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''Meridian 59'', abbreviated ''M59'', is an online role-playing video game first published by the now defunct 3DO Company. First launched online in an early form on December 15, 1995 and released commercially on September 27, 1996 with a flat-rate monthly subscription. ''Meridian 59'' is often credited as the first 3D graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). ''Meridian 59'' is currently available as open source'ed Freeware〔 and is being run by original developers Andrew Kirmse and Chris Kirmse. == History == ''Meridian 59'', the first commercial, 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game, was developed by Archetype Interactive and published in September 1996 by 3DO. ''Meridian 59'' was Archetype Interactive's only product; Archetype Interactive was acquired by 3DO in June 1996. Archetype was run by Steve Sellers, Mike Sellers, and John Hanke, with Andrew Kirmse and Chris Kirmse filling key technical roles. Damion Schubert contributed to the design along with a team totaling 22 employees and contractors. The game's technological base was initially inspired by ''Scepter of Goth''. The game was in an early beta stage in April 1996 when it was noticed by Kevin Hester and other game developers at 3DO. Trip Hawkins, CEO of 3DO, recognized the forward-looking value of the game and the company, and 3DO bought Archetype in June 1996. More than 25,000 players joined the game's public beta that lasted up until its commercial launch on September 27, 1996, beating its next major rival, ''Ultima Online'', by approximately a year. Although ''Meridian'' arguably holds the title as the first realtime three dimensional online role-playing game, it lacks some features of its modern successors. For instance, the ability to jump was not implemented as a function of character input. Any jumping required in puzzle solving is done by climbing an incline and falling from one platform to another. This is the same limitation that ''Doom'' suffered; the game used a similar engine written in part by the original developers. Due to restrictions placed upon level designers by the graphics engine, many of the maps appear to have similar limitations to ''Doom''. For instance, unnatural sharp edges are common, as are short walls that are placed to prevent the (non-jumping) player from entering incomplete areas of the world. Tree-lines are duplicate image stamps, similar to tiled desktop backgrounds, and environment sounds are short clips from readily available sound sources. However, the game contained many other features that modern games duplicated later: guilds had a dynamic voting system for changing leadership, customized sigils that appeared on shields, and guild halls that could be won or lost. There were also in-game bulletin board system (called newsglobes), a personal mail system that both players and NPCs could use to send messages, a political meta-game, and frequent expansions that expanded the world and gameplay options. Prior to its release, the term "massively multiplayer" and the acronym "MMPRPG", "Massively Multi-Player Role-Playing Game", emerged in meetings within 3DO (beating out other monikers such as "large-n game"), as did the now-ubiquitous monthly subscription model. At the time, AOL was still charging per minute, though a change to flat fees was anticipated. The game received multiple awards, including the fantasy-role-playing game of the year for 1996. It also has had various updates throughout its life, each adding new monsters, spells, and areas. In its early years it was commonly conceived of as a graphical MUD, though this term, and ''M59s preferred "MMPRPG", was eventually displaced by the now-ubiquitous Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, a term coined by Richard Garriott of ''Ultima Online'' in 1997. 3DO shut down the game on August 31, 2000 and it was re-released by Near Death Studios, Inc. in 2002. Near Death Studios was co-founded by former ''Meridian 59'' developers Rob "Q" Ellis and Brian "Psychochild" Green. A new rendering engine was added to the game in the ''Evolution'' expansion on October 2004, offering an alternative to its ''Doom''-based graphics. This expansion also included features like dynamic lighting, rebindable keys, mouselook, and other visual improvements. Near Death Studios announced that they would be closing their doors on January 6, 2010, after which ''Meridian 59'' would continue running, but not as a commercial concern of Near Death Studios. In February 2010 ''Meridian 59'' was turned over to the original technical developers, Andrew and Chris Kirmse. On September 15, 2012, they released the game to the public at no charge to the players (freeware) and most of the source code under the GPLv2 license. For a while, ''Meridian 59'' had an international presence, with servers operating in Germany, run by the company MDO (active 2002-2009), and Russia, in addition to a Sacred Haven (non-PvP) server operated by Skotos. These are no longer operational. Meridian 59 stands as one of the longest running original online role-playing games; the original game client and official game play servers can currently be found through ''www.meridian59.com''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Meridian 59」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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