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The Archive

Browse every game in the index. Filter by era, platform, genre, or status. 30 games archived and counting.

30
Games
17
Hubs
41
Members
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30 Games 17 Hubs 41 Members
30 games found
No Hub Yet

Auto Assault

2006 · NetDevil

3 (1)

Auto Assault was one of those weird, ambitious MMOs that nobody quite knew what to do with. Set on an Earth thats already been wrecked by an asteroid impact, players hopped into customizable armed vehicles and fought across a wasteland split between three factions, Humans hiding in mall fortresses, Mutants scrapping in the ruins, and Biomeks who were half-machine and half-something-worse. The whole pitch was vehicular combat in a real MMO world, and it actually delivered on the destructible environments part. You could literally drive through buildings, knock over trees, and leave craters in the dirt. Missions ranged from convoy runs to faction battles, and there was even a brief on-foot mode for when you wanted to step out of the car. It launched in April 2006 to a lot of curiosity but never quite found its audience, and NCsoft pulled the plug in August 2007. To this day a lot of people still bring it up as one of the most unique MMO concepts that just came out at the wrong time.

4 Hubs

PlanetSide

2003 · Sony Online Entertainment

4.5 (6)

PlanetSide was Sony Online Entertainments first attempt at the massive online FPS, launching in 2003. It was huge for its time, three factions, persistent continents, vehicles, aircraft, base captures, and battles that could go on for hours. You picked your faction, the Terran Republic, New Conglomerate, or Vanu Sovereignty, and you fought over territory in real time alongside hundreds of other players. The combat was a little stiff and the leveling was slow, but when you got into a good fight at a base, with people calling out positions and squads working together, it felt like nothing else. SOE shut it down in 2016 after PlanetSide 2 came out, but the original has been resurrected by fan projects like PlanetSide Forever, which is the best way to relive that specific brand of chaos.

+14
No Hub Yet

Fireball Island

1986 · Lund and Company

Fireball Island was the absolute peak of late 80s board game design. It came out in 1986 from Milton Bradley and had this gigantic 3D plastic mountain you assembled in the middle of the table, with paths winding around it, traps, and a giant tiki idol named Vul-Kar at the top. The whole point was to climb the mountain, grab the jewel, and escape, while other players rolled marbles down the mountain to knock you off your feet. The marble physics were genuinely chaotic and the game was constantly being interrupted by fireballs flying everywhere. Hasbro brought it back in 2018 with a Restoration of Vul-Kar version which is amazing, but the original from 1986 is the one everybody remembers from childhood.

No Hub Yet

Dark Age of Camelot

2001 · Mythic Entertainment

4.5 (2)

Dark Age of Camelot is the MMO that proved three-faction PvP was the best PvP. Mythic Entertainment launched it in 2001 with three realms based on Arthurian, Norse, and Celtic mythology, and the entire endgame revolved around realm vs realm warfare in a giant frontier zone called the Frontiers. The combat was deliberate and tactical, classes had real identities, and crowd control mattered enormously. It was never the biggest MMO but it had the most rabid PvP community in the business. The official servers are still running through Electronic Arts via Broadsword, and the game just keeps shuffling along year after year. The Phoenix freeshard kept the classic experience alive for years and proved how much demand there is for the old version.

No Hub Yet

Gauntlet Legends

1998 · Atari Games

4 (2)

Gauntlet Legends was the 1998 sequel to the original Gauntlet arcade game, and it was a huge deal in arcades and on the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast. Up to four players could pick a class, the Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard, or Archer, and just plow through these massive themed levels filled with monsters, treasure, and food that you absolutely needed to not shoot by accident. The voice yelling Warrior is about to die is permanently burned into the brains of everyone who played it. It got a sequel called Dark Legacy in 2000 that expanded everything, but the original Gauntlet Legends is the one that defined the experience for most people. You can still find it in barcades sometimes, and the home ports hold up surprisingly well.

No Hub Yet

EverQuest

1999 · Verant Interactive (later Sony Online Entertainment, Daybreak Game Company)

4.8 (4)

EverQuest is the MMO that taught a whole generation what it meant to lose your life to a video game. Verant launched it in 1999 and immediately became the biggest MMO in the world, pulling players away from Ultima Online and basically defining what a 3D fantasy MMO should look like. It was hard in a way that modern MMOs just arent, you could lose your corpse, get killed by a wandering monster, or spend an entire weekend trying to put together a group for one dungeon. The community formed around it was intense, the friendships were real, and the lore of Norrath ran deep. Daybreak still runs official EverQuest servers today, and the Project 1999 emulator brings back the original classic experience with the original 1999 ruleset. EQ basically built the genre that came after it.

+4
No Hub Yet

Anarchy Online

2001 · Funcom

Anarchy Online came out in 2001 from Funcom and was the first sci-fi MMO to really commit to a future setting. The world was Rubi-Ka, a corporate-run planet locked in a civil war between the Omni-Tek corporation and the rebel Clans, with a third neutral faction caught in the middle. Character builds were absurdly deep, you could mess around with implants, nanos, and skill points to make some genuinely broken combinations. The launch in 2001 was famously catastrophic, one of the worst MMO launches ever, but Funcom kept patching and rebuilding it, and the game went free-to-play in 2004 and just kept going. Its still running today with active players, which is honestly amazing for a game that almost killed its own studio at launch.

No Hub Yet

Glitch

2011 · Tiny Speck

4.7 (3)

Glitch was Tiny Speck's beautiful, weird, gentle browser MMO from 2011 about a world that lived inside the imaginations of giants. There was no combat, no leveling really, just a bunch of skill trees about cooking and farming and meditating and helping other players, all wrapped in this hand-drawn whimsical art style that felt like a moving storybook. The community was kind in a way that online communities almost never are. Tiny Speck shut it down in December 2012 because they couldn't make enough money, and the team famously pivoted into building Slack with the same core people. They open-sourced all the assets, so theres a fan project called Eleven that has been slowly rebuilding the world for years. Its still missed by everyone who played it.

No Hub Yet

Final Fantasy XI

2002 · Square Enix

5 (3)

Final Fantasy XI was Square Enixs first MMO and the first Final Fantasy to go fully online, launching in Japan in 2002 and worldwide in 2003. It was famously brutal, you needed groups for almost everything, leveling took forever, and a single mistake could undo hours of progress. But Vana'diel was beautiful and the music was incredible and the friendships you made grinding for experience points were real. The job system let you switch your class at any time as long as you had the levels, which was way ahead of its time. It still has official servers running today and even got a mobile spinoff. Theres also a private server scene with projects like Nasomi and HorizonXI that recreate specific eras of the game for people who want to experience the early days again.

+1