I think that describes the game many of us experienced MMO players are looking for. Things as simple as sunsets and weather can dramatically increase immersion. A long time ago, and I do mean a very long time ago in video game terms, I found my favorite game of all time, it's an RPG that features:
Rising and setting sun - you can actually see the sun moving in the sky, hour by hour, and the ambient level of light adjusts accordingly.
Weather, seasons, months and a full yearly calendar - sometimes it rains for a few hours and other times you hear the wind blowing down the streets and the frequency is all based upon the seasons.
Inebriation, disease, hunger, thirst, cold, sleep - you actually go to taverns to eat, drink and resupply, and Inns to sleep, and you wear clothing not only for it's varying appearances, but to actually keep warm. What you wear can have an effect on how other creatures perceive you. If you neglect any of these things, you gradually grow weaker in varying degrees. Of course, sleeping goes by in an instant, but the game time actually moves forward depending upon the number of hours you choose to sleep - sleeping at night results in better recuperation. If you get drunk, your character actually does stumble around and black out - yes, the screen actually goes black for moments and you do lose some actual control as your character spins around and stumbles back and forth while you have difficulty moving in the direction that you want - it's first person perspective.
Reputation - your reputation with other beings depends on all of your previous actions. For example, if you kill good beings, then you become evil and most everything tries to kill you along with guards chasing you down. Every encounter you have the freedom to choose how to react, from a sneak attacks, to saying hello, or even ignoring them.
All these things add up to make the game highly immersive, it's an experience I have not found an equal to in any other game I have played. Now if only it was an MMO!
Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800! Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't.
Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.
Originally posted by frkhot97What should I choose?
Nothing.
There isn't anything like that.
UO, SWG(Pre-CU/NGE), AC1 were probably the most enjoyable games for me to play... but they weren't the most profitable and the game industry just tries to copy the most profitable... WOW in this case. Expect more grind, expect more leveling, expect non-skill based systems with dead static worlds.
I think that describes the game many of us experienced MMO players are looking for. Things as simple as sunsets and weather can dramatically increase immersion. A long time ago, and I do mean a very long time ago in video game terms, I found my favorite game of all time, it's an RPG that features:
Rising and setting sun - you can actually see the sun moving in the sky, hour by hour, and the ambient level of light adjusts accordingly.
Weather, seasons, months and a full yearly calendar - sometimes it rains for a few hours and other times you hear the wind blowing down the streets and the frequency is all based upon the seasons.
Inebriation, disease, hunger, thirst, cold, sleep - you actually go to taverns to eat, drink and resupply, and Inns to sleep, and you wear clothing not only for it's varying appearances, but to actually keep warm. What you wear can have an effect on how other creatures perceive you. If you neglect any of these things, you gradually grow weaker in varying degrees. Of course, sleeping goes by in an instant, but the game time actually moves forward depending upon the number of hours you choose to sleep - sleeping at night results in better recuperation. If you get drunk, your character actually does stumble around and black out - yes, the screen actually goes black for moments and you do lose some actual control as your character spins around and stumbles back and forth while you have difficulty moving in the direction that you want - it's first person perspective.
Reputation - your reputation with other beings depends on all of your previous actions. For example, if you kill good beings, then you become evil and most everything tries to kill you along with guards chasing you down. Every encounter you have the freedom to choose how to react, from a sneak attacks, to saying hello, or even ignoring them.
All these things add up to make the game highly immersive, it's an experience I have not found an equal to in any other game I have played. Now if only it was an MMO!
Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800! Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't.
Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.
Alternate Reality: The City was given a mixed review in Computer Gaming World. The graphics were praised for its attention to detail, as was the expansive city to explore. On the other hand, the game has no goal; once the city is painfully mapped out, the only thing left to do is monotonously battle enemies in preparation for The Dungeon.[1]
lol, I guess they had the same problem even back then!
Oblivion is the NGE of the Elder Scrolls really! really really!
All it has is the bling, and a immensely downgrade from what the Elder Scrolls used to be...
Give me Daggerfall any day, with landmass the size of Great Britain (And not Guernsey), 15.000 towns, villages and dungeons. 750.000 NPC's and 6 different endings..If you ever got there, since.. There were so many dungeons and places to go, that you totally forgot the storyline and just became part of the world.
Whoever said "Oblivin" has nooooooooo clue Oblivion is the NGE of the Elder Scrolls really! really really! All it has is the bling, and a immensely downgrade from what the Elder Scrolls used to be...
Give me Daggerfall any day, with landmass the size of Great Britain (And not Guernsey), 15.000 towns, villages and dungeons. 750.000 NPC's and 6 different endings..If you ever got there, since.. There were so many dungeons and places to go, that you totally forgot the storyline and just became part of the world.
Thats all well and good, but everything looked like crap.. the requirements were low! Now a days with actual realistic immersive graphics they can't put that much into a game, you're talking about 100's of gigs of space.
As for Vanguard, I did try it. The game obviously have bugs, but I have some other issues with it as well:
1) The world feels very static, mobs are just standing there until you attack them. The reputation system is nice but apart from that the game isn't a living breathing world (yet?).
2) It's a bit too level/group dependant for me. When you reached the first tier in Ryzom you could basically group with because high-level people could always choose a low level skill. In VG and similar class based games I'd be stressed to keep up with my friends.
But there's still hope for Ryzom. Gameforge just didn't give it a chance...
Whoever said "Oblivin" has nooooooooo clue Oblivion is the NGE of the Elder Scrolls really! really really! All it has is the bling, and a immensely downgrade from what the Elder Scrolls used to be...
Give me Daggerfall any day, with landmass the size of Great Britain (And not Guernsey), 15.000 towns, villages and dungeons. 750.000 NPC's and 6 different endings..If you ever got there, since.. There were so many dungeons and places to go, that you totally forgot the storyline and just became part of the world.
Thats all well and good, but everything looked like crap.. the requirements were low! Now a days with actual realistic immersive graphics they can't put that much into a game, you're talking about 100's of gigs of space.
I think that describes the game many of us experienced MMO players are looking for. Things as simple as sunsets and weather can dramatically increase immersion. A long time ago, and I do mean a very long time ago in video game terms, I found my favorite game of all time, it's an RPG that features:
Rising and setting sun - you can actually see the sun moving in the sky, hour by hour, and the ambient level of light adjusts accordingly.
Weather, seasons, months and a full yearly calendar - sometimes it rains for a few hours and other times you hear the wind blowing down the streets and the frequency is all based upon the seasons.
Inebriation, disease, hunger, thirst, cold, sleep - you actually go to taverns to eat, drink and resupply, and Inns to sleep, and you wear clothing not only for it's varying appearances, but to actually keep warm. What you wear can have an effect on how other creatures perceive you. If you neglect any of these things, you gradually grow weaker in varying degrees. Of course, sleeping goes by in an instant, but the game time actually moves forward depending upon the number of hours you choose to sleep - sleeping at night results in better recuperation. If you get drunk, your character actually does stumble around and black out - yes, the screen actually goes black for moments and you do lose some actual control as your character spins around and stumbles back and forth while you have difficulty moving in the direction that you want - it's first person perspective.
Reputation - your reputation with other beings depends on all of your previous actions. For example, if you kill good beings, then you become evil and most everything tries to kill you along with guards chasing you down. Every encounter you have the freedom to choose how to react, from a sneak attacks, to saying hello, or even ignoring them.
All these things add up to make the game highly immersive, it's an experience I have not found an equal to in any other game I have played. Now if only it was an MMO!
Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800! Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't.
Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.
Alternate Reality: The City was given a mixed review in Computer Gaming World. The graphics were praised for its attention to detail, as was the expansive city to explore. On the other hand, the game has no goal; once the city is painfully mapped out, the only thing left to do is monotonously battle enemies in preparation for The Dungeon.[1]
lol, I guess they had the same problem even back then!
Actually that's just the point, Alternate Reality: The City was a sandbox, you did whatever you wanted and set your own goals. It was one of a kind back then! At that time, even text games had a predefined storyline to follow. If people in general are not even used to that in gaming today, 22 years later, and are still looking for a monotonous set-story-line, leveling, and pre-defined NPC quests to follow, even in MMOGs, you can just imagine the response and reception there was to a sandbox game way back then!
Reviewers either hated the game or loved it. It just did not fit into any pre-defined category and completely broke the mold of the typical RPG that had the exact same set path or sequence of events for every single player to follow, in exactly the same ways, until they completed the game.
On the other hand, Alternate Reality: The City cannot be "won," or completed. It's the original graphical virtual world, if ever there was one. This was very frustrating to all those people used to grinding out the standard RPG until they "completed" it. And, as a result it either received outstanding reviews from those that respected what it was trying to accomplish, or horrible reviews from those that just did not get it and were used to "finishing" games and moving on to the next.
Whoever said "Oblivin" has nooooooooo clue Oblivion is the NGE of the Elder Scrolls really! really really! All it has is the bling, and a immensely downgrade from what the Elder Scrolls used to be...
Give me Daggerfall any day, with landmass the size of Great Britain (And not Guernsey), 15.000 towns, villages and dungeons. 750.000 NPC's and 6 different endings..If you ever got there, since.. There were so many dungeons and places to go, that you totally forgot the storyline and just became part of the world.
Daggerfall was the first and only true sandbox game.
You were given tons of skills, you made your class up, you explored.. you got a horse, talked with villagers, became a vampire or werewolf, and you could cure yourself.
This was the greatest game of all time. And you didn't even have to "beat" the game. There was no need. And there was a TON of land to travel if you wanted.
The graphics today are dated, of course, but if they threw all the substance of Daggerfall into Oblivion's graphics.. you would have the ultimate game.
Oh and there were "patches" and "updates" back in the 90's. There was the game and that was it. True sandbox.
I honestly wouldn't call the 1985 game the first sandbox. Games back then were very much limited, even Daggerfall with the limited amount of space it took up (only like 200 megs I think), was enormous..
I just can't see an Atari game back in the 80s doing the same.
That would be like saying ET was the greatest game ever released.
As for Vanguard, I did try it. The game obviously have bugs, but I have some other issues with it as well: 1) The world feels very static, mobs are just standing there until you attack them. The reputation system is nice but apart from that the game isn't a living breathing world (yet?). 2) It's a bit too level/group dependant for me. When you reached the first tier in Ryzom you could basically group with because high-level people could always choose a low level skill. In VG and similar class based games I'd be stressed to keep up with my friends. But there's still hope for Ryzom. Gameforge just didn't give it a chance...
They did a little bit, with Vanguard. They did succede in making a large world. However they screwed it up so royally! And its not even close to the size of Daggerfall, and it is already 25 gigs just for the client.
aion might be a decent game for u good graphics some political stuff in there and most of the mobs have free will AI so they go where ever they want and can do w/e they want
I honestly wouldn't call the 1985 game the first sandbox. Games back then were very much limited, even Daggerfall with the limited amount of space it took up (only like 200 megs I think), was enormous.. I just can't see an Atari game back in the 80s doing the same. That would be like saying ET was the greatest game ever released.
It's doesn't matter how many "megs" it took up. Alternate Reality: The City is the first graphical sandbox RPG game that I know of. All the ones that came before it had some defined plot or quests for you to complete and were very linear. The City, however, had no ending, had nothing to complete, it was completely freeform virtual world. The only thing you did, was whatever you wanted to, along with trying to survive.
Ironically, and unfortunately, the second game in the series, The Dungeon, was programmed by different people for DataSoft Corporation and it went right back to the basic RPG forumla that most RPGs have had since their existance - go here, do this, complete this quest, become more powerful, save the day. Blah...
It's always the big corporations that produce the generic junk for the masses...
Comments
You forgot to mention what the game was...
Or, maybe I wanted to see if anyone would guess.
Alternate Reality: The City
Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800! Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't.
Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.
You can play it on your Windows or Mac PC with an emulator.
Nothing.
There isn't anything like that.
UO, SWG(Pre-CU/NGE), AC1 were probably the most enjoyable games for me to play... but they weren't the most profitable and the game industry just tries to copy the most profitable... WOW in this case. Expect more grind, expect more leveling, expect non-skill based systems with dead static worlds.
*shrug* Someday they'll get it right-- maybe.
Shadus
You forgot to mention what the game was...
Or, maybe I wanted to see if anyone would guess.
Alternate Reality: The City
Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800! Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't.
Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.
You can play it on your Windows or Mac PC with an emulator.
Alternate Reality: The City was given a mixed review in Computer Gaming World. The graphics were praised for its attention to detail, as was the expansive city to explore. On the other hand, the game has no goal; once the city is painfully mapped out, the only thing left to do is monotonously battle enemies in preparation for The Dungeon.[1]
lol, I guess they had the same problem even back then!
Whoever said "Oblivin" has nooooooooo clue
Oblivion is the NGE of the Elder Scrolls really! really really!
All it has is the bling, and a immensely downgrade from what the Elder Scrolls used to be...
Give me Daggerfall any day, with landmass the size of Great Britain (And not Guernsey), 15.000 towns, villages and dungeons. 750.000 NPC's and 6 different endings..If you ever got there, since.. There were so many dungeons and places to go, that you totally forgot the storyline and just became part of the world.
Thats all well and good, but everything looked like crap.. the requirements were low! Now a days with actual realistic immersive graphics they can't put that much into a game, you're talking about 100's of gigs of space.
As for Vanguard, I did try it. The game obviously have bugs, but I have some other issues with it as well:
1) The world feels very static, mobs are just standing there until you attack them. The reputation system is nice but apart from that the game isn't a living breathing world (yet?).
2) It's a bit too level/group dependant for me. When you reached the first tier in Ryzom you could basically group with because high-level people could always choose a low level skill. In VG and similar class based games I'd be stressed to keep up with my friends.
But there's still hope for Ryzom. Gameforge just didn't give it a chance...
Thats all well and good, but everything looked like crap.. the requirements were low! Now a days with actual realistic immersive graphics they can't put that much into a game, you're talking about 100's of gigs of space.
Yees... It's all about teh bling isnt it?
Speaking of worldlike game and bling. Take a look at this singleplayer game in ASCII:
Review page 1and page 2 from Games for Windows
Download here
You forgot to mention what the game was...
Or, maybe I wanted to see if anyone would guess.
Alternate Reality: The City
Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800! Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't.
Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.
You can play it on your Windows or Mac PC with an emulator.
Alternate Reality: The City was given a mixed review in Computer Gaming World. The graphics were praised for its attention to detail, as was the expansive city to explore. On the other hand, the game has no goal; once the city is painfully mapped out, the only thing left to do is monotonously battle enemies in preparation for The Dungeon.[1]
lol, I guess they had the same problem even back then!
Actually that's just the point, Alternate Reality: The City was a sandbox, you did whatever you wanted and set your own goals. It was one of a kind back then! At that time, even text games had a predefined storyline to follow. If people in general are not even used to that in gaming today, 22 years later, and are still looking for a monotonous set-story-line, leveling, and pre-defined NPC quests to follow, even in MMOGs, you can just imagine the response and reception there was to a sandbox game way back then!
Reviewers either hated the game or loved it. It just did not fit into any pre-defined category and completely broke the mold of the typical RPG that had the exact same set path or sequence of events for every single player to follow, in exactly the same ways, until they completed the game.
On the other hand, Alternate Reality: The City cannot be "won," or completed. It's the original graphical virtual world, if ever there was one. This was very frustrating to all those people used to grinding out the standard RPG until they "completed" it. And, as a result it either received outstanding reviews from those that respected what it was trying to accomplish, or horrible reviews from those that just did not get it and were used to "finishing" games and moving on to the next.
Speaking of worldlike game and bling. Take a look at this singleplayer game in ASCII:
Review page 1and page 2 from Games for Windows
Download here
Now, that is interesting.
Yeah, it's a nice little gem. But both Dwarf Fortress and Oblivion feels so lonely when you're used to online multiplayer.
Yep, multiplayer games is where it's at. After you have played one, it's hard to go back to single player games.
You were given tons of skills, you made your class up, you explored.. you got a horse, talked with villagers, became a vampire or werewolf, and you could cure yourself.
This was the greatest game of all time. And you didn't even have to "beat" the game. There was no need. And there was a TON of land to travel if you wanted.
The graphics today are dated, of course, but if they threw all the substance of Daggerfall into Oblivion's graphics.. you would have the ultimate game.
Oh and there were "patches" and "updates" back in the 90's. There was the game and that was it. True sandbox.
Hmm, first true sandbox?
Dagerfall = 1996
Alternate Reality = 1985
Lol I read a bit about the guy who programmed it.. apparently you could get scurvy if you didn't eat enough vegetables.
I honestly wouldn't call the 1985 game the first sandbox. Games back then were very much limited, even Daggerfall with the limited amount of space it took up (only like 200 megs I think), was enormous..
I just can't see an Atari game back in the 80s doing the same.
That would be like saying ET was the greatest game ever released.
Lol I read a bit about the guy who programmed it.. apparently you could get scurvy if you didn't eat enough vegetables.
In daggerfall? yes.. among other things... you had to take care of your character lol.
They did a little bit, with Vanguard. They did succede in making a large world. However they screwed it up so royally! And its not even close to the size of Daggerfall, and it is already 25 gigs just for the client.
aion might be a decent game for u good graphics some political stuff in there and most of the mobs have free will AI so they go where ever they want and can do w/e they want
Ironically, and unfortunately, the second game in the series, The Dungeon, was programmed by different people for DataSoft Corporation and it went right back to the basic RPG forumla that most RPGs have had since their existance - go here, do this, complete this quest, become more powerful, save the day. Blah...
It's always the big corporations that produce the generic junk for the masses...
Because their motive is intrinsically money...