# Worlds Online *From MUD1 to World of Warcraft* - Tour: Tour - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/tours/worlds-online/ > Fourteen stops trace the shared fantasy world from glowing PLATO terminals and a text game at Essex University through dial-up boards and AOL to Britannia, Norrath, Azeroth and the economies and epidemics they produced. **Why it matters:** Online worlds turned the roleplaying game from something played at one table into a society. This tour shows how the technology grew, and what happened when thousands of strangers began sharing a fantasy world. A roleplaying game is a social activity, and from the beginning some designers wanted to make the computer version social too. This tour follows the growth of the shared online world, from a few dozen players on a university network to millions on commercial servers. The early stops are text and terminals. On the [PLATO](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/plato-system/), games such as [Avatar](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/avatar-plato/) let groups explore a dungeon together in the 1970s. At the University of Essex, [Roy Trubshaw](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/roy-trubshaw/) and [Richard Bartle](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/richard-bartle/) created [MUD1](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/mud1/), which gave the [MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mud/) its name and many of its conventions. [BBS Door Games](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/bbs-door-games/) like [Legend of the Red Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/legend-of-the-red-dragon/) brought a slower kind of shared world to home computers over dial-up lines. The middle stops show commercial services adding graphics. [Neverwinter Nights](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/neverwinter-nights-aol/) put a Forgotten Realms city on America Online in 1991. [Meridian 59](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/meridian-59/) opened a 3D world on the internet in 1996, and [Ultima Online](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ultima-online/) made the persistent fantasy world famous in 1997, with results its designers did not expect, including the [The Assassination of Lord British](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/lord-british-assassination/). Then the [MMORPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mmorpg/) became an industry. [Lineage](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lineage/) in Korea, [EverQuest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/everquest/) in America and [RuneScape](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/runescape/) in the browser each found audiences in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Economists noticed their [Virtual Economies, Gold Farming & the GDP of Norrath](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/virtual-economies/). [World of Warcraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/world-of-warcraft/) brought these ideas to a far larger audience, and the [The Corrupted Blood Incident](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/corrupted-blood-incident/) showed researchers that a virtual world could be a laboratory for the real one. Many of the people behind these worlds, including [Raph Koster](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/raph-koster/), [Starr Long](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/starr-long/), [Brad McQuaid](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/brad-mcquaid/) and [Jake Song](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jake-song/), learned their craft from the earlier stops on this tour, some of them as players of MUDs. As you go, notice three recurring questions: how to make strangers cooperate, how to stop them preying on one another, and who governs a world that belongs to everyone who plays it. ## Stops 1. [PLATO](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/plato-system/) — Start at the University of Illinois, where PLATO terminals with orange plasma screens hosted message boards, chat and multiplayer games in the 1970s. Online community existed here before most people had heard of computer networks. 2. [Avatar](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/avatar-plato/) — PLATO's most popular game, begun by junior-high students, let parties explore a dungeon together and chat in real time. Notice how many later online features, from group play to its very name, appear here first. 3. [MUD1](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/mud1/) — In 1978 Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at the University of Essex built a shared text world in which players met, fought and cooperated on the way to Wizard rank. The MUD gave the online RPG its name and many of its habits. 4. [Legend of the Red Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/legend-of-the-red-dragon/) — Through the 1980s and 1990s, hobbyists ran dial-up bulletin boards, and door games like this 1989 dragon hunt gave callers a few turns a day in a shared village. It was online fantasy for people who had never seen a university network. 5. [Neverwinter Nights](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/neverwinter-nights-aol/) — From 1991 to 1997, AOL subscribers dialed into a shared Forgotten Realms city built on SSI's Gold Box engine. It is widely credited as the first graphical online RPG and set the pattern for the MMORPG. 6. [Meridian 59](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/meridian-59/) — Opened to the internet in 1996, Meridian 59 offered a first-person 3D world for a flat monthly fee. It arrived before its famous rivals and kept running, in one form or another, for two decades. 7. [Ultima Online](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ultima-online/) — Origin's 1997 Britannia made the persistent world famous: player housing, player shops, crafting and a lawless culture of player killing. It passed 100,000 subscribers and showed how hard a virtual society is to govern. 8. [The Assassination of Lord British](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/lord-british-assassination/) — On August 9, 1997, during the beta, a player killed Richard Garriott's supposedly invulnerable avatar with a fire field spell. It remains the best-known lesson in what players will do when a world allows it. 9. [Lineage](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lineage/) — In South Korea, NCSoft's 1998 game of castles and blood pledges spread through PC bangs to millions of subscribers. Online worlds were becoming a mass medium in Asia at the same time as in America. 10. [EverQuest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/everquest/) — Sony's 1999 Norrath brought the MUD's structure into 3D: camped spawns, corpse runs and raids for large groups. Its players were so devoted they nicknamed it EverCrack. 11. [Virtual Economies, Gold Farming & the GDP of Norrath](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/virtual-economies/) — In 2001 an economist estimated the per-capita output of EverQuest's world and found it rivaled real countries. Gold farming and real-money trading turned fantasy loot into a real economy. 12. [RuneScape](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/runescape/) — Launched in a web browser in 2001 by two brothers in Nottingham, RuneScape made the online world free to enter; Guinness recognized it in 2008 as the world's most popular free MMORPG. 13. [World of Warcraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/world-of-warcraft/) — Blizzard's 2004 Azeroth polished every idea on this tour into the most successful subscription game of its era, with more than 12 million subscribers at its 2010 peak. 14. [The Corrupted Blood Incident](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/corrupted-blood-incident/) — End with an accident. In 2005 a raid boss's curse escaped into World of Warcraft's cities, and epidemiologists later studied how players spread it. Online worlds had grown complex enough to model real ones. ## Facts - Avatar took 6 percent of all hours spent on PLATO between September 1978 and May 1985, according to Richard Bartle. - Neverwinter Nights on AOL held 50 players per server at launch in 1991 and 500 by 1995. - Meridian 59 launched commercially on October 7, 1996, about a year before Ultima Online. - Edward Castronova's 2001 paper put the GNP per capita of EverQuest's Norrath between Russia's and Bulgaria's. --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.