1. Do you feel that M59 is the first true MMO or do you have another title in mind for that honor?

It all honestly depends on what you mean by "true MMO". MUD (now known as MUD1) was the first MMO in the regard that it had multiple people playing it at one time. Dr. Richard Bartle truly paved the way for multiplayer MMORPG's as we know them today.

We consider Meridian 59 to be the first 3D graphical MMORPG commercially available at retail, and that it paved the way for that particular business model. Also, "massively" has been re-defined these days, as companies are able to put thousands of players on each server; the number of players per server doesn't affect the quality of the game.

2. Of the MMORPG's on the market, who do you feel has come as close to M59 in purity of game play and original vision?

Personally, I don't think anyone has really come close to Meridian 59 in the areas of character variety and meaningful PvP. These features are what keep our players sticking around for so long. These also make Meridian 59 more of a niche game, and as such, it may be a bit dangerous for larger companies to venture into same design plan.

However, if I had to choose one that came out of the closest I would say Shadowbane. It's a hard-core PvP game, but they haven't quite matched all our features and they have a lot of other features in the game that separate them from Meridian 59.