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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 spring of 1990 on GEnie.〔 In the summer of 1996 the game was moved to AOL.〔Bartle (2003), p. 15; "AOL went for the throat and signed up Gemstone III, Dragon's Gate, and Federation II (it already had Neverwinter Nights)."〕 Later the game was moved to Mythic Realms, and finally to independent server, where it ran until the summer of 2007. == History == At its creation, the core of Dragon's Gate was based on the AUSI-entitled game Aradath, which was programmed and designed in 1985 by Mark Jacobs. Dragon's Gate was originally developed by Mark Jacobs and Darrin Hyrup, who had joined AUSI from Simutronics where he had been a programmer on ''GemStone II'' and lead programmer on ''Orb Wars''. Dragon's Gate was launched on GEnie in late 1989 and was eventually taken up by AOL as an online product.〔Bartle (2003), p. 14; "GEnie was the launch point for many classic online games, including two very important virtual worlds: Gemstone II in 1988 and Dragon's Gate in 1990"〕 Hyrup's initial work on the game was to help port the game to GEnie's Mark III operating system, though in the end, the resulting game was more of a new creation than a port. That partnership led to Hyrup becoming an integral part of AUSI as well as the evolution of the game from Aradath to Dragon's Gate on GEnie and to its other homes. Jacobs and Hyrup, along with partner Rob Denton, later formed a company in 1995 called Interworld Productions, which in 1997 was renamed as Mythic Entertainment. In 1997 Hyrup and Lori Silva (now Lori Hyrup) joined forces, Darrin as the Producer/Lead Programmer and Lori as an Associate Producer/Lead Game Designer. In 1998, programming was taken over by Roy Sutton, and in 1999 Lead Game Design was passed on to Colin Johanson. Mythic Entertainment is currently best known for the MMORPG Warhammer Online and Dark Age of Camelot. On June 20, 2006 Mythic Entertainment was purchased by Electronic Arts.〔(EA To Acquire Mythic Entertainment ) Mythic Entertainment, June 20, 2006〕 On January 31, 2006, Mythic Entertainment dropped a number of games from its services and official sponsoring, including Dragon's Gate. After being rescued by Darrin and returned to service as a free game running from his basement, the game was taken back down again a year later after a lightning storm damaged the server equipment. Currently, the game server is offline entirely, and as such, Dragon's Gate is no longer accepting new members and can no longer be connected via telnet to play what was formerly a MUD. Recently, as said per the official message boards, the game has been "closed... at least for now."〔(Official Dragon's Gate Message Boards )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dragon's Gate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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