Although online games have achieved great success in recent years, few people realize how long the genre existed before this explosion in popularity. Often labeled as MMORPGs, or “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games,” these online worlds have been around for almost as long as the Internet. The purpose of this article is to explore the fascinating evolution of online gaming, from the dawn of its invention to the huge 3D landscapes of modern times.
The roots of online gaming can be traced back to BBS, or “bulletin board system”. These early versions of our modern forums were used to host all sorts of discussions or, in the case of this article, to provide a central location for a group of online role-players. BBS-hosted games often required players to take on the appearance of a character they had created. Over the course of several board posts, the characters would interact back and forth, gradually developing the otherwise undefined story. BBS games live on even in the present, although the new generation of online gamers tend to find them too slow for their tastes.
Online gaming took a huge leap forward in terms of interactivity with the advent of MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon or Domain or Dimension (the last word in the acronym varies according to opinion). MUDs retained the text-based aspect of BBS games, but added a level of automation not previously known. Players can develop characters with stats similar to Dungeons & Dragons and team up to explore and kill monsters. More importantly, MUDs also allowed players to interact with each other in real time. Gone are the delays in BBS posting, as players would only have matches while logged in at the same time.
MUDs reigned supreme in online gaming for เว็บแทงบอล years, until the first incarnations of graphical MMORPGs appeared. These new games featured primitive graphics that still appealed like something that hadn’t been possible before. A good example of a game produced during this era would be Legends of Kesmai, a now-defunct graphical game in which players adventured together in a world set on a vast tile-based map. Real-time interaction was now the norm, rather than the latest, and feelings of community and faster gratification helped these games slowly overtake the popularity of their text-based predecessors.