Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
While that makes a great story that is absolutely horrible game design.
I dunno it depends on how essential it is to the gameplay to know specific spells, it obviously doesn't make sense in a class-based game where you have your wizards and your clerics decided at character creation but it would have been rad to have a system like that in a game with freestyle character development game like ultima online.
Oh, I should mention that AFAIK that the game was exactly like that. You just had a character. They were a completely blank slate for you to fuck around with as you pleased within the confines of the game world. So conceivably you could be the best magic caster in the game and also the best user of bladed weapons and the best user of blunted weapons.
And from what I recall, you wanted to be a Jack of All trades because at the very least you wanted to keep all your shit enchanted 24/7 and certain mobs were simply immune to certain types of damage (like slashing. or blunt. or fire). And everything was a big risk since very little was soulbound.
@Rankenphile , how old were you when you played the game?
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
Cool opinion you got.
You're wrong, of course, but at least you're a dick about it.
+1
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
I started playing it from the beta that came on the PC Gamer demo discs right before launch, so I would have been 19 I think.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
That spell system is so fucking cool
Like, that's actually using the MMO thing to make a properly realized world
I want to swipe that shit for every high fantasy RPG I run for the rest of my life
It won't be the same without the MMO aspect, of course, but flavor-wise it is still the coolest thing
That kind of spell system would fit perfectly into my ideal MMORPG idea I had where you are basically getting an MMORPG and ARG and a season of additional content expansions/player engaging events like Hitman or something all as part of your subscription.
Chilling out in Eastham with only my towel and my patron shirt on letting rabbits kill me so they could gain levels was something I really missed once they removed mob leveling from the game.
I'm not sure what this is about, I don't really listen to rap music
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
One of the best things about AC was the update system. Every single month they rolled out new content. This led to some incredible story and world progression.
The most momentous example, when the game was young, was during the Shadow Wars. After a few months of launch there was a story about The Shadows, and how they were attempting to take over the world. You'd start seeing Umbra and Penumbra Shadow creatures everywhere, and they were mean nasty bastards.
Then one update everything changed.
North of the town of Eastham was this town called Arwic. It had everything you could hope for in one place. Every kind of vendor, easy access via portals from a number of towns all across the map, and a dungeon with some low-level monsters, a stairway that wound down to a big chamber, and in the center of that chamber was a big drop. If you could survive that drop you ended up in a massive room that had portals that went to nearly every major city on the map. It became known as the Subway, and tons of people hung out there for trade and socializing. It was the major hub for travel for the entire game.
Then this update rolled out, and Arwic was absolutely leveled. These tremendous spires burst from the ground, leaving HUGE craters. Arwic itself was annihilated. The Subway remained, but most of the vendors had been scattered. A bunch of other towns saw craters and spires emerge, but most of them were outside of the town.
Partly Arwic was chosen for its visceral impact on players, but partly it was to mitigate the massive lag people would receive whenever they entered town. It worked.
When I first logged in, I was just outside Eastham. We had a rock northwest of town where my guild would meet. When I logged in, it turned out to be dead center of a huge crater.
This was going to be a problem.
You see, there was no long term storage for items in Asheron's Call. Instead you created extra characters to hold your gear, called Mules. Still a fairly common thing in a lot of games.
The problem was, my mule was logged out about a hundred feet in the air, was level 1, had maybe 10 hp and was overburdened with all of my most expensive gear. Right outside town where anybody could find its inevitable corpse and take my shit.
I ended up coordinating with my guild mates, and they waited for me to land and die, grabbed my stuff and waited for me to respawn and make the perilous run to our new rock south of town.
The Shadow Spires event ended up culminating probably eight months later in an epic fucking battle. Baelzaeleron, the Big Bad Evil Guy of AC, was being summoned, and using the Shadows to do his bidding. At least, I think, it's been over a decade. The point was that one month, all of a sudden, there was a huge, huge quest to take out Satan Himself, basically. They introduced a whole new island filled with high-level monsters, this huge temple, all kinds of shit.
Now that in itself isn't that remarkable. That's what most games do. Big baddy, new quest, yadda yadda yadda.
The thing is, though, that to get into this final dungeon, you had to go Red.
Going Red meant swearing allegiance to Bael himself. It also meant you were no longer PvE Only. You were in PvP mode. Other players could harm you. Any other player.
On most servers, this meant that folks would kill other guilds who came in out of rivalry to be the first to kill him on the server.
On one of them, though, things went haywire.
One guild decided to take it seriously. They swore allegiance to Bael and meant it. They set up a 24-7 defense, swore to protect the Big Bad Evil Guy, and assaulted anyone who would come to do him harm. For an entire month.
This turned into a big, big deal.
Every guild that was high enough level to take part in this event began to meet, to strategize on how to overcome this new obstacle. They'd send in spies. They'd try to send in saboteurs. They used misinformation to try to obfuscate the planning of the defense guild. Anything.
The defense stood their ground. Every other server had seen Bael taken down, even the PvP Only server that was known for their brutal player killing guilds like Blood had seen Bael defeated, but this server stood alone.
At that point there was no tech that would allow story or server divergence. Something had to give. Right up until they shut the servers down for the next month's update, the defense of Bael weathered the storm.
Finally the servers came down. Turbine crafted a story about some uber-level followers of Asheron who were able to do some bullshit yadda yadda yadda to take down Bael in the dark of night, but that was out of necessity. It had to happen, for technical reasons. But the devs had noticed this event, and followed it closely.
When the servers came back up, only on this server, a huge statue had been erected in a major city in tribute to the guild, with their names inscribed on the base.
Posts
Oh, I should mention that AFAIK that the game was exactly like that. You just had a character. They were a completely blank slate for you to fuck around with as you pleased within the confines of the game world. So conceivably you could be the best magic caster in the game and also the best user of bladed weapons and the best user of blunted weapons.
And from what I recall, you wanted to be a Jack of All trades because at the very least you wanted to keep all your shit enchanted 24/7 and certain mobs were simply immune to certain types of damage (like slashing. or blunt. or fire). And everything was a big risk since very little was soulbound.
@Rankenphile , how old were you when you played the game?
You're wrong, of course, but at least you're a dick about it.
Like, that's actually using the MMO thing to make a properly realized world
I want to swipe that shit for every high fantasy RPG I run for the rest of my life
It won't be the same without the MMO aspect, of course, but flavor-wise it is still the coolest thing
My first MMO after MUDs and for sure my favorite.
RIP
The most momentous example, when the game was young, was during the Shadow Wars. After a few months of launch there was a story about The Shadows, and how they were attempting to take over the world. You'd start seeing Umbra and Penumbra Shadow creatures everywhere, and they were mean nasty bastards.
Then one update everything changed.
North of the town of Eastham was this town called Arwic. It had everything you could hope for in one place. Every kind of vendor, easy access via portals from a number of towns all across the map, and a dungeon with some low-level monsters, a stairway that wound down to a big chamber, and in the center of that chamber was a big drop. If you could survive that drop you ended up in a massive room that had portals that went to nearly every major city on the map. It became known as the Subway, and tons of people hung out there for trade and socializing. It was the major hub for travel for the entire game.
Then this update rolled out, and Arwic was absolutely leveled. These tremendous spires burst from the ground, leaving HUGE craters. Arwic itself was annihilated. The Subway remained, but most of the vendors had been scattered. A bunch of other towns saw craters and spires emerge, but most of them were outside of the town.
Partly Arwic was chosen for its visceral impact on players, but partly it was to mitigate the massive lag people would receive whenever they entered town. It worked.
When I first logged in, I was just outside Eastham. We had a rock northwest of town where my guild would meet. When I logged in, it turned out to be dead center of a huge crater.
This was going to be a problem.
You see, there was no long term storage for items in Asheron's Call. Instead you created extra characters to hold your gear, called Mules. Still a fairly common thing in a lot of games.
The problem was, my mule was logged out about a hundred feet in the air, was level 1, had maybe 10 hp and was overburdened with all of my most expensive gear. Right outside town where anybody could find its inevitable corpse and take my shit.
I ended up coordinating with my guild mates, and they waited for me to land and die, grabbed my stuff and waited for me to respawn and make the perilous run to our new rock south of town.
The Shadow Spires event ended up culminating probably eight months later in an epic fucking battle. Baelzaeleron, the Big Bad Evil Guy of AC, was being summoned, and using the Shadows to do his bidding. At least, I think, it's been over a decade. The point was that one month, all of a sudden, there was a huge, huge quest to take out Satan Himself, basically. They introduced a whole new island filled with high-level monsters, this huge temple, all kinds of shit.
Now that in itself isn't that remarkable. That's what most games do. Big baddy, new quest, yadda yadda yadda.
The thing is, though, that to get into this final dungeon, you had to go Red.
Going Red meant swearing allegiance to Bael himself. It also meant you were no longer PvE Only. You were in PvP mode. Other players could harm you. Any other player.
On most servers, this meant that folks would kill other guilds who came in out of rivalry to be the first to kill him on the server.
On one of them, though, things went haywire.
One guild decided to take it seriously. They swore allegiance to Bael and meant it. They set up a 24-7 defense, swore to protect the Big Bad Evil Guy, and assaulted anyone who would come to do him harm. For an entire month.
This turned into a big, big deal.
Every guild that was high enough level to take part in this event began to meet, to strategize on how to overcome this new obstacle. They'd send in spies. They'd try to send in saboteurs. They used misinformation to try to obfuscate the planning of the defense guild. Anything.
The defense stood their ground. Every other server had seen Bael taken down, even the PvP Only server that was known for their brutal player killing guilds like Blood had seen Bael defeated, but this server stood alone.
At that point there was no tech that would allow story or server divergence. Something had to give. Right up until they shut the servers down for the next month's update, the defense of Bael weathered the storm.
Finally the servers came down. Turbine crafted a story about some uber-level followers of Asheron who were able to do some bullshit yadda yadda yadda to take down Bael in the dark of night, but that was out of necessity. It had to happen, for technical reasons. But the devs had noticed this event, and followed it closely.
When the servers came back up, only on this server, a huge statue had been erected in a major city in tribute to the guild, with their names inscribed on the base.
It was fucking amazing.