Meridian 59 dev Near Death Studios reaches death

I for one have never even heard of this game before.

It's not funny when you do it on purpose.

[banned]

[banned]

Just curious, how many emails do you have?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7goZUYGXAHA

You know what this is, don't you? This is him being genuinely embarrassed over being discovered. Kind of sad in a way, glad I was there though.

You won't get people to laugh with you though, so stop dwelling on the past and move the hell on.

Can we please not flood this post with two pages...

A same they're closing and it's surprising they lasted this long.

This looks like a neat experiment from the mid-90s. That, in no way, resembles a retail product from this century.

I wouldn't say that the studio's name is ironic. It's actually more appropriate now.

An ironic name for them would be "Live Forever Studios" or "Longevity Studios" or something like that.

"Near Death Studios" as a name for a failing studio is like a black fly in your Chardonnay...in other words, not ironic at all.

^^^^^^^^^^^ its sad the youth these days... This was one of the 3 original "great" mmos to ever be released.. Ultima Online, Meridian 59, and Everquest.. They started it all... before than all we had were MUD's... Great games, great companies... Now everything is shit compared to those.. Ill throw in Dark age of camelot being the last great MMO.. Since then, everything else has been mediocre, or dog shit.

Im dissapointed in the fact that i was downvoted, i guess i should have expected it..
Those games are too old for this generation...

No one commented on the name of the game or the fact that you have knights and skeletons fighting in Brooklyn NY so far? Seriously?

Gratz

3DO ran this first -- along with Might and Magic before they went belly up. This game preceded UO/Asheron's Call/Everquest. At the time it was released -- it was pretty unique. Back in the day, a whole 100-200 people could play together on about 10 different servers each. Near Death bought the rights. They were devs that used to work at 3DO. It had doom like graphics with an AOL chat room sortof community aspect to it. Think WOW trade channel but server wide ;)

At first glance, these mushrooms appear common, but look at the green stem! These are actually Darken's Invigorating Inky Caps!

I'll admit I have an extremely fond memory of this game - and seeing this article makes me sad. Will I never be able to play this game again? I played it for years when I was younger when it first came out (1995?). Sure, if you've never heard of it before and you're looking at that screenshot, it seems primitive. What do you expect from the first 3d graphical MMO? I think where this game really shined was the server politics and the personal relationships that developed. With only perhaps a couple hundred players on each server, you knew literally everyone, and that made the pvp both excruciating and satisfying at the same time. It really hurt to die and lose not only your character stats but every single item you were carrying. But the highs were often equal to the lows. Often a single guild would begin to dominate the server, but boy was it fun joining the secret opposition guild dead set on overthrowing them. Or hunting down a player killer and having the entire server hail you for it.

Meridian 59 lost me to Everquest, and a string of MMOs following it, but playing them was never as satisfying as the game that started it all for me. I still often wish MMOs were broken up into smaller communities like M59 so these more complex server politics could develop.

YES HE's BANNED!

I beta tested this game when it came out, and my name will remain immortally written in the back of the manual with the other beta testers ;)

I had so many friends on this thing, it was seriously a great game at the time.

Really? They cite world of warcraft as a reason for poor performance? /really/?

That's like a guy complaining that his horse-driven carriage company went bust because of the invention of the CAR...

Thank god.

Bye my first game :( , i played meridian59 sence release , server 103 kendar/rothgar/kendarik and also server 109 during the clone invasion cant remember my clone number though 1000200 bah . Went back to that game after uo , went back after the black company went to eq , followed the BC to Doac and stayed . Couldnt go back after that , i wish they would bring out a modern game with that design the fighting over guild halls was dam cool when it would happen.

I am sad to hear of the passing of this game, it was good to know I could always go back and relive some of the most awesome gaming memories I have ever had by popping back into this game.

Whenever I read or hear people spout about how Everquest did 3d first person MMO first or that Ultima Online was the first MMO I am always annoyed that they did not know of this game that contained so much awesome at such an early time.

I will never forget charging into the graveyard or castle throne room and half the time dying due to my 14.4 modem and the connection time over the Atlantic. The intense PvP battles involving massive hunts, battle, arena fights or defending my guild hall. Getting my Jerry discount or hearing FETTP! Most of all, the people that formed the first gaming community I was honored to take part in.

This game came out in 1996, it preceded most MMOs by a long shot. Never did get around to play it though I was too poor to afford a game with a monthly fee...at that time I also didn't believe in monthly fees.

How times change...

Anyways you can read about it here:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/meridian-59

Citing WoW is a bit silly. M59 is about as niche as niche can get, being a dated game with a subscription.

Admittedly I was on the tail end of Meridian 59, but just wanted to post that you hit the hammer on the head with this one. Managed to capture just how powerful community used to be in mmo's, something that's nearly completely lost in the current iterations.