King Must Die

In 1997, Richard Garriott (aka Lord British) was the god of his own digital world, Ultima Online. His character was supposed to be immortal. But during a server stress test, a player named Rainz cast a fire field spell. To everyone's shock, the King died. This book uses this legendary moment as a starting point to explore the lawless early days of MMORPGs. It's a story about the clash between developers who want order and players who crave chaos. From the first virtual ecology (that players destroyed by killing every animal) to the first economy and the first digital assassination, this is the history of how we learned to live together in virtual worlds—by first burning them down.