Chromehounds was From Softwares 2006 mech combat game for the Xbox 360, made before they became famous for Dark Souls. The big idea was that you built your own mech from parts you scavenged through the campaign, then took it online to fight in faction wars across a persistent world map. Squads coordinated through radio operators, scouts, snipers, and heavy weapons mechs all played different roles, and the matches felt slow and tactical compared to most shooters. The metagame of the persistent world was the real draw though. Microsoft shut down the Xbox Live servers in January 2010 and the game basically died overnight because the campaign without the online war was a shell. Its one of the cleanest examples of a game that needed servers to exist.
Dark Tower was Milton Bradleys 1981 fantasy board game with a huge electronic battery-powered tower in the middle of the table that did all the bookkeeping for you, telling you what monsters you fought, what loot you found, and where you could travel. It was basically a video game that lived inside a board game, and at the time it felt like sorcery. You played as a knight trying to gather the resources to defeat the evil in the tower itself. The plastic tower itself is the iconic part, and surviving units in working condition are collectors items now. Restoration Games made a successful Kickstarter reboot called Return to Dark Tower in 2022, but the original 1981 version is still legendary among board game collectors.
Shadowbane was Wolfpack Studios PvP-focused MMO from 2003, and the entire pitch was that you could siege and destroy other players cities. There was no loot grind, no PvE focus, just guilds, politics, and constant warfare over territory. Every city you saw on the map was built by players, and it could be torn down by other players with enough firepower. The graphics were rough even for 2003, the launch was a disaster, but the people who stuck with it had experiences in that game they never had anywhere else. Wolfpack shut it down in 2009. There are emulator servers like Magicbane that have been running for years and are the best way to experience that specific feeling of building something just to defend it against other people.
Phantasy Star Online launched on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000 and was the first console MMO that mainstream players could actually play, no PC required. It was a hub-based action RPG, you teamed up with up to three other players online and ran through randomized dungeons fighting monsters and grabbing loot. The combat was fast and satisfying, the music by Hideki Naganuma was unforgettable, and seeing other players in the lobby for the first time blew peoples minds. Sega shut down the original servers years ago but theres a huge private server scene with projects like Schthack and Ephinea that keep multiple eras of the game alive. Its still one of the most pure cooperative experiences you can find.
2005 · Monolith Productions, Sony Online Entertainment
3.5 (2)
The Matrix Online came out in 2005 and tried to continue the story of the Matrix movies after Revolutions ended. Monolith built it and SOE took over running it. The combat was unique, with this slow-motion martial arts system that almost felt turn-based, and the city environments captured the look of the films pretty well. The Mission of Neo storyline actually let players influence canonical events in the universe through live events run by the developers. The problem was that without the movies cultural moment to lean on, the game struggled to find an audience. SOE shut it down in July 2009. There have been a few emulator attempts over the years but nothing has fully recreated the live event experience that made the game special.
Motor City Online was EAs 2001 attempt to take the Need for Speed brand into MMO territory, focused entirely on classic American muscle cars from the 50s and 60s. You bought wrecked cars, restored them in the garage, swapped parts, and raced them online against other players in events scattered across a map of Detroit. The car customization was incredibly deep for its time, with real licensed parts and historically accurate options. EA shut it down in August 2003, less than two years after launch. There have been a few private server attempts to bring it back over the years, with varying levels of success, because there really isnt anything else quite like it.
CarnEvil was Midways 1998 light gun arcade game that took the haunted carnival horror concept and turned it up way past eleven. You picked up a pump-action shotgun, walked through these absolutely demented levels full of clowns and zombies and giant babies, and just blasted everything you saw. The bosses were memorable, the gore was outrageous for the time, and the whole thing had this carnival barker host named Umbilicus pulling you through. It was pretty much an arcade-only game, no proper console port ever happened due to the licensing and the content, so the only real way to play it now is to find a working cabinet at a barcade or run it through MAME. Its a piece of late 90s arcade culture that stayed exactly where it was born.
Puzzle Pirates was Three Rings Designs 2003 browser MMO where you joined a pirate crew and the entire game was made of puzzle minigames. Sailing was a puzzle. Cannon firing was a puzzle. Bilge pumping was a puzzle. It sounds ridiculous and it absolutely was, but it was also genuinely brilliant because everyone on the ship had to coordinate their puzzle skills together to actually win the battle. Crews bonded over this in a way that no shooter or MMO ever achieved. The game is technically still running through Grey Havens after Sega bought and then later sold Three Rings, but its a shadow of its former self. The 2003 to 2010 era is what people remember.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning launched in 2008 from Mythic Entertainment, the same studio behind Dark Age of Camelot, and it leaned hard into the Warhammer Fantasy setting with two faction Order vs Destruction warfare. The selling point was Realm vs Realm combat at a massive scale, with public quests scattered around the world that anyone could just walk up to and join. The Tier 1 experience was incredible, but the game struggled at endgame and EA shut down the official servers in December 2013. The fan-run Return of Reckoning private server has been running ever since and is the only way to play the game now. Its been kept alive by a small dedicated team for over a decade and the community is still active.
