Grandia (video game)
Grandia is a role-playing video game, developed by Game Arts and published by ESP Software for the Sega Saturn console as the first game in their "Grandia" series. Released in Japan in 1997, the game was ported to the PlayStation in 1999, with an English version of the game appearing on the platform in North America in the following September by Sony Computer Entertainment, and in Europe in 2000 by Ubi Soft. The game was produced by much of the same staff who worked on the company's previous role-playing endeavor, the "Lunar" series, including producer Yoichi Miyagi and composer Noriyuki Iwadare.
History of massively multiplayer online games
May 2003 saw the release of "Eve Online", produced by CCP Games, which had players taking the role of spaceship pilots and had gameplay similar to the series "Star Control". Though not the first space MMO ("Microsoft Allegiance" was the first space MMO and was released in 1999), "Eve" was able to achieve lasting success. One of the reasons for its success may have been the game's design, in which all subscribers play in one shared universe as a result the natural partitioning of the game universe into solar systems connected by stargates. This partitioning allows the world to be divided up in such a way that one or more solar systems run on different servers, while still maintaining a single coherent world.