Even Russians know Richard Garriott; the guards at his training facility outside Moscow salute the billionaire with the nickname "Lord British." Garriott has made a name for himself over the years--first as an online videogame designer, best known for his 1980s creation "Ultima," and now as a commercial space flight advocate.
This October, he'll be launching into space for a 10-day stint aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits the earth. Accompanying him on his journey will be the entire population of his massively multiplayer videogame, "Tabula Rasa," and 40 digitized DNA sequences--all stored on a hard drive he calls the immortality drive.
Despite Garriott's pending trip, which he hopes will prove laymen can play a useful role in space exploration, he's still thinking about the world of online games.
Here are excerpts from a recent interview Forbes had with Garriott.
Let nostalgia take you back to the lands you once roamed until they were cruelly taken offline and away from us. MMOGames list the top 10 MMOs that died and left us with a hole in our hearts.
I agree when it comes to The Sims Online. That game was really fun and nothing has even come close to it. I still crave a new Sims with online multiplayer. Blows my mind they haven't done anything like that since The Sims Online or even The Sims Bustin' Out on PS2.
GamesRadar - You probably think online worlds shut down because no one's playing. Actually that's rarely true. Often, when servers finally wink out, there's a thriving community patiently waiting for the end and making sad faces at the sky. Most recently it was PlayStation Home, a game that no-one apparently played but which still managed to have millions of inhabitants waiting out their own personal apocalypse on the last day.
MMO-Play gathered a list of the most disappointing MMO's in the history of gaming.
