Asheron's Call qualitative time, 1999

[Laethaka]

unlike most (all?) MMOs nowadays, Asheron's Call didn't assume that your pre-industrial blademaster always has a Timex on him. Instead of digital time, the game's UI gave descriptors that a player could understand only with experience and observation:

Dawnsong
Dawnsong-and-Half
Morntide
Morntide-and-Half
Midsong
Midsong-and-Half
Warmtide
Warmtide-and-Half
Evensong
Evensong-and-Half
Gloaming
Gloaming-and-Half
Darktide
Darktide-and-Half
Foredawn
Foredawn-and-Half
(starting at 6:00 AM, 90 minutes for each)

nothing so little in a game has ever had such an immersive effect on me. Not only are the names way prettier than a 10:52 readout, having to slowly figure out that Gloaming is before Darktide felt exactly like working out a local custom and adapting to a living world.

[Morreion]

Now this is cool! Like the video, too!

The best thing about the early MMOs is that there was no way that you were supposed to do things yet. Everything was open for experimentation, which made each game fresh. That's why those pre-WoW games were so different from each other...post-WoW games have been too similar.