MMO BinA Geek's Look at Massively Multiplayer Online Games

A long time ago, back in the mid-90’s, I was an avid player of online role playing games, and before there were high speed Internet connections in every home, a popular way to role play online was through text. This goes all the way back to the early days of the Internet with people playing on BBS’s and through the earliest forms of e-mail. IRC or Internet Relay Chat, made this all move at a faster place, with multiple people in a single room, all conversing in real time, we interacted with each other, creating whole worlds around our interests.

One of my early endeavors was a small RPG based around the Dragonball Z universe. I was a fan of the movies, and the television series and I enjoyed the idea of being a super powered individual. Brolly, a “bad” character from the eighth movie interested me the most. His split personality, and the ball energy attack that he could perform were right up my alley for role playing.

We created our characters, had game masters, and points that we could trade in for new skills, abilities, and power upgrades. We were given rewards both for winning a battle, and playing out a proper defeat. People that tried to become “gods” in the game were scolded, and sometimes asked to leave. It was a thriving community of friends, with strong checks and balances that provided me with hours of entertainment.

The game changed over time, as I got older, and more serious about my writing, I found the limitations of IRC stifling my ability to really convey strong story-like messages. I found that the newer characters, with their one line reactions, attacks, defenses, were boring, and I longed for a new, bigger, and better challenge.

IRC as a medium was great, but I believe that the websites we made surrounding the text-based game really brought it to life, and so I looked for other mediums to put my imagination and talents towards.