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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

ATITD2 Early Impressions 129

Posted by michael from the kill-the-mob-get-the-loot dept.
Darniaq writes "While a relatively small game as defined by player count, A Tale in the Desert was a rather robust experiment into just how much crafting a massive online gamer would like to do. The game is also more evocative of a massive online real-time strategy game than a roleplaying one ala Everquest or City of Heroes. And now there's a sequel. The staff at Grimwell.com has temporarily relocated to Egypt, and provides a live report."
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ATITD2 Early Impressions More

ATITD2 Early Impressions

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  • Torrents -Windows Client (Score:5, Informative)

    by AIX-Hood ( 682681 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:11AM (#10042711)
    For the windows client: http://www.filerush.com/torrents/atitd2.exe.torren t [filerush.com]

  • Damn Acronyms! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:19AM (#10042725)
    Every time I see ATITD I think it's Alone In The Dark (calssic pre-resident evil survival horror game), fsking dslexyia.

    • Re:Damn Acronyms! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm dreading the day the Alone in the Dark movie, from the 'great' mind which brought House of the Dead to the big screen is released. The only thing worse than having a great series be forgotten, as Alone in the Dark pretty much is now, is to have it associated only with a bad movie in the minds of most people.

      • Re:Damn Acronyms! (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Oh, a "Alone in the Dark" movie can't be bad. At least if they put Macaulay Culkin in it.

        "Home Alone in the Dark" does have a ring to it....

    • Re:Damn Acronyms! (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by hype7 ( 239530 )

      Every time I see ATITD I think it's Alone In The Dark (calssic pre-resident evil survival horror game), fsking dslexyia.

      On the subject of dyslexia:
      The staff at Grimwell.com has temporarily relocated to Egypt, and provides a live report.

      HAVE!

      The staff at grimwell.com HAVE temporarily relocated to Egypt, and provides a live report.

      Staff is plural! So it's have, not has!

      I know it's /. , but you think they could at least get the grammar right in the stories, no?

      -- james

      • Not necessarily, oh pedantic one. A company is a singular entity, despite having many employees and there is no reason why you could not also treat staff as a singular entity in the same way that a brigade, platoon etc. are singular.

        I admit, it has a somewhat artificial feel, though.
      • Both you and the anonymous grandchild post are wrong.

        'Staff' is a collective noun, and neither a plural nor a singular noun. Check out your Strunk & White or your Chicago Manual of Style.

        As a collective noun, it is used in plural when referring to its constituents and in singular otherwise.

        The staff are at each other's throats. but
        The staff is loyal.

        The usage "The staff has temporarily relocated" is absolutely correct, by virtually every news editorial style guide in North America.

        In
        • Both I and the anonymous grandchild post are not wrong! The difference being we probably don't speak bastardised English - I didn't realise US English did this :)

          It doesn't work like that for the rest of the English-speaking world. Though I accept that this is a US server.

          -- james

          PS: See here [getitwriteonline.com]:
          Committee is a collective noun, just like jury, flock, herd, class, choir, team, family, and other words that refer to a single unit consisting of more than one person or thing. In American English (British Englis
    • That's funny, when I read ATITD2 I coulda sworn it was 1337-5p34k for "attitude." I realized, of course, that that should be ATIT2D, or better yet, 47172D, which is just plain incomprehensible. (excellent.)

  • Who would pay for this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:20AM (#10042728)
    Yes, all I ever wanted to do on an online MMO was grind... yup, nothing else. Grind grind grind grind grind, woohoo so much fun it feels like work! But instead of getting payed, I pay them, sweet! /sarcasm
    • You just described 90% of MMORPGs. Personally, I prefer a MMOG with a fabrication system gone beserk to a game that expects you to spend days leveling your character.

    • Re:Who would pay for this? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mriker ( 571666 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:48AM (#10044574)
      Have you played it?

      I will be paying for it. Typically, I can't stand MMORPGs that are all about grind, but ATITD2 has been an absolute blast to play in the last week, and I find myself spending all my free time playing it. I'm not sure that "grind" is the right word. You do stuff to progress, but I don't find it particularly monotinous. Unlike other games, where you kill and kill and kill and do little else, in ATITD2, you build, make items in many different ways, explore, farm, raise animals, trade, and there's a great variety throughout all of it. The game strikes me as much more social than other games as well. And you'd think the lack of combat (aside from duels) would make the game completely boring and uninteresting, but I quite like it. It's a very different and enjoyable MMO experience, and in my case, doesn't have the feeling of grind that most others do.

      The monthly cost is a bit much ($13.95), but with much fewer players than the vast majority of MMORPGs, I can understand the cost. In addition, you don't need to pay anything to play except for the monthly cost, and there is a free trial if you don't get a chance to play the beta.

  • A Machiavellian fantasy? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Travoltus ( 110240 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:21AM (#10042730) Journal
    "Besides arguing, there is another way to resolve bigger conflicts: the law. Unlike any other game, players are allowed, within certain limits, to change the rules of the game. For this they first need to write a petition outlining the law they want to introduce, for example not allowing players to place their house closer than 100 feet to another player's house. They then need to collect a certain number of signatures from other players that support this petition."

    "For example the first test of Art requires that you build a statue, and get 20 players to look at it and judge it interesting."

    "ATITD is a very social game, supporting both individual and collective achievement. It is possible for everyone to just playing for himself, but not very effective. To advance your personal path through the tech tree, you often need tools that are quite expensive to build but infrequently used. So forming a guild which shares its tools makes a lot of sense. Public-spirited individuals or guilds can even make their tools available for use to everybody else.
    So while there is no combat, there is most certainly the possibility of conflict. Sharing property in a group is not always easy. And everything you do, affects the other players. Build a house in which to place your tools, and at the very least you prevent somebody else from placing a house at the same spot, or block somebody else's view. Build and operate a mine, and you will cause pollution, making somebody else's sheep sick and flax wither. You are changing the world all the time, and that can have positive or negative consequences."

    My prediction: This game is absolutely ripe for the picking by people who are good at backstabbing and sycophantry. People who are highly skilled and socially unskilled will be reduced to workerbees, while the PHB types will wind up cliquing their way to the top and lording it over the rest. I can't wait to see this...

    • MUSH (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kahei ( 466208 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:44AM (#10042790) Homepage

      This is exactly the pattern of old MUSHes and MOOs -- the 'nerd' type will sit and create, and the 'social networker' type will form a overclass that ultimately decides the atmosphere and direction of the community.

      There will always be 2 approaches to getting 20 people to say your statue is interesting:

      1 -- Build an interesting statue.
      2 -- Flirt. ...and the 2nd one will always be more efficient, provided there are enough other people working away at the 1st one.

      Still, it's interesting to watch the patterns develop... I might even try playing in fact.

      • Re:MUSH (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Travoltus ( 110240 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:55AM (#10042815) Journal
        Indeed. And the key to keeping the workerbees from all turning against you in such a situation is to pit them against each other by defining arbitrary lines between them.

        In real life the upper class pits the Union worker against the migrant farm worker.

        In a MUSH Joanne pits her flirtees against Lisa's.

        In ATITD2, I am assuming that the workerbees will be led to vote for and against things by the designated popular person (maybe even a former workerbee, but also likely to be a vapid uberflirter). They'll naturally form cliques as a result (I think it's called a "cult or personality"?), and opposing cliques will duke it out with words and votes. Of course, the people at the bottom who support the survival of the ones on top will be fighting amongst themselves and will not see the big picture.

        I'm not saying the upper class will be running a conspiracy; this is just how they get when they're elevated to that position. The danger is in that no one really realizes the box that they're in, and that they're being played.

        The danger is that pollution will run rampant in this virtual world, and other tangibly, measurably bad things will happen, as cliques use their popularity muscle to get their way on things.

        Depending on how well ATITD2 is implemented, you could be looking at an accurate representation of Earth in a digital petri dish...
        • or you could, you know, play the game and discover that *gasp* it's nothing like that and people at large there are friendly and willing to help.

          besides, it's beta, we're not even sure the mines pollute this time 'round. it's on the list of things to check, but we're too busy trying to figure out the new mining system x.x

      • Re:MUSH (Score:2, Insightful)

        by famebait ( 450028 )
        the 'nerd' type will sit and create, and the 'social networker' type will form a overclass that ultimately decides the atmosphere and direction of the community.

        Just like real life.

      • Re:MUSH (Score:2, Interesting)

        by crazy blade ( 519548 )

        I found both parent comments interesting and even more so because of a very important factor NOT present in the game: PHYSICAL INTERACTION.

        You see, while it may be true that nerd-types may often look "uncool" and while it may also be true that "flirting" can help achieve some goals without effort, in this game these factors are modified. As always, in the net, it's not what you look like it's what you write like.

        I wonder, will players of the game go as far as actually meet in the real world and discuss

    • Isn't this is what happens in real life anyways?
    • It's already been done. I googled for the article but didn't find it right away, and I'm impatient.

      Two players pretending to be foes maneuvered people into passing a number of laws which basically segregated society within the game. It was masterfully pulled off.

      I can't wait to hear what the next big coup in the game will be.
    • I've been playing ATITD for a while, and you may be in for a big surprise. It seems that we're already pretty good at sycophantry.

      Building a huge pyramid, one that requires some 200 participants, and accomplishing it in a single weekend, is no small managerial feat.

      ATITD is very much a social game, but it's no tea party.
    • If you don't like the PHB types and prefer to be a creator instead of a networker, why do you get so upset when they are the ones at the top? That's how you do it, and they figured out the system. I don't mean this to sound aggressive, but for gods sake, stop whining, or do something about it.

    • Now that I've trolled in the subject line...

      "My prediction: This game is absolutely ripe for the picking by people who are good at backstabbing and sycophantry. People who are highly skilled and socially unskilled will be reduced to workerbees, while the PHB types will wind up cliquing their way to the top and lording it over the rest. I can't wait to see this..."

      I've played Telling 1 for the last year and exactly the opposite has happened. A friendlier online game does not exist--it is sometimes too frie

  • Massive online gamers (Score:5, Funny)

    by RichardX ( 457979 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:40AM (#10042772) Homepage
    just how much crafting a massive online gamer would like to do

    Perhaps they should craft themselves some running shoes, and lose some of that mass?

    • Quote (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "MMOGs are like treadmills that make you fatter."

  • How very ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:41AM (#10042777) Journal
    More and more realistic games, imitating life in so many subtle ways. Yes, to grow carrots you need water and jugs to carry water and soil to plant the seeds in...

    I wonder why one doesn't just go outside and experience that free-for-ever massive online game called REAL LIFE!

    I assure you: it has far more surprises, and is far more difficult than anything you ever tried on your computer.

    • Re:How very ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kahei ( 466208 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:47AM (#10042797) Homepage

      it has far more surprises, and is far more difficult

      Yes. That must be why it's generally more relaxing to play computer games.

      See, it all makes sense if you think about it.

    • Re:How very ironic... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by scratchbuild ( 651760 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @06:03AM (#10042840)

      Gamespot reviewed "Real Life" [gamespot.com] once. It got a 9.6, but that's a really subjective opinion....

      • I'm sorry - I just have to say this...

        It got a 9.6, but that's a really subjective opinion.... [emphasis added]

        ...as opposed to an objective opinion? ;-)

      • Most people would prefer nearer to the 'top' of the 'heap' than not. If there is only one 'top' of one 'heap' than only a small percentage of the population can be happy (I'll defer an exact definition of happy).

        In other words, everyone wants to feel special.

        Fortunately, in real life there are multiple 'tops' (fastest 100m runner, richest person, sexiest babe) and multiple 'heaps' (local, regional, or global; money or power [although correlated]; skinny or curvy).

        This allows for much more special

    • Re:How very ironic... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @06:24AM (#10042891) Homepage
      I don't feel there's anything ironic about it.

      I don't mean to flame, but I can't see why or how you got modded +5 insightful.

      I wonder why one doesn't just go outside and experience that free-for-ever massive online game called REAL LIFE!

      I wonder why one doesn't just go outside and experience that free-for-ever massive online game called REAL LIFE!

      So a pilot wouldn't play a flight sim? A management drone such as I wouldn't play something like Railroad Tycoon? All of these because the meatspace equivalent is more fulfilling?

      Look, it's a game. That is the keyword. It is not an inadequate substitute for real life. There's got to be a million reasons to play those things. See? Another keyword: play.

      You can't get killed in a flight sim and you can't get thrown out on the street if you bankrupt yourself in a management sim.

      And that's just one reason.

      But you already know all of this; you just made that post because it's a tried and tested slashdot cliche for karma points.

      I'm sorr, I really don't mean to flame. Your comment history just indicates you truly can be insightful, and this comment doesn't reflect that.

      • Re:How very ironic... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Dogers ( 446369 ) *
        You can't get killed in a flight sim and you can't get thrown out on the street if you bankrupt yourself in a management sim.
        Yeah, those damned Enron bums, why do they have to keep bugging me for change on my way to work?

      • Re:How very ironic... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ites ( 600337 )
        The irony is this: games are generally fun because they are escapist. Few people get the chance to fly a F16 for real, so a simulator is a rare and valuable thing. Even a simply video game is escape because it lets you pretend you're three again, where little moving blobs are fun.

        But this game... take it to its ultimate conclusion. It simply becomes a more and more accurate rendition of real life.

        It's ironic because people play games to escape real life and here we are with something that actually teac

        • Re:How very ironic... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by blirp ( 147278 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @07:39AM (#10043188)
          The irony is this: games are generally fun because they are escapist.

          <snip>

          But this game... take it to its ultimate conclusion. It simply becomes a more and more accurate rendition of real life.

          But ... as this is a game I can be somebody else. I can even try being several different people.
          All without ruining my real life, of which there's only one.

          M.

          • But ... as this is a game I can be somebody else. I can even try being several different people. All without ruining my real life, of which there's only one.

            The distinction you've made here is totally arbitary. The only limitations on you being several 'different' people in your real life are purely self imposed. You can acquire the rudiments of many of the skills people enjoy exercising in these games in a surprisingly short ratio to the time they spend playing them. Just find someone that knows how to

        • Re:How very ironic... (Score:2, Insightful)

          by tprox ( 621523 )
          Exactly.

          The thing is, in this game, the goal isn't to just be. It's about the evolution of the in-game world and a social experiment to determine whether the people involved can band together to build the "wonders" of the world.

          Growing carrots is one thing. You don't need the carrots to eat, though. It's all part of building something else. It contributes to the richness of the world.

          From what I can tell, the endgame requires construction of obelisk's and pyramids. It takes A LOT of resources to accom

    • Answer to all who advocate "Real Life" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2004 @06:30AM (#10042911)
      As Samuel Clemens once pseudomonously wrote, and I now paraphrase: "There are wealthy men, who at great expense hire coaches and dress in their Sunday finery to be driven about the countryside. Yet if those same men were approached with the same carriage and coat and asked to ride the coach for pay; they would refuse, because that activity would be the provenance of work and not fun at all."

      While you advocate a return to "real life", which you find to be fun, challenging and difficult; there are others who couldn't care two figs and a rolling boll weevil for your opinion of the grandiosity of the real world. That we are paid in the real world for performing the same real activities as imagined activities makes those activities the provenance of work, even if all we are paid in is satisfaction of a job well done. We wish to have fun and at great expense we pay others to give us fun. That is our choice and it is the right one for us.

      So, I propose a solution: you have your fun on the cheap, as it were, in real life and let those of us who can afford to have our fun at great expense to do so. Our chosen activity injures you not at all and complaining because our form of entertainment is not your chosen form of entertainment is not only useless, but massively condescending. I don't remember inviting you to condescend to me.

    • Re:How very ironic... (Score:5, Funny)

      by rpbailey1642 ( 766298 ) <robert DOT b DOT pratt AT gmail DOT com> on Monday August 23, 2004 @06:46AM (#10042956)
      I wonder why one doesn't just go outside and experience that free-for-ever massive online game called REAL LIFE!

      Because there's a chance in the Sims that my characters will have sex, whereas in the real world...

    • Re:How very ironic... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      . . . online game called REAL LIFE!

      You could have at least posted a link.

      KFG
    • that free-for-ever massive online game called REAL LIFE!
      Yes, but the difficulty to respawn should be what makes it less fps oriented, and yet, there still are huge amounts of noobs to try to win it that way.

  • Poetic license (Score:3, Funny)

    by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:42AM (#10042782) Homepage
    the law appears for several days in voting booths distributed over all of Egypt, and players can vote on it. If the law gets a two-thirds majority, the developers will then change the game code to implement it

    Cool. Now we (yes, I live there) can get to vote on our laws in a computer game, at least :)

    • Re:Poetic license (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Travoltus ( 110240 )
      Ooooh, fun!!!

      Can they use a 2/3 majority to pass a law that requires future laws to be passed by a 100 person Senate and xx person Congress?

      If so, can players then bribe voters or these new 'politicians' with in-game resources?
      • That law, would never get a 2/3 majority :) It would be interesting trying tough...
        • I am thinking someone might make a case that the 2/3 majority rule is somehow inefficient, and that would precipitate a vote for a Senate/Congress setup.

          The people running the game, of course, might panic and decide to declare such a change would break the game... one could only hope...
          • Why not a setup as seen in the game Anachronox on the planet Democratus? They're so democratic, every issue is voted on. So democratic, voting is mandatory (IIRC if you don't vote you get executed). Also, since the public is dumb and easily influenced, they set up the high council, which has eight members. Of course, in best democratic traditon the vote of a councilmember doesn't count more than the vote of a normal citizen, but voting different from the council can lead to torture or execution.

            On the othe
      • You could try, and they would definitely implement it if it passed. But it would not have a chance of passing. Atitd players are mostly libertarians, and they resent any laws that they perceive as granting special power to an elite subset of players. 2/3 means twice as many have to vote for something as against it, and at least 1 in 3 are always too obstinate to vote for anything with major consequences. They also voted down a law lowering the threshold from 2/3 majority to 1/2 majority, out of fear tha

    • Re:Poetic license (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KingRamsis ( 595828 )
      Ezyak ! It seems that we will never vote for real in Egypt, I will settle for the simulated real voting for the time being until something can be done about the real simulated voting.
    • I can't wait till they implement an in-game patent system!

      (Hurries off to go submit his patent application for a method of bricks from mud and grass.)

  • Fun fun fun! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:48AM (#10042799)

    Collecting wood is a simple as clicking on a tree, then waiting 60 seconds for the wood to respawn.

    What fun! That's definitely worth $13.95/month. I can't wait for the "paint drying" mod.

    • Ahhhh!!! Noooo! The wood will forever respawn and take over the world!
    • Look where I live we don't have too much trees.
      I want to be a lumberjack all my youth, you insensitive clod! :)

    • Re:Fun fun fun! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Dogers ( 446369 ) *
      Now we're gonna have tree respawn campers too? Great stuff!
    • As opposed to clicking on a rat to kill it, and then waiting for it to respawn? Well, gee, that's got to be so more exciting. Not.

      Oh yeah, and better go solo at the end of nowhere. You wouldn't want to share that precioussss xp with other players. No time to lose! Gotta race to the next level, where you'll be allowed to beat slightly larger rats with a slightly larger stick.

      And be sure to delude yourself that everyone will envy your über-levelled up character. Be sure to attach a list of characters a
      • I agree, it does look more interesting than most MMOGs, but there isn't exactly a lot of competition in the interest stakes, is there. It was just such a silly quote I had to take the mickey.
        Someone should invent a reverse-Turing test for games - if it's impossible to distinguish between a human player and a macro in the game, the game's no good.

    • Re:Fun fun fun! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dachannien ( 617929 )
      Then trade other goods for the wood you need. Or use your offline to collect wood. Or play around with things that don't require wood as a resource.

      Obviously, the game isn't for everyone, but it's more complicated than you try to make it out to be.

    • I know you joke, but for many of us, there is greater appeal in the minimal risk of crafting than there is the large risk of adventuring. Hell, if they made some of the trade skills SKILL based, and perhaps used twitch reflex systems so you'd actually have to know where to chop the tree, or how to smith the sword, I think it would be perfect.

  • massive online gamers (Score:3, Funny)

    by j1mmy ( 43634 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @05:58AM (#10042830) Journal
    at least we're being honest here

  • Impressions of the first (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @06:32AM (#10042918)
    Okay, I played the game for about a month so perhaps I didn't 'get' it all but I'll lay down my impressions.

    First the good. You could download the game and play for free to see if you liked it. This is a very, very good thing. That the Star Wars Galaxies & others don't do this says a lot. There is also a Linux client.

    The free period has some restrictions on what you can do, but it gives a good taster for the game. So I paid for an extra month and played during that period.

    Additionally the play world is truly massive. You can wander around, find a spot by the river and start building a little village. Join a guild and everyone can start communal factories specialising in one thing or another. In theory therefore you have a little community and you could barter with another community, specialise in one particular thing and so forth. Still, you have to good at doing something and that means a lot of time is spent producing 'things' to trade with.

    If you become bored by the constant grind of producing items you can become an artist or a politician. For example a politician can have laws enacted into the game (e.g. rotten flax becomes public property after 20 minutes). An artist can make sculptures that others can rate. There is also points to be had for leading newbies through their initial tests, so you'll find yourself being helped as soon as you enter the game.

    As the world as a whole advances you can contribute surplus items to advance the world's technology. For example give enough of one thing and oil suddenly becomes available and with it items that require oil as a component.

    Did I mention there was no killing? Yup the whole game is communally based, although there was a ritualised combat game (think Yuh-gi-oh) you could play, though I never did.

    Now the bad. The intent of the game is that you wander the desert and set up shop where you start weaving, baking bricks etc. This becomes exceptionally tedious. Making anything is extremely long winded. Collect straw and mud to make bricks, dry bricks on a rack (made from wood you gathered and planed), make a kiln, pour water on mud to get clay, spin clay into pots, fire pots, use pots to collect water to make more pots. Look forward to this because this is your life. If you're not doing that you're growing flax, collecting thorns to make a flax comb etc. Did I mention it is tedious? If you're lucky, you find some generous soul has donated some equipment such as kilns and forges to the community. If you're unlucky you'll have to make them from scratch too. The tedium can be broken by creating works of art, or fishing or other pursuits, but this game is one long Skinner box. That's not to say other MMPORGs are any different, but ATITD turns it into an artform.

    Now the world is massive, but it looks the same. The graphics are pretty sucky too. I'm sure the real Egypt is grass and sand too, but it could still be made more interesting than it is. Wandering from one end of the world to the other to collect seeds or fungus, takes ages and is also very tedious even when you gain waypoints

    So all in all, ATITD feels more like a brave but failed attempt to produce a communal game.

    It's hard to tell what the second version is like without downloading it (the screenshots are postage stamp size), but my opinion is that ATITD2 would be better if it included:

    1. More eye candy to while away the time. More scenery, wildlife (bugs, birds, crocs etc.), interesting architecture, seasons, weather, clouds, meteorites, unique ruins in the desert etc.
    2. Dump the skinner box attitude. A better approach would be if you could tell your person to make 10 pots and he goes about it automatically without the monotony of clicking through every bloody dialog to do it.
    3. Throw in some cities, with interesting architecture, NPC traders, markets etc. to wander through.
    4. Fighting. I know the game is communal, but Egypt still needs warriors. Perhaps certain parts such as the borders and coastli
    • I only played the 24 hours they gave a couple of months ago, and that is quite the impressions I got.

      I think that the game basics are *very* interesting. The graphics are not so bad, I think that it is the interface that could be improved, namely character control and inventory management (that's the 2 things I remember that didn't impress me).

      Well, in fact, probably that if I played that game when I wasn't soo busy in my life with other things, I would still play. The grinding didn't bother me that much.
    • As someone who played Tale 1, for the most part I agree with the parent that the game is poorly paced. The 2nd telling didn't actually improve much from what I can tell. One of the largest changes, requiring you to build compounds to hold all major structures, (including sculptures, which are voted on by the populace to pass the test) now makes every area look just about the same.. a sea of off-white compounds. Worse yet, you can only view the contents of one compound at a time, forcing even those with a
    • First the good. You could download the game and play for free to see if you liked it. This is a very, very good thing. That the Star Wars Galaxies & others don't do this says a lot.

      Actually you can download a 14 day free trial [sony.com] of Galaxies which I did and its pretty cool

    • Re:Impressions of the first (Score:5, Insightful)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @10:05AM (#10044828) Journal
      I find it interesting that people that want to create "realistic" worlds like this, invariably eliminate the ability to kill other players.

      As distasteful as that might be to the sensitivities of some of the programmers and players fleeing the kill-everything gaming world, the fact is that the idea of killing & death - either the fear of it or the causing of it (and no, you can't respawn or get another account) is INTEGRAL to the behavior of people, cultures, religions, everything that makes us human.

      Earlier posts above referred to the typical pattern of these games, where there are nerdy types that end up as workerbee crafters, and there are social-types that invariably end up running things. However, the ultimate governor to all this is the fact that in the Real World (tm) if someone is exploited enough, they may just kill their exploiter.

      It has laws? Well, the funny thing is that in a game, laws are mandatory while in Real Life (tm) they are simply consensual. Perhaps enforced strictly, but still consensual. If the law is passed that says "houses can't be built within 100 feet of each other", in a game, the game engine simply prevents this from ever happening.

      IRL (tm), someone could STILL build their house 50' from yours. The question is: what are you going to do about it? Is it worth fighting about? How about if we pool a little of each of our money, and have a group that their JOB is to make sure they have more force to keep our rules in place than someone could muster to break them.

      Of course then your problem is, who watches the watchers?

      Read the Story of the Jesse Wall (by Wagner James Au, IIRC) in the Second Life website. Linden Labs created a killable zone, and the example was far closer to a Hobbesian state of nature (and, IMO, more like early societies) than the idyllic crafter communities that some people like to imagine that 'noble savages' lived in.

      Ironically, the results were positively medieval. On the one hand, some of each group were thrashing it out with violence which was really only escalating things (and eventually, the WW2OLers *would* have either been wiped out, or reduced to a pathetic rump state which enough of the majority pitied enough to leave extant).

      On the other hand, a large number of people appealed to the admins to "FIX SOMETHING!" (ie. religion). Ultimately, it was only resolved in a gamey fashion: the intervention of Linden Labs, the cordoning off of people into certain zones, and game-enforced bans. Too bad, we could have really had an interesting experiement.

      Unfortunately, we don't HAVE an admin@universe.net IRL that can set the rules to no-PK in this world, no matter how much we appeal to them, so we're better off studying models that realistically represent behavior than these stilted artificialities.
      • I agree with this, but as you noted, the existence of griefers probably throws off any expectation of having a model "realistically represent behavior" of your players. I haven't seen any effective way to deter their actions. I believe it's for this reason most developers decide to just disable PK'ing and be done with it instead of having to deal with the headaches that PvP life brings.
      • You said that when someone dies, they can't get another account. Totally unenforceable, not to mention suicide for a for-profit business. The jackasses of the world will get new accounts, play for a few days, go on a killing spree, then repeat.

        What all games lack by their nature is true accountability. The worst that can possibly happen to you is you can't play that one game anymore, but there are always hundreds of other games, plus real life, waiting for you. Everyone quits a game eventually, and w
    • First the good. You could download the game and play for free to see if you liked it. This is a very, very good thing. That the Star Wars Galaxies & others don't do this says a lot.

      SWG doesn't have a free trial? Sure, if you discount the "14 Day Free Trial".

      http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/ [sony.com]
    • "A better approach would be if you could tell your person to make 10 pots and he goes about it automatically without the monotony of clicking through every bloody dialog to do it." Already in Telling 1, essentially. Many click tasks can be done offline once you've done enough manually. Further, there are many machines which automate the boring tasks. Instead of making dozens of bricks, drop hundreds of sand & mud & straw (made by the thousands in greenhouses) into your brick machine. Walk away. Th

  • Another similar MMO (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gwala ( 309968 ) <adam AT gwala DOT net> on Monday August 23, 2004 @07:01AM (#10042996) Homepage
    Another similar MMO is the poorly-named 'Second Life [secondlife.com]', published by SF Based Linden Labs [lindenlabs.com]. Which is an entirely player-maintained MMO. (ie: 99.95%+ of items, events & actions are built, run & maintained by players).

    It mixes some features of ATiTD with a much wider array of customisability (mostly through the in-world C-like scripting language 'LSL'), and can in turn be more interesting purely from creative possibilities. (Since there is no 'levels', 'skill points', it's entirely based on your own prior experience as to what you are capable of), ignoring the incredibly poor choice of name, it actually is more like a proper 3DVR platform mixed with some MMO elements, that what the name implies. (also see ActiveWorlds for a much more primitive similar design). If your interested, there's a 7 day trial availible (with refferal [secondlife.com] / without refferal [secondlife.com] link). Worth checking out as well as ATiTD.

    -Adam

  • Don't knock it til' you've tried it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Apathetic1 ( 631198 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @10:35AM (#10045321) Journal
    I played ATITD and loved it. I was part of the guild that built the first Deep Well Mine and helped open up the petrolium tech tree. Many of the tasks that were very tedious at the beginning of the game (like growing flax or making bricks) grew less so as technology advanced - you could fill a brick making machines with supplies and let it run while you were logged off, for example. You would log back in some hours later and 500 bricks would be waiting for you.

    All I can say is don't knock it until you've tried it.

  • A (good) Half Of A Game (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @07:45PM (#10062880)
    ATITD is half a game. It is a crafter's utopia and little else. What ATITD is missing is any sort of excitement, adventure, exploration, or intrigue. It does an amazing job getting rid of 'levels'. Most of what it does right it does dead, on, it just isn't enough for most people. I swear, when I play ATITD I feel like someone made an amazing kick ass MMORPG, then stripped away everything but the economy, and ATITD is all that is left.

    ATITD has the right idea, and I think it is an excellent example of how MMORPGs can progress past the stupider the fuck AD&D mentality. Now what we need is that takes what ATITD does right, and puts it in an interesting world with a little excitement and adventure. Bonus points if this hypothetical world can utterly ignore levels like the way that ATITD does.

    ATITD is not for everyone. In fact, it is not for most people. What it is, is some original thinking that should jar the some creativity into the future generation of MMORPGs. Obviously the next generation of MMORPGs hasn't gotten a clue. World of War Craft, The Matrix, and the other up coming MMORPGs clearly are still stuck with a AD&D mentality, but hopefully the generation after the next round of Everquest and UO clones come out we will see some REAL innovation like what is show in ATITD. Here is hoping.

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