Genie

Genie was the invidual online service that initially hosted GemStoneIII (and before it, GemStoneII). Before the advent of the internet and common content, each online service--such as Prodigy, American OnLine, CompuServe, and suchlike--had their own games, forums, pictures, research capabilities, et cetera.

Initially, the service was named GEnie because it was part of the General Electric family of companies. General Electric owned GEIS (General Electric Information Services), one portion of which was GEnie. Later, GEIS sold GEnie to another company which retained much of the name, but changed the first E to lowercase.

While on GEnie/Genie, GemStoneIII had a "normal" online population of between thirty and fifty (30-50) people. Special events like the Gladiatorial Games or merchant events would see the number logged in rise to the eighty or one hundred person (80-100) range, but more than that made it increasingly likely that the whole system would crash. Finally, in 1995 when the GemStone server was switched over to a Unix processor, more than one hundred twenty (120+) people were all logged in simultaneously... and the system kept running!

(We were easily impressed in those days.)