Dragon's Gate

1990 video game

Released: 1990
Platforms: cross-platform
Genres: MUD MUDs
Developers: —
Publishers: GEnie
Modes: Multiplayer
Country: United States

About

Dragon's Gate was an interactive, real time, text-based multi user online fantasy role-playing game, sometimes referred to as a MUD. It was one of the longest running pay-for-play online games in the world, it opened to the public in the spring of 1990 on GEnie. In 1996 the game was moved to AOL. Later the game was moved to Mythic Realms, and finally to independent server, where it ran until the summer of 2007.

The game has recently resurfaced and has been brought back on line independently. com/

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

At its creation, the core of Dragon's Gate was based on the AUSI-entitled game Aradath, which was programmed and designed in 1985 by Mark Jacobs. Dragon's Gate was originally developed by Mark Jacobs and Darrin Hyrup, who had joined AUSI from Simutronics where he had been a programmer on GemStone II and lead programmer on Orb Wars. Dragon's Gate was launched on GEnie in late 1989 and was eventually taken up by AOL as an online product.

Hyrup's initial work on the game was to help port the game to GEnie's Mark III operating system, though in the end, the resulting game was more of a new creation than a port. That partnership led to Hyrup becoming an integral part of AUSI as well as the evolution of the game from Aradath to Dragon's Gate on GEnie and to its other homes.

Reception

Ken St. Andre wrote in Computer Gaming World in 1992 that "gamers who like medieval fantasy ... will positively love the Dragon's Gate experience". He said that the opportunity to interact and cooperate with other players, and "unparalleled opportunity for extensive role-playing" were its main virtues, and called the cost of $6 per hour "a very reasonable price for being transported into a world of alien wonder and adventure".