Neverwinter Nights (AOL) 1991 MMO

[Manabi]

Somehow I've been playing this game off and on since 2013 pretty frequently but I never knew that the first graphical MMO was called Neverwinter Nights and was developed alongside AOL. I thought I would share this discovery as I can't be the only one out of the loop on this, right?

`Neverwinter Nights was a co-development of AOL, Beyond Software, SSI, and TSR. It was the first multiplayer[1] online role-playing game to display graphics.[2]

Don Daglow and the Beyond Software game design team began working with AOL on original online games in 1987, in both text-based and graphical formats. At the time AOL was a Commodore 64 only online service, known as Quantum Computer Services, with just a few thousand subscribers, and was called Quantum Link. Online graphics in the late 1980s were severely restricted by the need to support modem data transfer rates as slow as 300 bits per second (bit/s).

In 1989 the Beyond Software team started working with SSI on Dungeons & Dragons games using the Gold Box engine that had debuted with Pool of Radiance in 1988. Within months they realized that it was technically feasible to combine the Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box engine with the community-focused gameplay of online titles to create an online role-playing video game with graphics although the multiplayer graphical flight combat game Air Warrior (also from Kesmai) had been online since 1987; all prior online RPGs had been based on text.`


Here is some footage of the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATMXCa8krH4

[garrbear758]

Don't really have much to add but I enjoyed this.

[RedGiant]

Ah the halcyon days of the goldbox era.

Pro-tip, there is an Arelith nod to all of this which, if you find it, will reward your character with 200xp.

Not kidding.

[Manabi]

Ah the halcyon days of the goldbox era.

Pro-tip, there is an Arelith nod to all of this which, if you find it, will reward your character with 200xp.

Not kidding.

That is. . . incredibly interesting. I will have to see if I can find this.

[Kuma]

Don Daglow and the Beyond Software game design team began working with AOL on original online games in 1987, in both text-based and graphical formats. At the time AOL was a Commodore 64 only online service, known as Quantum Computer Services, with just a few thousand subscribers, and was called Quantum Link. Online graphics in the late 1980s were severely restricted by the need to support modem data transfer rates as slow as 300 bits per second (bit/s).

anyone interested in the history of this should check out LGR's videos on Quantum Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7jLBOIvxhg

[Xantor_Stromgate]

My favy old-school SSI Entertainment is the Dark Sun games. Half-Giant FTW!!!

[chris a gogo]

Still have my old dark sun disks somewhere used to love it.

[TurningLeaf]

Ah the halcyon days of the goldbox era.

Pro-tip, there is an Arelith nod to all of this which, if you find it, will reward your character with 200xp.

Not kidding.

How do we know if we found it? My chars found a thing or two before that gave 200 xp and I wasn't sure why. There was a server message but it was pretty general like, "you found something special" or something along those lines. If it didn't tell me it had to do with AOL NWN from 1991 I definitely would not realize it on my own..

[RedGiant]

My bad. Its 150xp. There is no special message apart from that found at all such sites. "You've discovered something special." And its not from the AOL game, it's from the Gold Box games, which the AOL used as an engine as noted above. From there, you can figure it out if you read the in-game description of the area and know your Gold Box titles even marginally well.