Sounds a bit silly when you put it in that context, but this is exactly what you’re arguing for with EQ in comparison to previous games. As I said above, many games contributed to MMO development even if you ignore purely text games. There’s a rich history of graphical games that came out many years before WoW, EQ, or even M59. Pretending they aren’t significant so that your favorite game can claim a title isn’t useful for meaningful discussion.

Massively.

While many games were multi-player, even back to text MUDs none of them really reached the “Massively” portion, and thus, qualify (IMO) to be called an MMO.

EQ1 was, really, a GUI’d DIKU MUD. But the GUI made it more accessible due to the “ooh shinies” aspect compared to text.

There were many great games before EQ1, and some were big, but “massively” implies something much larger than “big.”

Thus, I would have to consider EQ1 to be a “first gen MMO,” simply due to the definition of “MMO” but definitely not a “first gen multi-player world.”

Frame of reference shift.

-Mike

If we keep ignoring older games just because some bigger one came a long and “reaches [bigger] mainstream success” then we ignore history. That usually doesn’t end well.

Every game has some feature that sets it apart. There was an academic study of UO’s economy released around the time EQ launched, before its economy got underway. M59 set the business model for MMOs for the next decade (while abandoning that model itself). IoK showed that you could do a real-time, multiplayer game over the internet in something besides scrolling text.

EQ’s claims to being really big and being the pattern for cloning don’t make it a “first generation” game. It’s important, sure, but not first generation.

Of course that’s why I stuck “first generation” in quotation marks

No. While some EQ devs have tried to make this claim it is not the case, even if you ignore non-graphical games there were a lot of game that came before it. Even given my own history I wouldn’t even call Meridian 59 “first generation” given the existence of games like Islands of Kesmai, or Kingdom of Drakkar.

Not to say that EQ doesn’t have some important historical significance, but it’s irksome to see people try to call it “first generation” as if there had been the no history before the game.