The game itself can be played and tested here but the real value of it is that it is open source and on GitHub. The codebase itself is as tidy as you’d expect from a Mozilla release which makes it a great source of education if you’re looking at making in-browser games with multiplayer support.

BrowserQuest is a tribute to classic video-games with a multiplayer twist. You play as a young warrior driven by the thrill of adventure. No princess to save here, just a dangerous world filled with treasures to discover. And it’s all done in glorious HTML5 and JavaScript.

Double click pickaxe. Click ground. Wait. Fail. Double click pickaxe. Click ground. Gather.

For me, this was as addictive and engrosing as it got.

Ultima Online, an MMORPG released late 1997 by Origin Systems, was the game to open the doors for the likes of Everquest and eventually World of Warcraft to barge through. Played from an isometric perspective, the game put you in the customizable clothes of your avatar who could travel the lands of Britannia and fight evil, set up shop, mine, tame animals, build their own city or attack other players, salavaging their wares.

When I began playing, the controversial splitting of the player vs player areas (PvP) and safe areas into the two lands of Feluccia and Trammel had already happened and by the time I had amassed enough money to purchase the plans for my own house, all spaces had been grabbed by the elite. The only route to go down at this point was to keep saving the pennies and eventually buy a pre-built house of the homeowner – often selling at a remarkable premium depending on where the house was situated.

Managing a home was a game in itself.

The game was fascinating. Not only were the mechanics of the game complex and compelling, the players who filled up the vast lands – from Trinsic to Vesper – were dynamic, varied, annoying, hilarious and creative. Expanding on the feature that allowed a player to run their own shop, players combined their shops and created malls,treasure hunts and duelling pits, gave guided tours around the local area and provided services for pub quizes and weddings.

The majority of the unique ideas that players created would not be possible if not for Ultima Online’s often overlooked item management system. The ability to “drop” any item directly into the gameworld, yours and everyone elses, meant players could organise chairs and tables and form a wedding venue. This is something that could not be achieved in the static worlds of Azeroth and the like.

Of course, with the ability to customize the land for all players, came the people who griefed. Boxes placed infront of door ways, teleportation gates surrounded by immovable objects often caused the developers to get hands on with the world they had developed. Game Masters (GMs) were illustrious in their appearance – hooded robes that were unavailable to players gave them an ethereal quality about them, as if they were really from the higher circle. Ultimited powers gave the GMs the talent to magic any item into the game world or remove a player indefinately.

Player Killers were one of the controversial elements of this freeform world.

Websites began popping up, journaling the trials and tribulations of players wrongly put into GM voidspace – a holding cell seperate from the entire game world with no doors. These weren’t the only websites to form their own life outside the game – uo.stratics.com was a library of information, documenting the limitless items, monsters, skills and tactics that could be obtained in the game. UO-auctions.com became the eBay of Britannia, users swapping ingame gold for houses and magical swords. imanewbie.com provided a comedic twist on the game with a weekly on going story about the character ImaNewbie.

Characters weren’t limited by skill, only imagination. With a total of 700 points being able to be put into one of the 60+ skills (including fencing, fishing, cartography, peacemaking, musicianship, cooking, taming, alchemy, hiding and archery) a player could become a master in 7 skills, often refering to them as Grand Master (confusingly abbreviated to GM also). Again, websites sprung up giving information on how to get the best from your character and listing complimentary skills. Because of this, templates became the standard way to plan out your character, the idea of becoming a legendary animal tamer or treasure hunter was achieavable.

Ultima Online has changed now, servers are emptier than ever and the game has been streamlined in an attempt to gain the attention of the new MMO fans who have only ever known the tank’n'spank systems of Warcraft and Everquest. This really is a shame because Ultima Online of old was an unbelievable game filled with unbelievable people. It had so many great systems that these days would be deemed “too hardcore” or “unrealistic” – the ideas of losing all your items when killed, percentage based skills and homeownership.

Hopefully one day a team of developers will see the lasting appeal of giving players the ability to do anything they want to themselves and their world to the extent that the team at OSI once did.

Double click pick-axe. Click ground. Wait. Vas Corp Por, Kal Vas Flam, Corp Por. Dammit. Pk’d.