-
EQ opens and quickly becomes the second huge success in the newly dubbed MMORPG genre .
-
Nine months later, AC releases on the Microsoft Gaming Zone.
-
VR-1's UltraCorps ( UC ) closes on The Zone.
-
TEN ditches hard- core and persistent world (PW) gaming to become pogo.com.
-
DWANGO dies in the US.
-
EA buys Kesmai (and PlayNation). This is part and parcel of a deal to become the exclusive games channel provider for AOL.
-
MPGNet bought from founder and owner, Jim Hettinger, by Interactive Magic. They combined I-Magic Online and MPGNet and eventually renamed it IEN.
-
Verant's Sovereign announced. It looks to borrow design elements heavily from Empire .
-
Simutronics announces a graphical version of their game, to be called Hero's Journey .
-
Bioware announces a new NWN , to be a distributed MUD server, at GenCon in August.
-
Electric Communities mothballs Microcosm .
-
Nexon develops distributed game servers for Kingdom of the Winds . They subsequently peak with 12,263 simultaneous users in a single world using this technology.
-
Mythic releases Darkness Falls: The Crusade , also a text-based game.
-
UO2 announced with Starr Long, Damion Schubert, and Jeremy Gaffney. Jack Heistand becomes general manager of Origin. The game is later renamed Ultima Worlds Online: Origin .
-
Sierra restarts development on Middle Earth Online and abandons The Realm . Codemasters picks up The Realm and Nichols joins them.
-
Legends of Future Past closes on December 31.
-
Project Entropia is announced. The novel twist is that real-world currency will be freely convertible to game currency, and vice versa.
-
On December 2, CompuServe stops running MUD1 after 13 years of operation.
"We were given a whole zero day's notice."
” Dr. Richard Bartle
-
The film The Matrix is released.
-
The film eXistenZ is released.
