GameStorm was an online gaming service founded by

Kesmai Kesmai was a pioneering video game developer, game developer and online Video game publisher, game publisher, founded in 1981 by Kelton Flinn and John R. Taylor III, John Taylor. The company was best known for the combat flight sim ''Air Warrior'' ...

corporation in November 1997. It offered several online video games at a flat monthly fee of $10 per month, a relatively radical payment system in the age of pay-by-hour online gaming. Both Kesmai and GameStorm were sold to

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

in 1999, and shut down by Electronic Arts in 2001. GameStorm featured games developed by Kesmai, such as ''

Air Warrior ''Air Warrior'' was a multiplayer online combat flight simulation game launched by Kesmai in 1988. It was hosted on GEnie and used that service as a server for client software running on a variety of personal computers. It underwent continual imp ...

'', '' Multiplayer Battletech: Solaris'', Stellar Emperor and ''

Legends of Kesmai ''Island of Kesmai'' was an early commercial online game in the MUD, multi-user dungeon (MUD) genre, innovative in its use of roguelike pseudo-graphics. It is considered a major forerunner of modern massively multiplayer online role-playing ga ...

'', along with games developed by several other companies. Legends of Kesmai was the 2d graphical version of Kesmai's groundbreaking

Islands of Kesmai ''Island of Kesmai'' was an early commercial online game in the MUD, multi-user dungeon (MUD) genre, innovative in its use of roguelike pseudo-graphics. It is considered a major forerunner of modern massively multiplayer online role-playing ga ...

MUD A MUD (; originally multi-user dungeon, with later variants multi-user dimension and multi-user domain) is a Multiplayer video game, multiplayer Time-keeping systems in games#Real-time, real-time virtual world, usually Text-based game, text-bas ...

from 1985, and may be regarded as an important step in the genre leap from MUDs to MMORPGs. GameStorm's payment method was massively popular for the emerging persistent online gaming genres that rewarded players for time invested, but were too expensive for many people to pay $2/hour for on

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

or other gaming services.

Mythic Entertainment Mythic Entertainment (formerly BioWare Mythic, EA Mythic, Inc., and Interworld Productions) was a video game developer in Fairfax, Virginia that was most widely recognized for developing the 2001 massively multiplayer online role-playing game '' ...

(Now EA-Mythic), widely known for the

Dark Age of Camelot ''Dark Age of Camelot'' is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in October 2001 in North America, and in January 2002 in Europe. The game combines Arthurian lore, Norse mythology, and Celtic mythology, Irish Celtic legends wi ...

MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...

, was one of Gamestorms major developers. Mythic offered several licensed RPG and persistent non-RPG games to Gamestorm's library, including ''

Dragon's Gate 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 sprin ...

''. ''Starship Troopers Online'', ''

Magestorm ''Rolemaster: Magestorm'' (since 2001, ''Magestorm Millennium'') was an online-only first-person shooter using magical spells as weapons. It was developed in 1996 by Interworld Productions (later known as Mythic Entertainment). Gameplay It cent ...

'', ''

Aliens Online ''Aliens Online'' was a 1998 massively multiplayer first-person shooter video game released for Microsoft Windows. It was based on the science fiction horror film ''Aliens''. Gameplay ''Aliens Online'' included asymmetric teams, teams consisting ...

'', ''Splatterball'', ''Godzilla Online'', ''Silent Death Online'', '' Darkness Falls'', and '' Darkness Falls: The Crusade''.

References

External links

The MultiPlayer BattleTech Archive
* http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/interviews/legendsofkesmai.htm * http://angelsofwrath.net * http://www.legendsofkesmai.com Online video game services Video game publishers {{US-videogame-company-stub