Ahsoka

Cybsled said:

Yup, I remember those days. They started out with a per-minute cost, then per-hour, then eventually they went large cap and then unlimited. Per hour it was something bullshit like $4.99 or whatever. But as a kid I got hooked on the original Neverwinter Nights (probably the first MMO with graphics) and my parents got a huge bill and that was the end of AOL lol

Then I remember like a year or two later, I was walking by a Babbages and they had some free discs advertising a new internet provider that gave you like 2,000 hours a month for $19.99, which in comparison to AOL was an absolute bargain. Then everyone started to go unlimited and higher speed internet became a thing and AOL became a historical footnote.

But the early 90s were really predatory for online stuff in terms of what they charged you. Compuserv and Prodigy used to charge a lot per minute/hour, then I remember there was an online mechwarrior game that would then charge you by the minute on top of whatever you were paying for the internet access.

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NWN was released in 2002, there were unlimited time ISPs way before that. I remember playing UO (97 - 99) then EQ (99 - 04) on 56k, as a kid for large amounts of time and my parents wouldn't have put up with a single bill over $100 (probably even $50 would have gotten me in trouble). I could have sworn it was AOL before switching to DSL, probably around 2001.

Furry said:

Just thank jesus you didn't see and hear chuk running around on your EQ server with his cringe barb.

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Oh please. You couldn't even get in the zones I hung out in the majority of the time.

Furry said:

Bro, I was a raid leader at times and current in content for all of my time in EQ until I quit. I trained you and your raids a couple of times on alts just for the lols, so pretty sure I found those zones just fine.

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Burns said:

NWN was released in 2002, there were unlimited time ISPs way before that. I remember playing UO (97 - 99) then EQ (99 - 04) on 56k, as a kid for large amounts of time and my parents wouldn't have put up with a single bill over $100 (probably even $50 would have gotten me in trouble). I could have sworn it was AOL before switching to DSL, probably around 2001.

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Not the 3D NWN, I mean the original NWN online that came out in 1991. This was cutting edge online gaming at the time lol

Cybsled said:

Not the 3D NWN, I mean the original NWN online that came out in 1991. This was cutting edge online gaming at the time lol



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Oh, neat. Never even knew that game existed.

Burns said:

Oh, neat. Never even knew that game existed.

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I think it was one of the last of the "Gold Box" games.

yeah. NWN was the first mmo with graphics. and yes, it was a gold box engine game. kids these days, don't know nothing.

Never played a gold box game. M&M4: Clouds of Xeen was the first RPG I played and Ultima 7 was the first I owned. So that turned into spending all my RPG monies on Might & Magic and Ultima. Once they stopped making them, it was on to Fallout 2 and BG2 type games.

Furry said:

Yes, a lobby where you could join a server with a few other people is where massive gaming started. Totally. And there’s tons of graphical online rpgs that predate it

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NWN (the OG one) is widely considered the first MMO with graphics. The game had hundreds of people playing simultaneously on the same world. When I started playing I think it was around 200 people, then by the time it closed around the 1995 or so it had over 500 at the same time. I remember you had to constantly queue or spam join attempt to get in because the game was usually packed

Fights could only have around a dozen people at the same time, though. Triboar had an arena so everyone used to PVP in there - when someone died, another person joined the fight. There was also "The Chamber" as people called it - it was a "perma death" PVP room where if you died, you got ported to a room you couldn't escape and in theory you had to reroll. Although most people knew someone with the cheat engine that existed and they could jailbreak you by triggering a fight in the room that you could die in, then respawn at an inn instead.

I made some friends there that I eventually reconnected with in EQ1 and later WoW. A few of them later worked for Blizzard or Brady games. Actually the FIRST CM for WoW (during beta) was one of them - she ended up telling some players to "git gud" on the wow forums and got removed from the CM position if I recall

Burns said:

Never played a gold box game. M&M4: Clouds of Xeen was the first RPG I played and Ultima 7 was the first I owned. So that turned into spending all my RPG monies on Might & Magic and Ultima. Once they stopped making them, it was on to Fallout 2 and BG2 type games.

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I guess dragon warrior was my first RPG video game. Though, Shining In The Darkness was a much better representation of one.

Fucking Da' Kor and Magister. Emarr for the win.

Fuck you Chuck. For all the Shaman's Crucible chats over the years.

Snoww <---

Srathor said:

Fucking Da' Kor and Magister. Emarr for the win.

Fuck you Chuck. For all the Shaman's Crucible chats over the years.

Snoww <---

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Hey dude. I always tried to help the shaman community. I wanted to be the Kendrick or Cybsled of that board, though I think Glorianna and Jenamdar did a better job. Me and Jen did all the shaman beta testing in actual beta and in their broken end game stuff. It was fun for a while til most everyone got burnt out on Earth B cockblock. Fucking Rathe Council bastards. 20 years later and I'm still salty about it. They rather piss all the Uber guilds off and quit to play WoW instead of letting us get in Time and have fun breaking their broken shit for free loots. we ended up doing that anyway because nothing worked right when they did let us in. Next expansion was bullshit too.

Edit
It was so frustrating. I was in their closed beta for PoP. We had special access to their secret beta board where we reported to the devs directly. We gave them all the feedback and told them exactly what was wrong. It wasn't just me. Just to have Absor or whomever tell us. That we were doing it wrong. All the guilds on our level were doing it wrong apparently. Then the next data patch which was a month or more later. Apparently what we were doing wrong suddenly became the right thing and Rathe Council went down like little bitches and then Time was cake. It was too late by then. People were taking breaks and playing WoW. Many didn't come back.