It’s Difficult To Justify the Investment”: The Founding Creators of the MMORPG Reflect on a Genre Overshadowed by Live-Service

In an expansive new series of interviews, three of the most influential creators in gaming history — Starr Long of , Bill Trost of , and Jeff Kaplan of — have come together to examine how their pioneering genre has been overtaken by modern live-service games, and why launching a fresh MMORPG today is proving more challenging than ever. Published this week across the global gaming landscape, the feature traces the evolution of massively multiplayer online role-playing games from their 1996 origins through their mid-2000s heyday to their current status as a niche but enduring format, offering candid reflections on rising development costs, shifting player habits, and the emergence of platforms such as Roblox.

The discussion opens against a striking backdrop: Roblox now reports 123 million daily players, a figure that dwarfs the combined historical peak of , RuneScape and EverQuest. Yet far from declaring the genre dead, the developers argue that MMORPGs have simply become the norm rather than the exception. A brand-new entry, , launched this week and quickly found itself on Steam’s Most Played list, while the long-awaited remains on the horizon. Meanwhile, pioneering titles continue running successfully decades after their inception — a reality that reframes them as the original live-service games.

From MUDs to Living Worlds

The genre’s lineage stretches back to multi-user dungeons, or “MUDs,” which functioned in the early internet era as virtual chatrooms hinged around fantastical adventure. The pivotal moment arrived in 1997 with the launch of , the game from which the term ‘MMORPG’ was coined by Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series. Directed by Starr Long, it delivered something unprecedented: a world that could change while players were away.

“The idea you could play in a virtual world with thousands of other people was a pretty novel idea at the time,” Long recalls. “It was like, ‘Wow, I can play D&D with my friends without even needing to be in the same town.'” The title became the first MMORPG to reach 100,000 subscribers within six months — an unexpected success that triggered severe performance issues and inspired a digital protest in the castle grounds of Garriott’s in-game alter-ego, Lord British.

“That was the turning point where we realized, while we are the game creators, this is the players’ world. We’re just facilitating it for them.”

Starr Long, Ultima Online

The Communal Core That Set Them Apart

Two years after , Trost — alongside co-creators Steve Clover and Brad McQuaid — launched , whose 3D engine demonstrated what an MMORPG world could become. Though its visuals were markedly more advanced, Trost insists the most important lesson came from his predecessor’s success.

“My world-building philosophy was to build a world with integrity, but don’t design it to death,” he explains. “The world we built and situations we set up made people bond together.” That ethos rippled through the industry: Kaplan first met Blizzard’s Vice President of Game Design, Rob Pardo, via the Legacy of Steel guild in , a fateful encounter that eventually brought him to lead development on .