Neverwinter Nights (AOL) 1991 MMO
Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2022 3:32 pm
Somehow I've been playing this game off and on since 2013 pretty frequently but I never knew that the first graphical MMO was called Neverwinter Nights and was developed alongside AOL. I thought I would share this discovery as I can't be the only one out of the loop on this, right?
`Neverwinter Nights was a co-development of AOL, Beyond Software, SSI, and TSR. It was the first multiplayer[1] online role-playing game to display graphics.[2]
Don Daglow and the Beyond Software game design team began working with AOL on original online games in 1987, in both text-based and graphical formats. At the time AOL was a Commodore 64 only online service, known as Quantum Computer Services, with just a few thousand subscribers, and was called Quantum Link. Online graphics in the late 1980s were severely restricted by the need to support modem data transfer rates as slow as 300 bits per second (bit/s).
In 1989 the Beyond Software team started working with SSI on Dungeons & Dragons games using the Gold Box engine that had debuted with Pool of Radiance in 1988. Within months they realized that it was technically feasible to combine the Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box engine with the community-focused gameplay of online titles to create an online role-playing video game with graphics although the multiplayer graphical flight combat game Air Warrior (also from Kesmai) had been online since 1987; all prior online RPGs had been based on text.`
Here is some footage of the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATMXCa8krH4
`Neverwinter Nights was a co-development of AOL, Beyond Software, SSI, and TSR. It was the first multiplayer[1] online role-playing game to display graphics.[2]
Don Daglow and the Beyond Software game design team began working with AOL on original online games in 1987, in both text-based and graphical formats. At the time AOL was a Commodore 64 only online service, known as Quantum Computer Services, with just a few thousand subscribers, and was called Quantum Link. Online graphics in the late 1980s were severely restricted by the need to support modem data transfer rates as slow as 300 bits per second (bit/s).
In 1989 the Beyond Software team started working with SSI on Dungeons & Dragons games using the Gold Box engine that had debuted with Pool of Radiance in 1988. Within months they realized that it was technically feasible to combine the Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box engine with the community-focused gameplay of online titles to create an online role-playing video game with graphics although the multiplayer graphical flight combat game Air Warrior (also from Kesmai) had been online since 1987; all prior online RPGs had been based on text.`
Here is some footage of the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATMXCa8krH4