UO is sued in a class-action lawsuit. The suit is later settled out of court . Oddly, one of the plaintiffs is an ex-player of LegendMUD .
Verant's EQ opens in Beta.
Rubies of Eventide opens.
Lyra's Underlight launches doing a role-play -enforced graphical game on MPlayer.
Electric Communities acquires The Palace from Time Warner. It also holds a closed Beta of ECHabitats/Microcosm .
Titanic releases NetStorm , an online-only strategy title. The company folds later that year.
Delashmit and others (including Todd McKimmey, formerly of LegendMUD and UO ) form Wombat Games. One of the first contracts is to help get Sega's MMP action-strategy game 10six off the ground.
Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life is published. The first chapter is "A Rape in Cyberspace."
Sierra announces Middle Earth , an MMP based on Lord of the Rings . Steve Nichols, creator of The Realm , leads the team with Janus Anderson, also of The Realm , and Daniel James of Avalon .
Mike Sellers plays a role in bringing TEC to The Big Network, where it becomes one of the first (if not the first) commercial text-based RPGs to be supported by banner ads, using a Java client.
John Pritchett creates the TW game server, which makes TW into a TCP/IP game playable over the Internet. He also founds EIS.
