Meridian 59 is a 1996 video game developed by Archetype Interactive and published by The 3DO Company. It was the first 3D graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and one of the longest running original online role-playing games. The development team included John Hanke, who later founded Niantic, Inc. and codeveloped Google Earth and Pokémon Go. The game was launched online in an early form on December 15, 1995, and released commercially on September 27, 1996, with a flat-rate monthly subscription. Meridian 59 was later released as open source software, run by original developers Andrew Kirmse and Chris Kirmse. Development Meridian 59 (abbreviated M59) was developed by Archetype Interactive and published in September 1996 by 3DO. Meridian 59 is the only product Archetype Interactive ever released, and the company was acquired by 3DO in June 1996. Archetype was run by Steve Sellers, Mike Sellers, and John Hanke, with Andrew Kirmse and Chris Kirmse filling key technical roles. Damion Schubert contributed to the design along with a team totaling 22 employees and contractors. The game's technological base was initially inspired by Scepter of Goth. The game was in an early beta stage in April 1996 when it was noticed by Kevin Hester and other game developers at 3DO. Trip Hawkins, CEO of 3DO, recognized the forward-looking value of the game and the company, and 3DO bought Archetype in June 1996. The characters were structured so that faces are presented in the highest resolution, while the less important torso and legs use a lower resolution in order to increase access speed. Approximately 17,000 players joined the game's public beta that lasted up until its commercial launch on September 27, 1996, beating its next major rival, Ultima Online, by approximately a year. The servers divided players into parallel game worlds, each populated by a few hundred people, in order to keep each world from being overly crowded. Prior to its release, the term "massively multiplayer" and the acronym "MMPRPG", "Massively Multi-Player Role-Playing Game", emerged in meetings within 3DO (beating out other monikers such as "large-n game"), as did the now-ubiquitous monthly subscription model. At the time, AOL was still charging per minute for online access, though a change to flat fees was anticipated. The game has received various updates throughout its life, each adding new monsters, spells, and areas. In its early years it was commonly conceived of as a graphical MUD,