a revolutionary idea that vastly opened up the doors for what MMO quest design could be, and it directly affected some of the greatest MMO quests to exist thereafter.