The roots of the MMORPG genre run deeper than you might think. Join us on a journey through the history of online role-playing games – from the 1960s to 2025! You’ll encounter the most significant milestones, remarkable curiosities, and exciting analyses!
MMORPGs, or “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games”, are online role-playing games that immerse you in their respective persistent worlds where you can encounter a large number of other players. The term “persistent” specifically refers to the progress of your character as well as the game world, which continues to exist even when you are offline.
When players today discuss the beginnings of the MMORPG genre, titles like Meridian 59 and The Realm Online from 1996 or Ultima Online, which was released in 1997, quickly come to mind. However, the roots of online role-playing games go much deeper. They trace back to the 1960s.
In the following, we want to take you on a journey through the history of MMORPGs. From their beginnings to the current status today. We focus on the defining milestones, important games, and remarkable curiosities. You’ll learn how the genre has changed over the decades.
This week, exciting articles about MMORPGs will be waiting for you every day. Included: a journey through the history of online role-playing games, as well as nostalgic looks back, streaming evenings, interviews, columns, and analyses.
Here’s the program for the big MMORPG theme week 2025 from MeinMMO
You can easily jump to the sections you are interested in via the table of contents:
Students set the spark … out of boredom
In the early 1960s, the University of Illinois introduced the teaching and learning system “PLATO” (via Wikipedia), which had communication functions that were later developed into emails, chat rooms, remote screen transmissions, and more.
Bored students, however, used PLATO to connect via the network to engage in simple battles together or against each other. Later networks like Arpanet (via Wikipedia) built on this and enabled the development of the first multiplayer games such as Maze War, which originated in 1974 at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
This first milestone offered a graphical, virtual 3D maze that players explored from a first-person perspective. And not alone, but with other players who were sitting at other PCs within the network. Such a thing had never been seen before!
Our MMORPG talk from Caggtus 2025:
MUDs – the Multi-User Dungeons conquer the universities
Maze War was the predecessor of the so-called MUDs, i.e. Multi-User Dungeons. These are games that allow multiple adventurers to explore some form of dungeon or virtual world simultaneously. The first of its kind, MUD1, emerged in the late 1970s. The focus was still on social interaction. Up to 36 players could play at the same time.
In the 80s, the new genre gained significant popularity as affordable home computers became available. At the same time, the first commercial projects came onto the market. Among them was the text adventure Sceptre of Goth, released in 1983, which was based on the popular pen-and-paper role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, bringing up to 16 players into the dungeons at the same time and even offered PvP. The cost: just under 3 US dollars per hour.
Today, when one hears of Lucasfilm Games or LucasArts, one immediately thinks of various Star Wars games or adventure classics like Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
However, even before all these renowned milestones, George Lucas’s video game division had already established a name as a technically adept game studio. An example of this is the online RPG Habitat, which was released in the USA from 1986 to 1988 as a beta version for QuantumLink (an online service for the Commodore 64) and was then referred to as a “virtual online environment with multiple participants.”
Habitat is considered the first MMORPG with a graphical interface, reminiscent of the style of Maniac Mansion or Labyrinth. There were customizable avatars, text chat, quests, trading of goods, marriage communities, and much more. Those who want to learn more and see screenshots from the game should definitely visit c64-wiki.de.
Another commercial but graphical multi-user dungeon came out in 1985 and is called Island of Kesmai. The game featured character creation (choosing class, race, and gender) and a chat room. In the virtual world, consisting of 5 regions with 62,000 locations, up to 100 players could roam simultaneously.
Additionally, there were about 2,500 creatures as well as NPCs. Rewards could be earned through quests. The MUD utilized ASCII graphics to represent player characters, world boundaries, opponents, and loot. Interested players could experience Island of Kesmai through the CompuServe online service, for about 12 US dollars per hour.
The first believable online worlds
In 1989, the text-based online RPG Avalon: The Legend Lives was released, featuring remarkable systems for economy, agriculture, and jobs. On top of that, there was a player-controlled government, with ministers and elections, as well as conquest battles involving entire legions, trenches, minefields, and fortifications.
In short: The developer aimed to create a believable world in which players could lead a virtual life (via Wikipedia). Avalon: The Legend Lives was thus an evolution of Habitat from 1986, which hit a similar note and offered many freedoms. So many that gangs and in-game organizations quickly formed.
Also noteworthy from this time is Kingdom of Drakkar, which emerged in 1989 from the text-based MUD Realm from 1984, and attracted players with 2D graphics. Players could choose between races as well as classes and genders. There was loot. PvP was possible, but prohibited.
