"Longest running mmo"

[Malsour]

NexusTK: Kingdom of the winds came out in '96 and has been going strong since.
Just thought I'd add this useless bit of info, don't be too offended! XD

[RetroTekGuy]

It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ claim. Ultima Online even beats this game.

[john 14:6]

this game actually came out in 1995, steam is wrong

[Bullborn]

94 if you count the beta when it was named Sniper.

[AlienC]

try get it on steam then man..we would all be dying to play it.. also fresh new newbies... :)

[Articulate Llama]

Bullbom is correct, including the beta this game has been out since 94'.

[chiyio]

This was out long before UO, Bullborn knows what he's talking about.

[AN BIFFED ELF!!!!]

It had its commercial release a year after UO launched.

[chiyio]

Its "commercial" release was just a boxed copy of the game people had been playing for years, it was really on the decline (comparatively) by that time. I know, I was playing it for years before that, and I still have my box, heh. The beta test for UO came later, I played that too :)

[AN BIFFED ELF!!!!]

What? UO had its expansion pack released by the time Subspace left beta and hit retail.

[chiyio]

I played the UO beta (a lot), but it was years after I first started playing sniper(later subspace). I want to say I started around version .95, I know for sure I was playing by .97 Don't know what to tell you, but that's how it went down. Looking at wiki, subspace/sniper came around 1994, UO beta was in 97 (I wasn't in alpha sadly, it sounded like a riot though) I was definitely playing subspace quite a while before diablo came out, and that was before UO was released.

[Dogsbody]

Regardless of UO and so on, MUDs (simultaneously multiplayer RPGs) have existed for far longer. Arguably since as early as the late 70's. Though early 80's is a better bet, depending on what you qualify as "massively multiplayer." These games weren't graphical, of course. But they were certainly massively multiplayer, especially by the mid to late 1980's, and absolutely by 1990 and later, when servers capable of handling hundreds of telnet connections were able to run the largest MUDs.

But even if you say "longest running graphical MMO," it still is a bunch of BS, as there were many graphical MUDs around 1993-1995. They certainly qualified as MMOs, because hundreds of people played at once. I remember there was one on AOL around 1993-4 or so, though I didn't play it much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_massively_multiplayer_online_games

Bottom line: to say SS is the first MMO is a ridiculous claim that is patently and unequivocally false, and it should probably be removed to save us some embarrassment.

Also, PriitK didn't invent Skype, but he did contribute Continuum's highly advanced protection code to it, among other things.

[AN BIFFED ELF!!!!]

It's not even the longest running multiplayer top-down space combat game.

*COUGH*Netrek*COUGH*

Also equating in-beta dates to claims of being canonical launch dates is a nuts thing to do anyway. regarding comparisons. i mean it's like claiming mac os x did a lot of things in 1994 being ahead of microsoft windows 95's release


A similar "LONGEST RUNNING MMO!!!" case is WarBirds which also had a 1998 retail launch and had betas back to 1995 when it was Confirmed Kill. It's even on Steam. not f2p though, and there's also the similar case of history misinformation.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/365620/
Can't vouch for what TotalSims did for it though. I only recall my days on it as an Interactive Magic title in 98.

[Marik]

They say it's the longest running MMO, not the first MMO.

[RazerTooth]

IF CARLSBERG MADE A GAME THEN IT WOULD BE SUBSPACE/CONTINUUM so stop yapping on about all these other pretenders to the crown.
The only other game on steam that is almost as epic as subspace is broforce.

[ein]

The first public beta for Sniper was announced on February 27th of 1996, but the game was probably in development during 1995.

Larger scale MUDs go back at least several more years, including GemStone which was (and is) a commercial game, but the simple fact is that this was the first MMO because the term didn't exist before then. I'm pretty sure Jeff Petersen came up with it - though it was Meridian 59 that first used it in marketing, and they also have a fair claim to the title.

Don't be fooled either by the downward defining of "massively multiplayer" we're seeing today, where 64 players and a leaderboard or lobby in the form of a worldmap supposedly means massive. This is not a 64 player game. Meanwhile, every legitimate modern MMO that I can think to name does its level best to separate players, and responds to large concentrations with instancing and phasing. At the time of its release, Subspace's arenas were capped at 150 players, and the game can handle more than that.

There are few other games - if any - that can do this without creating an unplayable situation. Subspace thrives on arenas this size, with dozens of large teams pursuing their own goals, claiming territory for the hell of it, and fighting over bizarre and unsanctioned goals. And no tricks to separate them except for good level design. I can think of no other game that actually benefits from having this many people in one room, except for asynchronous RPGs like Urban Dead. And even then, just Urban Dead.

In short, this isn't just the oldest MMO, it might still be the only MMO.