PLATO RPGs

[rusty_shackleford]

"Michael Coorlim" has been making an excellent history series of early RPGs & video games, and recently covered the early PLATO RPGs

He only covers up to Moria.

The really unique thing about these games is, that despite releasing in the early to mid 1970s, they were multiplayer, technically 'MORPG's. And you can play them online today:
https://www.cyber1.org/

Well, how good are they?
One of them, Camelot, has been ranked by CRPGAddict was one of his favorite games he's played so far(top 24%): https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/01 ... ating.html
Interestingly, it's also one of the longest RPGs he's played, clocking in at 69 hours.
You can find a book about Camelot here, which contains not just information on the game but historical content with regards to early RPGs and PLATO: https://www.cyber1.org/Camelot_Guidebook.pdf
If you open the document you'll note that it says "COPYRIGHT 1981-2020" on the screenshot. Camelot is still actively developed, and is perhaps the oldest actively maintained video game in existence.

[gerey]

A fairly obscure gaming channel did a series covering games relased every year from 1967 onward. Obviously, the farther they got the less coverage each game received as the number of releases increased dramatically, but for the videos covering the early years they do go into detail about the various titles, with a focus on early RPGs.