Another launch, another blogosphere debate about such nebulous terms as 'Innovation', 'Evolution', 'Revolution' and all sorts of related 'tions', most of which seem to be synonyms for 'Bored of WoW! Moar Differenty!' Certainly been here before myself, and Tobold seems to have hit the nail on the head (damnit!), with a response to it all, on long the basic lines of 'Different is already here, just none of you really want that.' I'm paraphrasing somewhat, but he casually throws out three or four titles which are indeed different, in a very meaningful sense, rather than in the minutiae. They are also extremely unpopular, illustrating a fair amount of hypocrisy in this current, and many previous, clamourings for 'Different', which is probably Tobold's point; I couldn't say.
Much of his comment thread descends into 'ya but they r teh suck, ATITD lawlz!', but it did all fire my own imagination somewhat; specifically regarding A Tale In The Desert. It's a game you hear almost nothing about. Zubon has some pieces in a category at Kill Ten Rats, but that's about all I'd ever seen on it. The SirBruce Charts put it at a seemingly constant 1500 or so subscribers, from 2003, right up to today, a figure well below the 'kill it' level in most other MMOs, I'd imagine, and yet those 1500 seem to have been there from the start and not ever left.
I've been fascinated by the idea of ATitD for quite some time; an MMO which has no combat at all, which is almost exclusively crafting based, and where the rules, ToS, etc are largely written by the players themselves, as a part of the gameplay mechanics. Players gain the ability to permaban other players? Madness! There's yer Different, right there, and since I am usually there, in the 'Moar Different!' mob, one row back, waving a rather apologetic placard, (and also cos I'm one MMO short at present), its probably time I had a look for myself. It might indeed turn out that I don't really want Different either, but I'll never know unless I try it.
Download and sign up is simple, easy and available here: http://www.atitd.com/download.html
It seems to be it's own free trial, and gives you 24 hours of play for free, after which billing and signup is all handled from within the UI, and costs about $13 a month. It's on it's third 'Telling', and is an MMO with a definite start and end. At some point in the future, III will be closed and IV will start. I have no idea how long remains on III.
First impressions, frankly, were 'Ewww!' The characters are primitive, the world rather flat and empty, a bit on the ugly side, the animations are token at best, and the UI is essentially a huge nested cluster of right-click menus. ATitD is not a pretty game, but even the minimal research I'd done over the years had somewhat prepared me for the idea that here, of all places, how it looks isn't really the point. I suspect in this unique case, you either don't worry about the Look-N-Feel, or really, this isn't the game for you, on a lot of levels. And hey, low barrier to entry on the system specs!
I pressed on anyway, roleplaying a much less superficial person than I probably am, to find myself on the Welcoming Island. This tutorial area is a fair old size, and is littered with helpful signposts, which gradually explain the various introductory elements of what I suspect is the meat of the game, it's vastly elaborate crafting tree.
Your goal at this point, is to become a Citizen of Egypt, largely by managing to get off the island and actually make it to Egypt at all. This is not an insignificant task, and involves building a Ferry Raft. To do this, you need to bootstrap an entire one-man boatbuilding economy, starting with pulling up tufts of grass, and working right up to complex chandlery. Quite daunting, but the UI does give you a helpful checklist or what to do next, and the overall process works well to teach you how all the various interrelated disciplines and construction project pyramid upward, eventually resulting in a boat.
Took a while, and the whole thing greatly reminded me of Pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies. I was an Architect there, and the whole gathering, sub-combines, increased training unlocks and such all seemed quite similar. Saying that, the Ferry itself, an item that concludes the tutorial, is easily far more complex than the most advanced thing I ever built in Galaxies; the Town Hall, and requires the following:
- 20 Boards
- 20 Wood (Can just pull this off trees)
- 1 Wood Plane (A reusable tool, requiring:)
- 4 Slate (Semi-rare ground spawn nodes you have to hunt for)
- 1 Stone Blade
- +1 Stone Blade every time it breaks
- 20 Wood
- 4 Tar (Found in a single spot you have to explore the island to find)
- 4 Rope
- 1 Small Distaff (A reusable tool which needs:)
- 12 Boards (As above - can reuse the tool)
- 100 Bricks
- 50 Mud (Ground Node)
- 34 Straw
- 34 Grass (Ground Node - drop some to dry it out into Straw)
- 17 Sand (Ground Node)
- 1 Flimsy Brick Rack (Tool - limited reuses)
- 10 Wood
- 20 Twine
- 1 Small Distaff
- 7 Tow
- 1 Flax Comb (Reusable Tool)
- 18 Boards
- 36 Bricks
- 60 Thorns (Found on certain local flora)
- 7 Rotten Flax
- 7 Flax (Dangle this in the water to make it rot)
- 7 Flax Seeds (Given out by the training school, or harvested yourself from existing flax)
- 1 Sail (Mercifully, given you you for free in the tutorial, but probably needs something at least as elaborate again in the main game)
Bit of a step up from 'Sword Blade + Sword Hilt, press Combine'. In addition to all of the above, there's skill training to pay for too. ATitD seems not to have money in the conventional sense, and obviously no Orcs to loot for it anyway, so skills are paid for in raw resources, which itself seems to dictate a kind of tech tree of sorts. Advanced skill training requires payment in materials that are made using intermediate skills, and so on down.
In short, there's a LOT of harvesting and a LOT of crafting in here. If you don't like Crafting, this is Not The Game For You. I quite liked it, to be honest, and gained an enormous amount of satisfaction from having an achievable purpose to the endless combines of typical MMO crafting, other than just dumping a load of rubbish on an oversaturated market.
It was mostly intuitive and all made a sort of sense, based somewhat in historical accuracy, although the Flax did drive me up the wall. The school gives you three seeds, and then tells you that you only need one to produce an unlimited supply. It won't give you another three for two minutes. So while you could just take three seeds, make three bundles of flax and then hit the school up for more, to meet the totals, I was determined to figure out the deliberately withheld secret of Flax reproduction. This took at least half an hour of varied experimentation with the different ways you can interact with the Flax Beds, and I came this close to just wiki-ing for it in frustration, but eventually the Eureka Moment came, and I can now generate as many new seeds as I need. Hurrah for me! I Have Invented Farming! I shall not starve! Next stop Alpha Centauri!
(I am not telling how I did it - you can trade me Bronze Working or Horseback Riding for it, like any one else!)
It does feel a bit like that actually; seeing if I, personally, could rebuild civilisation using only my bare hands, if need be. Surprisingly satisfying, and from what I gather, the entire game is essentially this; the players, individually and together, pursuing a number of Tasks, in an attempt to reach some kind of overarching Humanist Enlightenment. We have Quests and Levels elsewhere, but I wonder if here, they actually mean something more than just Time Spent and Guys Killed.
Anyway, I got the raft built and launched, taking two sessions of play, and am now in Egypt, and no longer a Peasant, but a Citizen! And for all that, I'm now only Level One!
Intriguing so far - more to follow, but just now, I can't decide if it's "Second Life, but with A Point", or "Pre-NGE SWG Architect Profession on Steroids"...