Legends in the MMO Industry: An Interview with Raph Koster

Using the Past to Jump to the Future

Often in the MMO industry, we lose track of our roots and merely follow the latest and greatest in gaming. The Ten Ton Hammer team has made it a point to bring these crucial past players into the light. Today we present you an interview with Raph Koster, one of the integral members of the initial UO team and general MMO guru. As the first in our series of article concerning the legends of the MMO industry, we cover topics that include how his past experiences with games like LegendMUD and Star Wars Galaxies has shaped his creative mindset and what it was like being an original member of the UO team .

UO felt like a garage project from the beginning..We were crammed three to an office, put on a floor where they were doing construction… we kept the servers under the thermostat, so the AC ran all the time and it got so cold we typed code while wearing gloves. For a long time, we were the weird kids in the attic, basically. Most of the team was brand new to the industry – there were a couple of programmers hired straight out of high school.

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