Scribblings - How Terris came to be.

I met Doug around '92 and we started chatting. It was going to be so easy. I would buy his program, write the greatest game in the world, and we would run it from my house via 20 phone lines. What could be easier!

Well, the council stopped my phone lines and the Internet was goin' mad. Doug looked at my first 200 rooms and decided that partnership would be a better way forward.

Spent the next 3 years living like a dog and working all hours. I wrote about 60% of Terris within 8 months and then spent all my time trying to find it a home. I still had a real job and that took 12 hours of the day (4 hours driving each day!). I wrote the game in the evenings and learned to function from 5 hours sleep.

In '95, Terris found its way onto the web. We were on a games channel with about 5 other MUDS--really there just to make up the numbers. After all, apart from my close friends, no one had ever been in the game.

Two months into our launch, we became the most popular MUD on the service. We trashed MUD2, and the bloke who ran the site started to mention things like, "It's quite good" and "You two are not that bad to deal with" and "Players appear to like it" and so on.

AOL UK were on the lookout for a game to put on their service. They came to see us and decided to try us out. They secretly trailed us during June '96, and we became the largest area on AOL UK within the month. AOL's bosses took us to one side and mentioned things like, "It's quite good" and "You two are not that bad to work with" and "Players appear to like it" and so on.

We were then put on general release in AOL UK, and they lined us up for general release on AOL USA. We got our launch about December '96. Within one month, we had become the third largest game they had. Even AOL USA started to take note.

March '97, AOL changed its pricing policy and we became the first (and as far as I know the only) AOL game to offer a monthly subscription.

I wrote a book. I go to Terris Meets and get real nice email from people who play the game. I am not a corporate type of person: I don't like all those meetings and business type stuff. Terris was always just my MUD, and I am amazed that other people like it so much.

After five years on the AOL network we ended our long contract and where free to move to the world wide web, this happened at the start of Jan 2001.

The move was as seamless as we could make it, we had a few problems along the way but nothing we couldn't get over.

Converted the wizard to the web and got on with expanding the game and trying to make it as vital to our players in the 21st century as we managed in the 20th.

11 million game hours played and 2 million characters (by the last count at the end of Aug 2000.)