Only managed to get to level 9 since I had literally about 2.5 days to play with. Tonight at midnight PST they are wiping chars for open beta to begin. But without further ado, we begin!
The Good
Visuals:
As you have probably heard or seen, this game is rather good looking. I've heard its actually based on the UT2k3 engine and they seem to of made good use of it. You can see trees swaying and the wind moving around clothes. The character models are pretty nice, though the faces seem a little flat.
Details:
Also nice is the attention to some little details. When you sit down, your character doesn't just collapse onto the ground. They actually LOOK like someone sitting down shockingly enough. Standing up is similar. Some of the females even whipe dust off their skirt/leather thong. Also when you kill your friendly NPC orc, they grunt, wobble a bit, then crash loudly to the ground. Gives a little more depth to the game.
Clothes/Armor:
For once when you are low level you aren't going to look all loserish. After getting to level seven my mage already had some pretty nice looking clothes. Each race and gender has their own model of each item as well, so its not like DAoC and whatever where Misc. Chain Shirt looks identical no matter who its attached to. Some of the high end models are pretty spectacular.
UI:
Overall pretty easy to figure out. Within minutes I was able to do pretty much all I wanted with no assistance. Most items are in a fairly logical, easy to find place.
Mages aren't shit to start with:
I actually found it easier to level up my mage than my tank. I think this is a first for any MMORPG. All casters start off with a direct damage spell and a self heal spell that each cost 9 MP. I'd like to say you start off with around 100 MP for most races. Your DD spell can basically instant kill most things you are fighting until probably level 5 or 6. They also are kind enough to give you a slight speed bonus when wearing robes(technically you can wear heavy armor as a caster but all kinds of consequences). This allows you to kite most enemies with little worry of getting gouged in the middle of casting your spell. Between that, lots of MP, and self healing, mages have nearly 0 downtime at least up to level 10. I expect some serious rebalancing here sometime in the future.
No or little zoning:
I have traveled probably half of the world and have yet to hit a zone point. And thats including some of the dungeons I got into before aggressives leapt all over me.
The bad
PvP:
Right now, and I think forever there will be open PvP. That mage over there give you a dirty look? Go beat the shit out of 'em! That fighter steal your kill that you were casting on well before he attacked? Fling a DD spell at him! The downside to killing is that you get "karma." When you have karma your name goes red and anyone can kill you without gaining karma themselves. Sadly this isn't a deterent, and in and of itself it can be abused. A few times some much higher level person will wander into the newbie areas and randomly kill people. So what if they are red? No one there can kill thim. My speed increase has allowed me to survive all such encounters, but fighters aren't so well off.
It also can be abuseable. Say there is a group of PKs out and about with no red members. They they send a lower level person out to start smacking someone around. That person defends themselves, kills the attacker and is now red. They defended themselves and got punished. Now the rest of the group comes over, pounds you without any downside and takes whatever item you drop. You heard me. You drop items when you die. AND you lose XP. Everyone but the griefers are up in arms about the sytem right now. On top of this the only "real" reason to PvP is to take keeps that don't have any purpose other than to start more PvP.
Skill Sytsem:
One thing I don't like too much is their skill system. Basically, when you kill a monster you gain XP and Skill Points. After you are level 5(fighter) or 7(caster) you can buy abilities with your skill points. On the surface it is an ok system. More challenging/powerful creatures give you more SP. But at low level at least it is borked. One more imbalance on the side of the mage occurs. When I got to level 7 most of the abilities I wanted cost 160 SP to earn. By this point I had just short of 200, so I bought Heal and wandered happily away. For my fighter it was a different story. I ding 5, wander into town for some skils and lo and behold! My abilities cost over 300! And I've killed less creatures than the mage by far. I think my fighter had 120 SP at this point. I'm thinking something is wrong with this picture.
Character customization:
This is by far the worst character customization system I have ever seen in an MMORPG. Your options consist of gender, 4 or 5 hairstyles, 2 often similar hair colors, and 2 very similar faces. The male Orcs have a touch more variety since their casters are far skinnier then their fighters. Apparently the devs say this is to improve performance with large raids. I'm personally not sure if this is an excuse since I would think you could easily cache some different faces and hair like EQ caches zones etc.
Lag:
I've got a pretty solid system(Barton 2500+, Radeon 9600 Pro, 512 PC2700), but walking into any occupied town kicks up storms of lag instantaneusly. I was at one GM event where about 50-60 people were on screen at once and the frame rates just vanished. There have been some 200 people raids that I would be deathly afraid of being on. I can not imagine what kind of lag those people had.
Creature variety:
There is a SEVERE lack of creature variety. I've played up to about level 5 for all races except orc and its the same thing. You start off killing some foxes. Then you move out a ways and kill stronger foxes. Then a little further you find some variety of wolf with a slightly different name. Usually after this you find some NPC orcs which look fairly different from PC orcs. Not sure if you can find orcs outside of the orc n00b area. All told in my travels I have probably seen 15 or so generaly creature types at max. But I see them recurring ALL over the place. You can hardly move without tripping over a _______ Orc Grunt or a ________ Lizardman Archer.
Chat System:
For whatever reason they decided to drop the normal chat commands here. When you just hit enter and start typing it says it locally. All well and good. To do a shout you start your line with !. If you want to send a tell you start it with ". I believe @ and # are also used. Whats so wrong with /t /sh and /gu?
And don't forget the nachos...
Controls:
I still haven't really decided if I like them or not yet. My best description is RO in a full 3D world. You click on where you want to go and you wander over there. Sometimes this seems like a nice movement system while kiting(but not always) since you can quickly change directions and not move your hands from your function keys to use for your quick spells. Other times it seems annoying. A few times while fleeing enemies or kiting I find myself suddenly clicking on a target other than what I want. Now I'm trying to move and spin my camera to reacquire a running target which isn't very easy. You can technically use the keyboard but it seems jerky and clunky to me.
And now for the pretty pictures! I can't direct link to them since I destroyed my homestead accounts bandwidth for the month I think.
Dark Elf in armor
Here we have some of the cool looking equipment. This one caught my eye, but a lot of other high-end stuff also looks quite nice.
DE Casting some magic
Elf and Dark Elf fighters have some magic casting ability.
Orc must die!
My Human Mage casting the direct damage spell you start off with.
Clothes
This is the gear that I bought at level 7 I believe. For once you look fairly decent this low. I own a pointed wizard hat, but hats aren't implemented yet. 
Dark Elf City
The Dark Elf city is in this underground cave. This giant lightning hand is the most predominant feature. Looks pretty nice in motion.
Wet and wild!
Water goes between being meh and pretty nice. If you are stationary when looking, it looks like a solid image almost. When you move the the engine does a nice job of simulating water fairly well. Underwater is complete garbage though and kind of buggy right now.
Death to the GM!
Since this was the last week before open beta some goofy events were going on. This is from a fight the GM event. This guy was a complete killing machine. Probably the most people I've seen together at one time outside of the city. I had my graphics dropped to 1024x768 and I was still taking some serious performance hits.
Orc...Monk?
Strangely the orcs are the one to get a monk style class. They use those hand blades and apparently can dish out some serious damage.
Inside the Orc Temple
This is the first thing you see as you begin your life as an Orc. Apparently they worship some fire god.
Orfen
As far as I know this is one of the nastier monsters around as of now. The boss guy is in the center and surrounding him are a horde of pretty nasty golems. This picture was taken shortly before a Drake raped my level 2 Elf.
Dark Elf
This is a Dark Elf fighter wearing beginning gear. I see lots of people playing them just for looks.
After combat pose
I think all the races have some little pose for after combat, but this was the only one that is worth anything.
Which one of these is not like the others? [ 03-27-2004: Message edited by: Alaan ]
Very pretty game... too bad the PvP system seems to suck =/
quote:
Khyron had this to say about Pirotess:
I gotta admit... those graphics are EXCEPTIONALVery pretty game... too bad the PvP system seems to suck =/
This week was aparently exceptionally bad since the XP loss wouldn't be a big thing. HOpefully it doesn't happen after the wipe tonight since you can carry Open Beta characters into release.
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
- Silvast, Battle.net forums
quote:
And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and Khyron was all like:
I gotta admit... those graphics are EXCEPTIONALVery pretty game... too bad the PvP system seems to suck =/
The PvP system is the one thing that looks good about the game from a gameplay standpoint imo. The old kill mob grind grind grind grind grind ding routine is just not fun any more. I hope they keep it the way it is, it would be the first game with real PvP since M59 that doesn't utterly suck (/wave shadowbane). [ 03-27-2004: Message edited by: Mod ]
quote:
A sleep deprived Mod stammered:
The PvP system is the one thing that looks good about the game from a gameplay standpoint imo. The old kill mob grind grind grind grind grind ding routine is just not fun any more. I hope they keep it the way it is, it would be the first game with real PvP since M59 that doesn't utterly suck (/wave shadowbane).
I guarantee you the old get up, get killed grind grind grind un-ding will get old faster.
quote:
Mr. Parcelan obviously shouldn't have said:
I guarantee you the old get up, get killed grind grind grind un-ding will get old faster.
The XP hits are pretty nasty. The hard core PvPers are saying they have to PvE four about triple the time they PvP to stay constant at level.
quote:
Mr. Parcelan had this to say about John Romero:
I guarantee you the old get up, get killed grind grind grind un-ding will get old faster.
At least with PKs around the world is dangerous. In EQ I can run through Dragon county three times a day and not even get scratched, if I pay some attention I can do it at lvl 12, that is boring.
quote:
Mortious had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
Plays like utter crap.
quote:
Mod had this to say about Punky Brewster:
At least with PKs around the world is dangerous. In EQ I can run through Dragon county three times a day and not even get scratched, if I pay some attention I can do it at lvl 12, that is boring.
With a few exceptions there is still some of that around. If you aren't right by a city you are pretty safe from PKs it seems. I literally traveled half the world with level 2's. That screenshot of the one boss mob wasn't even hard to get. I dodged a few mobs and walked right up to it. I was AFK when the drake got on me.
quote:
Mod had this to say about Tron:
At least with PKs around the world is dangerous. In EQ I can run through Dragon county three times a day and not even get scratched, if I pay some attention I can do it at lvl 12, that is boring.
So, you are saying its fun to get ganked by people 50 times your level and lose everything that you've spent several hours trying to get?
Sorry, but losing items and large amounts of exp because of a pk gank death does not equal fun, unless you are the one who is doing the ganking.
quote:
Willias enlisted the help of an infinite number of monkeys to write:
So, you are saying its fun to get ganked by people 50 times your level and lose everything that you've spent several hours trying to get?Sorry, but losing items and large amounts of exp because of a pk gank death does not equal fun, unless you are the one who is doing the ganking.
Losing is never fun. I got killed and looted at least 25 times in M59 (I sucked at that game) but without the PvP aspect it would have been dull as hell.
Having at least some risk in a game is good, the death penalty has been reduced farther and farther, resulting in games like Horizons where you can die 5x in a row like an idiot and keep playing with hardly any penalty. [ 03-28-2004: Message edited by: Mod ]
quote:
Mod attempted to be funny by writing:
Losing is never fun. I got killed and looted at least 25 times in M59 (I sucked at that game) but without the PvP aspect it would have been dull as hell.Having at least some risk in a game is good, the death penalty has been reduced farther and farther, resulting in games like Horizons where you can die 5x in a row like an idiot and keep playing with hardly any penalty.
I'd be more than a bit peeved if something that goes for 200k of their money unit just got yoinked by Joe Schmoe and his buddies who leapt all over me after a trip to town
Also: Some to add to the list of The Bad:
NO WEAPON SKILL LEVELS
Thats right. If you want to suddenly switch what branch of weapons you're using, no problem! Instant expert at anything in the game!
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
- Silvast, Battle.net forums
quote:
This one time, at Alaan camp:
Also: Some to add to the list of The Bad:
NO WEAPON SKILL LEVELS
Thats right. If you want to suddenly switch what branch of weapons you're using, no problem! Instant expert at anything in the game!
That's kinda cool imo, in EQ, I hate the fact that I can't use blunt weapons or piercing weapons because I've never spent hours swinging them at mobs i've been fighting.
Instead, the game will allow you to pick weapons upon what is actually stronger than what you have, or what type of weapon you prefer.
quote:
Willias had this to say about John Romero:
That's kinda cool imo, in EQ, I hate the fact that I can't use blunt weapons or piercing weapons because I've never spent hours swinging them at mobs i've been fighting.Instead, the game will allow you to pick weapons upon what is actually stronger than what you have, or what type of weapon you prefer.
Actually not really. Race and class have a lot to do with it. Dwarves will use blunt weapons. They are superior with them compared to the bladed weapons etc. The Human Paladin race will be using 1h blades and a shield. The orc monk guys will be using those hand crescents. Though some of the clases will have some variation.
quote:
Alaan had this to say about John Romero:
NO WEAPON SKILL LEVELS
Thats right. If you want to suddenly switch what branch of weapons you're using, no problem! Instant expert at anything in the game!
Seriously. That's awesome.
And I'd stick with the PVP, too. Don't care about getting killed by higher levels, the only part I think might be annoying is losing your items to said higher levels...
quote:
Nina wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
Seriously. That's awesome.And I'd stick with the PVP, too. Don't care about getting killed by higher levels, the only part I think might be annoying is losing your items to said higher levels...
Its kind of funny...the first quest you do rewards you with a world map. Apparently they have a habit of dropping. People were pretty regularly looking to buy them.
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
- Silvast, Battle.net forums
quote:
Fazum'Zen Fastfist had this to say about Pirotess:
Shouldn't there be some sort of legal consequence to killing someone? I mean, if there are castles and kingdoms, I assume it's not just an anarchy where the strongest survive. If you kill someone, there should be a bunch of guards that whoop your ass.
I'm pretty sure the guards are all over you like white on rice if your karma gets high enough. If you just thwack three or four people though you still can wander into town...if the mob doesn't get you first. Sometimes people come back from raiding another races keeps and get smashed when they are trying to work their karma off(killing creatures your level or higher).
Mod is right in the fact that, without PvP MMORPG get boring fast, without risk beyond the norm it gets old fast. In fact I think the putting in of "Con" systems in games lead to a lot of that too. Having an instantaneous color coded legend of difficulty takes away mystery and just makes it to easy to wander here or wander there.
Taking away the potential for permanent death, I feel, was also a negative factor. Especially in a PvP setting, because that l33t griefer has more to fear if he can actually perma die, have to start from scratch without his uber character, and now be raped by people who were just like him, as he starts from scratch.
If you are going to do a PvP system however, you gotta do things right, and this Lineage plan is utter shit. Their are no real consequences for the griefers, no deterants, and no order to the way it is carried out.
1) Factions was a good step in the right direction, if for instance you took EQ's factions and made it to where opposing factions (Dependant on your race, what enemies you had killed, and reputation) could label you as a target, then that allowed you to choose your side (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly) and work towards that, but still give you SOME semblance of safety from being mauled by every joe blow in the game. In fact you can even make it to where you take faction hits or gains dependant on what Player type you killed. Get Dark Elf faction for killing a High Elf, which would make a Dark Elf Player more reputable if they killed a High Elf Player, but works in reverse if a High Elf Player killed another High Elf player. This would carry over to some degree into the next point.
2) Consequences. For one, if you killed another player in view of an NPC, that NPC could shout "Murder" much like they do when they catch someone commiting a crime such as picking someones pocket. Whatever township you would happen to be in at the time, it would put marks against you with the local authorities. You could litterally be arrested BY NPC GUARDS in Dragonrealms if you were a wanted person for commiting a crime like picking a pocket, or killing someone if you were reported. They would just come out of the blue chasing you, and take you away to lock you up. You would be forced to spend a certain amount of time in jail (Not playing because you are stuck in a cell, think if Drysart bans someone from the forums for a while. They are still a member, they can still come here, but all they get to see is the Banned Page, until thier time is up.)get a fine that you would have to pay, or lose all the items on you at the time in order to cover the amount of the fine (And items were never worth as much as you paid for em, and fines were pretty hefty, and got higher the more crimes you commited). There were very real consequences to being an asshole. Now if you got far enough outside the city you would be safe from the authorities, but you had to get a ways out for one, and you would have to go back eventually to get supplies, heal, or train. So you were screwed until you made up for what you had done. After a certain point, depending on your faction, you would no longer be able to train until you had made up for your crimes, and it shouldn't be as simple as go out and kill x number of monsters for enough faction to offset the negative faction for killing players of x type. Of course to offset this, there needs to be limitations and valuations. For instance, killing a High Elf (Unless they have gone to the dark side by various means) in a Dark Elf run society would only make your reputation greater. And visa versa. So that way, the PvP has a legitamite reason for being, and going beyond just the "I am an asshole, and I am stronger than you, I feel like killing you now". It also still leaves it open for anyone of any type to go how they feel. There should be cities where criminals are tolerated and/or ignore, cities that adhere to strick laws, and cities for racial/professional preferences. And there should be very real consequences beyond simple exp hits and item loss to deter rampant abuse.
3) There should be a threat of permanent death. It SHOULD be there. There should be ways around it, through work and effort, but it should not be gone entirely. Griefers are bullies, a lot of thier power comes from the fact they know they can do what they do, and take no real hit/loss for it in the long run because of the way MMORPGs are designed. Give them a reason to fear getting caught and recieving vengeance, which can somehow weaken, or take away their effort that they have been paying for so they could lord it over people, is a very real deterant. Dragonrealms had something like this, and they never lost buisness for it, so it DOES work, and people STILL enjoyed playing even though it was in effect. In DR you had to commplete challenges to gain your gods favor (They got harder, and took longer, and got more complicated the more you did it) and in return you were granted an orb that protected you from "Walking the stary path" to permanent death when you died. So there needs to be a way to work around it through a lot of extra effort and time, but the threat of the character being permanently retired needs to remain. Like I said, the more you used the Orb system, the harder it got to be granted the gods favor to avoid permanent death. This also works well against griefers who say, "Hey, I can still avoid dieing permanently!" because then it requires them to put in more effort still, just to stay ahead of the game. In which case, while they are putting effort into avoiding reprecussions for griefing, everyone else is still advancing. No real benefit for them to work overly hard at it, just to get ahead at being an asshole.
4) Bounties should be in place, and be very viable. Also qualified players (ie: Faction dependant, and/or Class dependant ala Paladins and such) should be granted some sort of immunity againts punishement for killing and/or aprehension (Which should also be possible al sudual) against "Wanted" players, aka Griefers. FOr instance, an upstanding citizen well liked and respected by the locals and local authorities should not be punished for hunting down a player who is WANTED by those same locals and local authorities for commiting a crime. Be it pickpocketing, or player killing (Murder).
Those are just a few ideas I had once upon a time, and some of em are know to be functional and viable because there are variations of them in DragonRealms which was (For its time, and to some degree still is) a VERY successful Online RPG, and hell, it was a MUD. Not even nearly as technically advanced as todays games. So there is shitloads better mechanics they could have in place now.
quote:
A sleep deprived Faelynn LeAndris stammered:
To a degree I agree with Mod, although I think the way Lineage goes about it is utter crap.Mod is right in the fact that, without PvP MMORPG get boring fast, without risk beyond the norm it gets old fast. In fact I think the putting in of "Con" systems in games lead to a lot of that too. Having an instantaneous color coded legend of difficulty takes away mystery and just makes it to easy to wander here or wander there.
Taking away the potential for permanent death, I feel, was also a negative factor. Especially in a PvP setting, because that l33t griefer has more to fear if he can actually perma die, have to start from scratch without his uber character, and now be raped by people who were just like him, as he starts from scratch.
If you are going to do a PvP system however, you gotta do things right, and this Lineage plan is utter shit. Their are no real consequences for the griefers, no deterants, and no order to the way it is carried out.
1) Factions was a good step in the right direction, if for instance you took EQ's factions and made it to where opposing factions (Dependant on your race, what enemies you had killed, and reputation) could label you as a target, then that allowed you to choose your side (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly) and work towards that, but still give you SOME semblance of safety from being mauled by every joe blow in the game. In fact you can even make it to where you take faction hits or gains dependant on what Player type you killed. Get Dark Elf faction for killing a High Elf, which would make a Dark Elf Player more reputable if they killed a High Elf Player, but works in reverse if a High Elf Player killed another High Elf player. This would carry over to some degree into the next point.
2) Consequences. For one, if you killed another player in view of an NPC, that NPC could shout "Murder" much like they do when they catch someone commiting a crime such as picking someones pocket. Whatever township you would happen to be in at the time, it would put marks against you with the local authorities. You could litterally be arrested BY NPC GUARDS in Dragonrealms if you were a wanted person for commiting a crime like picking a pocket, or killing someone if you were reported. They would just come out of the blue chasing you, and take you away to lock you up. You would be forced to spend a certain amount of time in jail (Not playing because you are stuck in a cell, think if Drysart bans someone from the forums for a while. They are still a member, they can still come here, but all they get to see is the Banned Page, until thier time is up.)get a fine that you would have to pay, or lose all the items on you at the time in order to cover the amount of the fine (And items were never worth as much as you paid for em, and fines were pretty hefty, and got higher the more crimes you commited). There were very real consequences to being an asshole. Now if you got far enough outside the city you would be safe from the authorities, but you had to get a ways out for one, and you would have to go back eventually to get supplies, heal, or train. So you were screwed until you made up for what you had done. After a certain point, depending on your faction, you would no longer be able to train until you had made up for your crimes, and it shouldn't be as simple as go out and kill x number of monsters for enough faction to offset the negative faction for killing players of x type. Of course to offset this, there needs to be limitations and valuations. For instance, killing a High Elf (Unless they have gone to the dark side by various means) in a Dark Elf run society would only make your reputation greater. And visa versa. So that way, the PvP has a legitamite reason for being, and going beyond just the "I am an asshole, and I am stronger than you, I feel like killing you now". It also still leaves it open for anyone of any type to go how they feel. There should be cities where criminals are tolerated and/or ignore, cities that adhere to strick laws, and cities for racial/professional preferences. And there should be very real consequences beyond simple exp hits and item loss to deter rampant abuse.
3) There should be a threat of permanent death. It SHOULD be there. There should be ways around it, through work and effort, but it should not be gone entirely. Griefers are bullies, a lot of thier power comes from the fact they know they can do what they do, and take no real hit/loss for it in the long run because of the way MMORPGs are designed. Give them a reason to fear getting caught and recieving vengeance, which can somehow weaken, or take away their effort that they have been paying for so they could lord it over people, is a very real deterant. Dragonrealms had something like this, and they never lost buisness for it, so it DOES work, and people STILL enjoyed playing even though it was in effect. In DR you had to commplete challenges to gain your gods favor (They got harder, and took longer, and got more complicated the more you did it) and in return you were granted an orb that protected you from "Walking the stary path" to permanent death when you died. So there needs to be a way to work around it through a lot of extra effort and time, but the threat of the character being permanently retired needs to remain. Like I said, the more you used the Orb system, the harder it got to be granted the gods favor to avoid permanent death. This also works well against griefers who say, "Hey, I can still avoid dieing permanently!" because then it requires them to put in more effort still, just to stay ahead of the game. In which case, while they are putting effort into avoiding reprecussions for griefing, everyone else is still advancing. No real benefit for them to work overly hard at it, just to get ahead at being an asshole.
4) Bounties should be in place, and be very viable. Also qualified players (ie: Faction dependant, and/or Class dependant ala Paladins and such) should be granted some sort of immunity againts punishement for killing and/or aprehension (Which should also be possible al sudual) against "Wanted" players, aka Griefers. FOr instance, an upstanding citizen well liked and respected by the locals and local authorities should not be punished for hunting down a player who is WANTED by those same locals and local authorities for commiting a crime. Be it pickpocketing, or player killing (Murder).
Those are just a few ideas I had once upon a time, and some of em are know to be functional and viable because there are variations of them in DragonRealms which was (For its time, and to some degree still is) a VERY successful Online RPG, and hell, it was a MUD. Not even nearly as technically advanced as todays games. So there is shitloads better mechanics they could have in place now.
So go play Dragonrealms.
So the griefer PK can lose all his shit? Guess what? SO CAN I.
I wouldn't mind seeing split content. 75% PvE, 25% PvP, with a bounty hunting system, faction, etc. But no bloody permadeath.
Unless you're a Jedi. Jedi must die.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
Eq PvP Server was 4 inkies to 1 non-inkie.
It sounds like people are forgetting that a game is meant to be a game. If it were exactly like real life, who would play it? I mean, Fae might. But he's poor. He can't pay the bills.
quote:
This insanity brought to you by Rodent King:
I'm logging onto server number 2 (Sieghardt) now, I declare it as the official EC server.
All the people that were in IRC last night are going on Kain, as am I.
Edit: though right now all 3 servers are heavily congested and I can't get to the server select screen. Guess they underestimated demand by a lot. [ 03-28-2004: Message edited by: Alaan ]
quote:
Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
I disagree with permadeath; all that ends up doing is congesting name servers at best, and at worst it turns into an even greater threat to people who don't dig PvP.So the griefer PK can lose all his shit? Guess what? SO CAN I.
I wouldn't mind seeing split content. 75% PvE, 25% PvP, with a bounty hunting system, faction, etc. But no bloody permadeath.
Unless you're a Jedi. Jedi must die.
It's only ever a real threat to assholes and idiots. You can quite easily cover your ass without having to worry about it. Hell I've played games for 5+ years and never permadied in it, even though it was possible. I gaurantee there is not much threat otherwise. Knowing that you can lose everything you have worked for if you are an asshole about it, ie: Through laws, or whatever, is more incentive to not be an asshole than anything else.
In fact if you really wanted to get overly protective of it, on top of having a system in place in order to avoid permanent death (Like the protection orbs, or wishes or whatever that saves you from suffering permadeath)you could put in the system like SWG has where for you to actually really die, the target has to deathblow you. That way it really only has a REAL chance to happen in PvP (Which makes it target the griefer even more) since it can me made to where most PvE targets wont actually death blow you.
Another issue that kills a lot of these games is the ability to have multiple characters per world. I like SWG's setup on that.
Orias the dark elf mage. friend said something about server 3. if any want to join me go for it me and Rodent King will both be there. will post more info when i find it out *im still stuck on patch right now >_< 
. *hugs*
quote:
Nobody really understood why Mortious wrote:
Looks like utter crap.
quote:
Everyone wondered WTF when Naimah wrote:
So go play Dragonrealms.
I did actually. In fact I played it longer, and was more socially and game world involved in it that I ever was in EQ. It was more immersive, more developed, and more involved. And it was just a MUD, no graphic, no nothing.
The only reason I quit, is because the company that run it got greedy and your RL standing had an impact on your game standing at the end. For examply if you had something like $70 a month you could get a premium account (And yes hundreds of people paid for these accounts) you could get a premium account that gave you access to exclusive content, abilities, items, and such over players who were JUST playing for fun and couldn't keep up with that. It cost you in the realms of $100 or so to have a wedding, and there were other monitary incentives that just got nuts. It got insane towards the end, but I was still there for over 5 years. And Dragonrealms is still going actually, with an active, paying, playerbase.
Also: Some screens from opening last night. BIG PEEKTURES
quote:
Tiolas had this to say about Duck Tales:
I'm gonna be hereOrias the dark elf mage. friend said something about server 3. if any want to join me go for it
. *hugs*
I'm on server 3 Zharan, DE too, look me up when you get past patch hell. [ 03-28-2004: Message edited by: Mod ]
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
