The first MMORPGs appeared in the 1990s. But at that time, there was no fast internet and no flat rates. How did people play online back then?
MMORPGs and the early Internet: In 1991, Neverwinter Nights launched as one of the first online role-playing games. Back then, the game could only be played through the internet provider AOL with hourly charges ($6 per hour) – in addition to the costs of the internet connection. Later, the games became accessible to everyone. Meridian 59 (1996) and also Ultima Online (1997) could be played over any service and established the MMORPG genre.
The Age of Screaming Modems
How did people play online at first? The internet is significantly older than MMORPGs. To surf the World Wide Web in the 1970s and 1980s, and still partly in the 1990s, an analog modem was needed. Acoustic telephone modems were particularly widespread. These devices used the regular phone line to transmit data. This meant that you could either make calls or surf the internet. Both didn’t work at the same time unless you had a second phone line.
Moreover, these modems were slow and loud. Initially, the phone receiver had to be placed on the modem, but later there were devices where this was no longer necessary. The screeching of the modem during data transmission was an unpleasant side effect of being able to use the internet.
How fast were the modems? Initially, 28.8k modems were widespread. They transmitted a maximum of 28.8kb/s. Later, these were replaced by 56k modems with a maximum data transmission of 56kb/s.
It’s hard to imagine such speeds today, where even gigabit connections are becoming established.
Imagine being in the countryside with your mobile phone and only having Edge connection. This transmits even 220kb/s. It means a 56k modem was almost four times slower than an Edge connection on a mobile phone!
Accordingly, surfing took a very long time. And of course, this time was billed. It cost around 20 pfennig per minute until a price drop occurred in the mid-90s.
In the mid-1990s, ISDN lines with 65kb/s also emerged, which had the advantage that you could make calls and surf at the same time.
By the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, DSL connections with 768kb/s or 1,000kb/s emerged. The speed increased continuously and very quickly from then on. At that time, the first flat rates were also introduced. However, they were still time-limited. For example, one could surf 100 hours a month for 100 D-Mark. Plus connection costs. Prices then fell rapidly as more and more private telecommunications companies flooded the market with increasingly cheaper offers.
How did people play then? Either one ran up the phone bill in the early days of MMORPGs or had to limit oneself significantly. Playing could be quite expensive. Because in addition to the costs for the telephone connection, the per-minute billing for using the line, and the purchase of the game, subscription fees also had to be paid at that time.
Due to the high costs, many online game fans preferred to play at the university. There, the computers could often be used for free for surfing, which, of course, prompted many to also play computer games online.
A little personal story
This is how the author experienced his first MMORPG: As a huge fan of the Ultima series, I purchased Ultima Online in the autumn of 1997. It was my first personal contact with the genre, although I had heard of Meridian 59 before.
At that time, I had already been using an ISDN line for about a year for internet. However, it was rather poor. Our system had the problem that whenever I was online and someone called, the connection was dropped.
With an older sister who was constantly on the phone, playing Ultima Online became quite challenging. We eventually agreed on times when I could play relatively undisturbed while she could talk on the phone. There were no mobile phones back then.
Ultima Online fascinated me so much that I often lost track of time. This became particularly intense after the first free month. My father stood in the doorway of my room with a red face, phone bill in hand. I still remember that it was an amount of almost 500 D-Mark that I had burned through, as flat rates did not exist at that time. The billing happened by the minute.
As a result, my internet time was severely limited in the following week. Fortunately, flat rates arrived and it became much more pleasant to play.
MMORPGs were a very expensive hobby in their early days, demanding a lot of patience. Today, one doesn’t have to worry about the issues mentioned above anymore.
