On Wikipedia, Modem Wars is listed as "The first multi-computer online game." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem_Wars I think the key statement here is "computer to computer." There were many games that went through servers. But there is a game that came before Modem Wars call Fire Power, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Power_(video_game) It allowed two computers to play over a modem as well, and allowed people to chat while in a real time video game (arcade style action strategy). Is there anything that came before Fire Power?
Island of Kesmai I would say would be the precursor to the MMORPG, but you can say it was a first. Another milestone in Multiplaying we cannot forget is Neverwinter Nights. Now this is not the bioware game which I love, but an earlier game with the same title that came out in 1991 and was available for subscribers of the aol service in those days. It ran from 1991-1997, and was quite popular. Now mind you while Island of Kesmai predated it, Kesmai was more of a mud with text and no visuals. NWN for aol had visuals and was the first MMORPG to have visuals, so consider it the true first MMORPG where as Island of Kesmai is more of a precursor. Here is some footage for the original NWN.
There has got to be ones before that. The Commodore 64 for had a modem and even a legitimate internet service: Q-Link.
Emerald_Warrior
Well as far as MMORPGs go, those two are considered the first....the first games that were networked based were developed on the Plato system and the first two network Multiplayer games were in 1973 and 1974. They were Empire in 1973 and Spasim in 1974. Spasim allowed up to 32 players in network play....so yeah you could say those two were the pioneers for online Multiplayer.
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