A Tale in the Desert 365
Sandy99 writes "A Tale in the Desert is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (mmorpg) that has been in development for 4 1/2 years and goes live tomorrow. There is no killing in this game. It is all about cooperation to unlock the knowledge of Egypt. A basic overview is at
the official site.
Discussion forums are at atitd.net. Maps of Egypt and construction knowledge are at
atitdmaps.com. Everything has been produced by a handful of independent developers and a bunch of volunteers. This is also the first mmorpg to debut with both
windows and linux clients."
Such graphics... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm thinking I must have missed a few Discovery channel episodes. It probably would have been easier for them to reskin The Sims Online and release that..
I'm not seeing the importance or significance here, they are basing their engine off Cal3d and are releasing the source for their engine, which roughly looks like shit. Parsec just released their source, which is incredibly cool, and their engine looks good.
For $13.95 a month, I think I'd be pretty pissed off if this is what I got.
I heard about this awhile ago... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, MMORPGs give you the feeling of accomplishment even if you are not really doing anything. Even if all you do is kill one or two wombats, you earn a FEW XP and it looks like you are advancing. I don't know exactly how htis game is setup, but if I think that if the players don't feel as though they are always moving forward (like in EQ) then many will not play.
Also I heard that some of the goals are strange, like you have to get like a hundred (or however many) people to an area and they all have to pray for a certain amount of time or something. And that's a goal. Strange stuff like that. So it could be interisting, I just don't think that it will be as big as many of the other games.
Hey (Score:3, Insightful)
*ahem* Maybe this will be a haven from all the rabid player killas we have all grown to hate in online games. It's nice to see someone trying to create something constructive, instead of completely destructive. The destructive games make me think our culture is perpetually stuck in adolescent mode...heh, well, I guess it's that in combination with everything else ^^
What really matters is quality of play and cost (Score:3, Insightful)
If these people managed to incorporate good, involved game play - then i'll put down GTA3:VC and try it out.
Also, if it costs and arm-and-a-leg, then see ya (a la XBox live- only $10 month.. Ha!).
Re:no killing (Score:5, Insightful)
Killing is not the only basis there is for a video game, or more spacifically a MMORPG, but it is an over used one
Oh and I see they finally release a P2P game in a way that makes sense.... free.
Re:Such graphics... (Score:4, Insightful)
cal3d is a character animation library, and as far as I am aware eGenesis are just releasing their modified version of cal3d.
If the graphics are all you are looking at, then you are missing the point. This game is not about the graphics. As I said in my main post, its about political interplay between the players.
Re:Blood Thirsty (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then a high-level clan with 11 cooperating members can have everyone pass the test quite easily, if I'm not mistaken.
The lack of violence will have everyone aim for the next most regarded status : godlike stats or inane "test" scores.
Look at the way people like to impress each other with cellphones in countries where you can't carry weapons
Re:A truely fascinating game (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Source MMORPGs run without subscription is a nice idea, and one I have come across a few times before, but the facts are that there are good reasons why all the games of this kind are run on a subscription basis. It takes a serious ammount of computing power and bandwidth to host one of these games, and its beyond the means of even the most philanthropic people to provide it all for free. The most you can realistically hope to host is a server for games roughly on the same scale as Neverwinter Nights.
In addition to the running costs, the developers of MMORPGs have to recover the much larger development costs through the subscription charges, so you might be able to run a server quite a bit cheaper.
Re:Interesting. Some thoughts on this game. (Score:3, Insightful)
Far from being a problem, large groups who band together and try and solve Tale are exactly how its supposed to work. The thing is there will be other large groups who have banded together who are also trying to solve it faster than you, and eGenesis are continuously rolling out new content as fast as you can master it.
The ammount of work achieved by some of the guilds during the betas was trully awesome. It would take one hell of an organised group of people with lots of free time to beat them all.
Re: There *could* be value in this, yet.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes, that's what you want... a stress-reliever or some "instant action entertainment".
When you're ready to sit down and get immersed in a detailed virtual world, however, I think you expect more. Violence in role-playing and multi-player games gets old and cliche pretty quickly. To me, they all feel like "Dungeon Hack", over and over again - except with different scenery and sounds. I mean, how "immersing" is the same tired concept that you kill, collect items, and then go spend the money/gold to buy bigger and better items?
A good MMORPG should be more like reading chapters of a novel. (Only it's a novel that's being written as you go along, and there's no "last chapter" or "last page" to come across.) The fact that you can communicate with other live human players is always the "key point" to these types of games, but what makes it "good" or "bad" is how much is built around that basic premise.
Before I'd play this particular game, I'd want to know that there's some quality storyline unfolding, and lots of interesting puzzles, twists, and discoveries to make as a group effort.
Re:A trully fascinating game (Score:3, Insightful)
Killing isn't necessarily bad :) (Score:1, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with a little blood guts now and then IMO. Humans evolved as omnivores. Therefore we have a bit of that killer instinct coded into our genes which drives these violent desires, which only makes it natural, like it or not.
Re:What really matters is quality of play and cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where's the desert? (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure hope so, or else the state of geography education has gone downhill fast. All desert means is that the average rainfall per year is a given, arbitrary level or less. The sagebrush country of the eastern part of the state of Washington in the U.S. is desert, as is most (all?) of Antarctica.
All 4 screencaps on their front page show grass.
Well, let's see what geography and history we can dig out from our junior high days. If I recall correctly, a large river runs through Egypt. You may have heard of it; it's called the Nile. Also, given that people have been digging up three-thousand-year-old human corpses from big stone tetrahedrons, apparently built by humans, we can deduce that a civilization has existed there for a while, and you can be pretty sure they didn't eat sand and scorpions.
From those two facts, you can deduce that while a good part of Egypt may be desert, the part that's been heavily inhabited for the last few millenia must be capable of sustaining some sort of vegetation... and a lot of it. <grin>
But to your point, yes, just like in real Egypt, there is a heck of a lot of sandy desert in the game world. Problem is, just like in the real world, there's no reason anyone would want to build homes, towns, or anything worthy of a screenshot there.
But you could, possibly, make the argument that the title is misleading. I think if you take up the issue with the developers, you'll learn that "A Tale in a Group of Loosely-Affiliated Oases Located Throughout a Region Otherwise Consisting of Sandy Desert" was rejected, because it wouldn't fit on the splash screen.
Re:A trully fascinating game (Score:3, Insightful)
And how is this different from real life? My goodness, a game where money, prestige, status and experience expand the opportunities for advancement. That's practically revolutionary! The funny thing about being at the top, is that you have nowhere to go but down (and lots of folks gunning for your position). In fact, that's basically politics in a nutshell.
Great Game (Score:3, Insightful)
-quantumz[HoM]