Moria was developed by Kevet Duncombe and Jim Battin beginning in either 1975 or 1976. The game was later given a copyright date of 1978. It was initially begun as a top-down two-dimensional dungeon crawl game, inspired by contemporary PLATO game
dnd, which was developed beginning in 1975, and others such as
Orthanc (1978).
Moria was one of several
Dungeons & Dragons-inspired games on the PLATO network developed in the late 1970s. Although both developers had played other games based on works by
J. R. R. Tolkien or
Dungeons & Dragons, Duncombe had never read or played either. During development, Battin suggested converting the game into a 3D game, inspired by other early 3D PLATO games such as
Panther,
Spasim, and
Airfight. The name
Moria was suggested by
Dnd developer Dirk Pellett. An update was made to the game in 1984, with the copyright date changed to match.
Moria, like all other PLATO programs, was originally monochrome. In an effort to "modernize" the lessons, color was added by an intern in 1994 at University Online after the CYBIS system and its content was sold to them. CYBIS (short for CYber-Based Instruction System) was the new name for PLATO after
CDC sold the trademark to The Roach Organization in 1989. ==See also==