GameStorm

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Gamestorm was an online gaming service founded by Kesmai corporation in the 1990s. It offered several online video games at a flat monthly fee of $10 per month, a relatively radical payment system in the age of pay-by-hour online gaming. Both Kesmai and Gamestorm were sold to Electronic Arts in 1999.

GameStorm featured games developed by Kesmai, such as Air Warrior, Multiplayer Battletech: Solaris, and Legends of Kesmai, along with games developed by several other companies. Legends of Kesmai was the 2d graphical version of Kesmai's groundbreaking Islands of Kesmai MUD from 1985, and may be regarded as an important step in the genre leap from MUDs to MMORPGs. Gamestorm's payment method was massively popular for the emerging persistent online gaming genres that rewarded players for time invested, but were too expensive for many people to pay $2/hour for on AOL or other gaming services. Mythic Entertainment (Now EA-Mythic), widely known for their extremely successful Dark Age of Camelot MMORPG, was one of Gamestorms major developers. Mythic offered several licensed RPG and persistent non-RPG games to Gamestorm's library, including Dragon's Gate. Starship Troopers Online, Magestorm, Aliens Online, Splatterball, Godzilla Online, Silent Death Online, Darkness Falls, and Darkness Falls: The Crusade.

http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/interviews/legendsofkesmai.htm

http://www.legendsofkesmai.com

Game Storm is also a springtime annual general-purpose, all-ages, family-friendly gaming convention in Portland, Oregon, run by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-for-profit corporation which also operates the long-running OryCon science fiction convention.