Jolt Online Gaming has announced that they are working on a new browser MMO called Legends of Zork, oriented towards casual players and based on the Zork series.

Dublin, Ireland. 14th January 2009. Jolt Online Gaming today announced that it will be publishing Legends of Zork™, which will give players the chance to once again take up the mantle of Zork™, this time via an Internet browser.

The Great Underground Empire has recently fallen and the land is in disarray. The Royal Treasury has been sacked. The stock market has collapsed, leading even mighty FrobozzCo International to fire employees from throughout its subsidiaries. A craze of treasure-hunting has swept through the remnants of the Great Underground Empire. The New Zork Times reports that trolls, kobolds and other dangerous creatures are venturing far from their lairs. Adventurers and monsters are increasingly coming into conflict over areas rich with loot. It's a dangerous time to be a newly-unemployed traveling salesman, but it's also a great time to try a bit of adventuring.

LegendsofZork.com will provide online gamers with a persistent online adventure, playable from any Internet browser. Players take up the role of a recently laid-off salesman and part-time loot-gatherer, as he explores the Great Underground Empire. Designed to provide gamers with a casual MMO game they can play on their laptop, desktop or Apple iPhone (in school, work or on the bus), there’s nothing to download, just go to www.legendsofzork.com

“As a complete Zork geek, I’m very proud to be releasing this title”, stated Dylan Collins, CEO of Jolt Online gaming. “Anyone who plays MMOs will definitely like to spend some time with Legends of Zork while they’re taking a break or browsing around the web. It’s very addictive”.

Read more here.

I don't know what I am more excited about... Zork, or a browser based something or other I can get away with at work on slow days like today?

>Go West

You enter a dark cave and are eaten by a Grue.

YAY!

So how many of you are old enough to have played the original Zorks?  Or Beyond Zork? "Left, Right, Keep those lines Straight!"

Fantastic, and unexpected, news.

I grew up with the Zork series and cant wait to revisit nostalgia...

I loved Zork and all of those old Infocom games as a kid. I'm excited about this coming out!

I first played Zork back before there were PCs capable of running such things.  It was on a Data General NOVA minicomputer and it was written in PL/I (originally written on a DEC PDP).  Before that I played the granddaddy of them all, the Colossal Cave adventure which was written in Fortran in 1976 and just called Adventure, as it was the only one.  C.C. is the where the words xyzzy and plugh came from.  I think I still have the sources for those on a 9-track reel of tape, gathering dust in a box, but of course, no tape drive to read them on.

Playing those games on the ASR-33 teletype console was kind of slow (10 cps), but it gave you time to think about your next move.

Originally posted by EscherMoon

I loved Zork and all of those old Infocom games as a kid. I'm excited about this coming out!

Oh man!  Old School Infocom games...  Wow those bring back some memories.  Those where great games where you had to actually use your imagination.

 I was just thinking how Zork would make a perfect MMO.  Kinda skeptical of the browser based version, but we'll see.  Hopefully they'll do it justice because it was an awesome series.

FWIW, you can still get all the old Infocom games.  Just Google it and you'll find em.  I still play all the Zorks now and again when I want some nostalgic entertainment.

Originally posted by suenteus

>Go West

You enter a dark cave and are eaten by a Grue.

 

Those dastardly Grues! 

This is awesome... I cut my adventuring teeth on those early Infocom games - I may even have my map of Trinity around somewhere. 

While I will definitely keep an eye out for this, the prose-based nature left us all to come up with our own image of what a "grue" looks like, much less how being eaten by one would appear.  This will "ruin" that old book-flavor that these games had/have.

Still, it is great to have one of the old-time legacies re-born!

Originally posted by suenteus

I don't know what I am more excited about... Zork, or a browser based something or other I can get away with at work on slow days like today?

 

>Go West

You enter a dark cave and are eaten by a Grue.

 

YAY!

 

So how many of you are old enough to have played the original Zorks?  Or Beyond Zork? "Left, Right, Keep those lines Straight!"

I was thinking the same thing, something I can play from work.

I am old enough to have played the original.

Woot! Zork! Awsomeness. \m/

In a word, awesome.

It is pitch black... 

http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

i'm so excited about this news. oh~~~ i guess it will be wonderful journeys. go west east~~ i am zork' fan. can't for its coming out. haha

Hah i loved Zork. The game ran on a cassette drive.  Haha good times.

Rewinding the tape to reload the game after a failed attempt sucked, buts its funny looking back now.

This announcement  is full of win. 

Zork-farkin-tastic!!!

Twisty passages maze here I come!!! :)))

 Now we're talkin'!  What's not to like about this announcement?

OH. MY. GAWD!  I won't be able to sleep for a week thinking about this. I cut my gaming teeth on Zork on a C64 and then my greased-lightning C128.  Keeping my fingers crossed that they do this Classic-of-Classics justice.

ZORK FTW!   

Looking at these replies, and I realize that they're still making most games for kids and teenagers. When will they ever learn? :D

Reading this thread made me happy. It made me feel young, because I have no idea what this is. Never heard of it at all. So, thanks for making me feel young again. My body was feeling all creaky with the bad weather outside. This was nice.

Originally posted by Sanguinia

Reading this thread made me happy. It made me feel young, because I have no idea what this is. Never heard of it at all. So, thanks for making me feel young again. My body was feeling all creaky with the bad weather outside. This was nice.

Never heard of Zork?!!???!     There are only a few explainations for this earth-shattering revelation...

1. You are 10 years old.
2. Your parents have kept you locked away in the basement since you were born.
3. You are an alien who crashed to earth and is only now learning our language and customs.
4. You have amnesia.
5. You are a pathological liar.

Originally posted by LordAdder

Originally posted by Sanguinia

Reading this thread made me happy. It made me feel young, because I have no idea what this is. Never heard of it at all. So, thanks for making me feel young again. My body was feeling all creaky with the bad weather outside. This was nice.

 

Never heard of Zork?!!???!     There are only a few explainations for this earth-shattering revelation...

1. You are 10 years old.
2. Your parents have kept you locked away in the basement since you were born.
3. You are an alien who crashed to earth and is only now learning our language and customs.
4. You have amnesia.
5. You are a pathological liar.

Nope. I'm 29. And my mother was the type to try to coax me outside to socialize with others. [And then I'd come back in at the earliest opportunity.] Thinking about it.. is this an early days of the internet thing? Because I didn't get online [or near a computer] until the mid-to-late 90's. Meh, growing up poor. Oh well.