Habitat - World's First MMO is Back

[Myrthos]

Alrik spotted that the world's first commercial MMO Habitat, has been brought online again by the people of the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE).

31 years after Lucasafilm Games launched a beta version of its groundbreaking massively-multiplayer online game Habitat, the game is being brought back online by the folks at the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) in Oakland, California.

This is a big deal because when Lucasfilm launched it on the Commodore 64 in 1986, Habitat (seen below) was basically the world's first commercial graphical MMORPG.

MADE founder Alex Handy and the rest of the restoration team have been working for years to rebuilt Habitat, ever since Handy (in the course of preparing an exhibit about the historical value of the game) unexpectedly received the game's source code (which has since been publicly released) from Habitat lead Chip Morningstar in 2014.

More information.

 

[duerer]

OMG, I still remember this one!
Come'er m'son, hear ye my story of olde.
Back in the day, m'son, when MMOs were not about grinding 1000x clam shells and mindlessly leveling up for nothing, but finding a virtual spouse in a virtual environment and having an ordinary virtual life as a virtual family...
Awww, nevermind kiddo. That sucked then, and sucks now

 

[luj1]

Wasn't Meridian 59 the first MMO? Just curious

 

[beldurax]

Wasn't Meridian 59 the first MMO? Just curious

the first MMO with a 3D engine

some fascinating reading :
http://www.meridian59.com/about-early-history.php