Someone has written their fond memories of Meridian 59, my entry into the game design field.
No only was the game online, it was in 3D! Well, kinda. It took the Wolfenstein 3D and Doom approach to graphics, which was essentially to place 2 dimensional graphics on a 3 dimensional plane. Animations were only a couple of frames long and the basic attack looked like someone losing their balance while taking a crap. Needless to say, I was impressed.
The game proceeded like most MMOs do today. Kill things, get loot, level up. In this case, leveling up amounted to getting additional 1 hp. That was it, that was all you got. You started off with 20 hps and could theoretically go up to 100 or more. I use the word theoretically, because there was one thing about this game that really does make it an old school MMO. Every time you died, you lost a hitpoint. Yep, you read that correctly. A death, any death, even to a monster, was the equivalent of losing an entire level. To make matters worse, every last item you were wearing dropped on the ground when you died. So, not only did you lose a level, you also lost all of your best equipment.
I promise that, as a designer, I no longer harbor the lingering hatred towards my player base that I apparently once did.
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