Magic of the Gods Open Beta

Iceman32 · September 2008

I don't see it on the list, but Magic of the Gods is in open beta.

It's free, too. Check it out.

WisebutCruel · September 2008

Perhaps you should show a link, since even Google has never heard of the game.

Silok · September 2008

Originally posted by Iceman32

I don't see it on the list, but Magic of the Gods is in open beta.

It's free, too. Check it out.

Games played:
Runescape -------------- www.runescape.com

Magic of the Gods ------ www.magicofthegods.com

Saga of Ryzom ---------- www.ryzom.com

World of Warcraft ------- www.worldofwarcraft.com

He has show a link look carfully next time

WisebutCruel · September 2008

Originally posted by Silok

Originally posted by Iceman32

I don't see it on the list, but Magic of the Gods is in open beta.

It's free, too. Check it out.

Games played:
Runescape -------------- www.runescape.com

Magic of the Gods ------ www.magicofthegods.com

Saga of Ryzom ---------- www.ryzom.com

World of Warcraft ------- www.worldofwarcraft.com

DOH!! My bad.:)

WisebutCruel · September 2008

Realmcrafter........ :P

cjdrinic · September 2008

Ah thanks for reminder on this, I seen it posted else where and the download link was not there yet. Downloading now.

deadplayer · September 2008

The game official site is just a free google blog!

mortality · September 2008

Is this any good?

How is the game developing?

Iceman32 · September 2008

The game is apparently being done on the cheap by an independent developer and it shows. They have a pathetic website and horribly out of date graphics.

On the other hand, it's the ultimate sandbox game. It's not easy to explain it, but it's sort of like the people who are beta testing it are almost part of the development team. You can change how the game works by things you do within the game. I mean like you can change the rules. If you can influence the gods in the game, presto miracle, the game changes.

Plus normal things you do in the game change the game permanently for everyone else. Like if you kill an NPC, they're gone forever. I think that's true of monsters, too. You can start a religion or a kingdom. You can create new magic spells. You can create new crafts! Of course, since almost all spells and crafts are player-created and the game is new, there's not much there yet. That means we can more easily shape how the game develops.

I've never seen a game like this before. It's the only game I've ever played where all the players are role playing. Everyone is in-character all the time.

MotG is definitely not for everyone. I know that the people who love WoW and just want to kill stuff for XP won't like it much. But people like me who've been looking for a serious sandbox game with a player-run economy, serious death penalties, lots of role playing, a chance to have your actions permanently change the game world, no instancing and everything on only one server have finally got a game that really does work like that.

I really like the process the game devs are using to let the game evolve from player actions, I just wish it were farther along. I guess that will come in time.

Oh, yeah, the game devs are very, very easy to talk to. I wish that were true in some of the other games.

Iceman32 · September 2008

Big action today. A group of players are going to try to recapture Sheep island from the ogres. They are working with Garon, the owner of the island, who declared independence from the Realm of Azmar again after Azmar failed to defend Sheep Island from the enemy.

Garon is offering to give land on his island to those who help and a guild called 'The Soul' may build their guild house there if this works. If Sheep Island is recaptured and asserts independence, it looks like both the dwarven princes, from Azmar and Stondar, may try to annex the island and fight each other, rupturing the alliance that has held back the Ogre Raiders.

There are fears that the ancient dragon, Zern, may be present and help the ogres.

The expedition to Sheep Island is being led by the elf Thaero who is the High Ranger of Azmar, by Allort, the legendary elf wizard who is probably the greatest wizard in the known world, and Beepe, leader of The Soul Guild and priestess of the Fellowship of Kraylus.

They meet at the Stondar City harbor at 3:30 pm US Pacific Time today Thursday September 25, 2008. I'm not a leader of the group, so I shouldn't invite people, but I think the leaders would welcome any help they can get in this. If the dragon shows up, we'll need everyone we can get.

ZodiaEclipse · September 2008

If you already know what Realmcrafter is then you don't need to even read this rant. The game is straight from the box with no real concept or storylines added.

This "game" is a joke and it makes me gag that the people behind it have the nerve to call themselves game developers. All they did was buy a copy of Realmcrafter, plop down some terrain and models and put it online.

Yeah I know, Realmcrafter is a cookie-cutter program and all the models are there to be used by anyone who buys the software. That's true and even though I think its pretty lame that they didn't add their own content the part that really bugs me is how on their "forums" (cheap blog) they constantly make it sound as if they are really putting effort into this. As if they have really made a game by doing this.

I gave it a try, even after seeing the craptastic screenshots because one of the "developers" made a big deal out of how he's put 2 years into working on this (in a post about how he'd like to start making money off of this soon) and I figured that they must have some pretty good story elements and quest lines to make up for the complete lack of any work put in.

WRONG! When you log in one of the 'devs' is waiting there to greet you and basically hold your hand and teleport you around because there is no possible way you could find where you are supposed to go. He also had to equip everyone who logged in with a spear to catch fish (evidentally all you can do when you begin) and some copper so we could actually get into the only real town in the game.

Neither of these things worked and the client crashed over and over.

It astounds me how full of themselves these kids must be to think that they really made anything here. I honestly believe the only reason they have found any kind of following is because some people don't realize how little work they are actually doing since they make misleading posts about how "programmers are working on improving the graphics" that make it sound like they have some hand in it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealmCrafter

crunchyblack · October 2008

Just curious how they cram any content, decent gameplay, ok graphics (3d graphics right) and all this crazy sandboxyness into a 165mb download?

is this all taking place in a small room?

is there any real content?

ok what if i decide to go around and kill all of the npc's? they are dead for good with all of their quests and content?

mabey ill take the 30sec to download it, and completly wreck the game for everyone (see where im going with this concept...)

i dunno something just isnt right about this game...

phatpetey · October 2008

Well, the site is offline so I can't download the game and try it out. What I can't understand is why the developers have such a crappy site, I mean com'on how much can it cost to get a .com domain name and keep it running.

The game is also pretty unknown, even google doesn't know about the game. If they would buy a normal .com domain name, more people would get to know that game.

Iceman32 · October 2008

Uh, what? They do have a .com domain name. www.magicofthegods.COM. Not that it matters.

My experience was profoundly different than described above. There is quite a lot going on in Magic of the Gods and the world changes all the time. I have no idea how you can say there's no storyline.

I don't claim to be an expert in realmcrafter, but reading the wikipedia article it sounds like realmcrafter is only a game editor. Are you saying that it includes a complete turnkey game and that game is Magic of the Gods?

All for just a hundred bucks? Are you serious? I am seriously considering plunking down $100 to buy realmcrafter and running my own version of Magic of the Gods. I'll call it something else of course.

ZodiaEclipse · October 2008

I gotta be honest, I'm a little confused by what you seem to think Magic of the Gods has that makes it a game, but to answer your question, yes you can buy realmcrafter and basically turn out your own game with about as much content as Magic of the Gods in a few weeks.

It includes a terrain editor, (so you can make lands) quest editor (so npc's have quests) and many many models already set in with more that you can buy from the website to put into the game.

Stondar City (or whatever he calls the main dwarven town ) is also already built and included as a demo level as are all the people/animals/buildings used in magic of the gods. There are tutorials available on the realmcrafter forums to teach you how to use the engine.

So yeah, basically anyone can do what they did and it wouldn't even take that long. Enjoy.

Iceman32 · October 2008

You don't even know what makes it a game? How long did you play? You make it sound like you stopped by for part of a two hour session, couldn't figure out what to do and decided the game wasn't even a game.

Here's a few things you can do in Magic of the Gods:

Fishing

Hunting

Cooking

Combat with monsters

Combat with non player characters

Combat with other players

Trading

Exploring

Traveling to various lands by ship

Traveling to various lands by magic

Exploring new lands

Taming pets that will follow you around and help you fight

Learning and using magic

Creating new magic spells, items and creatures

Quests

Wars

Buying and selling land and buildings

Building houses and other buildings

Interacting with the leaders of various realms

Interacting with the gods

Join a religion and learn clerical spells, especially healing spells

Create a new religion

Join or create a guild

Join or create an army and wage war

Create new crafts

Create and run your own realm. (I did. Not much to it yet, but it's on the map. All I need is more players to join. Visit the Kingdom of Radnaria!)

I'd like there to be more to it, but I'd say it's a game. Not the ultimate game, but a game. Also, I've looked into realmcrafter some more and talked to someone who bought it and then returned it for his money back because he said it was too hard to use. He said it did not include any completed game, just a lot of graphics like that town you're talking about and some components like items and creatures.

I don't really care how much time the game developers of Magic of the Gods put into it, I'm impressed with how it's working out. But if they say they spent years on it and you say it could be done in weeks, I have to wonder who knows what they are talking about, the people who did it or someone who played it once. Do you know these guys? Do you have any idea how much time they spent on it? You call the game developers kids, but on the forums the lead developer mentions having a wife and kids of his own. Before I spend $100 on realmcrafter I'd like to know exactly how reliable your assessment of this is. Do you actually own a copy of realmcrafter? Have you ever made a game with it? If so, what game and how long did it take to make it? DId you have to do any programming or does realmcrafter do all that for you somehow?

On the in-game map in Magic of the Gods, there are six main islands and four cities and towns. The towns are Stondar City, Orveka, Worfin Village and Azmarton. The islands are Stondar Island, Worfin Island, Sheep Island, Kale Island and Azmar Island. There's also the underworld. How many of these did you visit? The game developers say on the forum that there are more lands that are not discovered yet and are not on the map. You say that Stondar City is included as a demo in realmcrafter. Okay. Then the realmcrafter guys did a great job on it. What about the rest of the known world? Is all that on the demo? Cause if I just get one town and one island, that's not really the same thing.

If you could make a game better than this with a copy of realmcrafter and a few weeks of work, why don't you spend a few months, make a truly great game that puts Magic of the Gods to shame and all of us who play Magic of the Gods will switch to your game and play happily ever after instead of arguing on this thread. I'd really rather play games than buy realmcrafter and become a game developer though it's tempting if it's really as easy as you say.

ZodiaEclipse · October 2008

Wow, you really are a die hard fan aren't you? Look, I'm not here to try to sell Realm Crafter. They aren't writing me any paychecks. I'll answer your questions (and accusations) as best I can, but I really don't care if you believe me because you're clearly already too invested in the game to listen to any criticism.

Firstly, yes I do in fact know what it takes to make a game. A lot of hard work and planning. This is where Magic of the Gods has already failed and before you jump on your high horse again let me explain. All those cool features you listed, how many are already implemented? I don't mean you can do it and get away with it, I mean there is actually programming that makes it part of the game? Pretty much just fishing has really been worked on. All the rest is just ideas of what could be or things that are side effects of other features being turned on in the engine.

Take your kingdom for example. Does anything in the interface actually declare that land as yours? No, basically you found some islands and said hey these are mine now. What's to stop anyone from just plopping down on one and saying it's theirs? Nothing. I guess you could fight them, but if you win your a murderer. If you lose you run around in the pit for hours. (The underworld is the dungeon expansion).

What about guilding? Same thing, you just say you are in a guild. No titles, tags or in-game benefits (guild hall, vault, accessories).

Basically, the dev (yeah I know he has a wife, but I feel like if he isn't a kid he should know better) just decided hey I wanna make a game. Came up with the idea that he could be a god and have everyone worship him then made a few islands, ploped down some extra houses and called it a day.

Yeah you can script your own spells and make your own models and basically request all kinds of groovy stuff. You know why? Because he doesn't know what to do himself. He didn't plan it out that far ahead. He's hoping that people will come in and make the game for him and all he has to do is plug it into the engine and collect donations at the begining of the month.

So about your RC questions. No, it's not easy to use right away, that's why there are tutorials. Yes I do have it, but it's not nearly as powerful as it could be and the advanced version which will make the graphics a little better is still in beta. It doesn't require programming expertise (see magic of the gods), but if you know programming you can make changes to the engine and make better games.

My only real complaint against Magic is that he didn't plan and build it the way he could have. Instead he took the easy way, just used what was included and didn't add any content of his own and people like you who don't understand how easy it is are running around saying it's the second coming or something. If you go to the RC forums you will see people who are really working on games with the engine and some who are making great progress. MotG will never be one of those until the dev takes it offline and puts a few more years of effort into creating something instead being so excited about having a game that he doesn't bother to make one first.

Also, you might think you're helping him by coming here and promoting the game and whatnot, but in the end you are only hurting the game you claim to love so much. Do you know why real games don't release as early as MotG did? Because you can't have a game without content or quests or models and expect anyone to stick around. Your little dev friend is wasting time playing god and RP'ing with the 6 or so players that he has instead of really building the game. What's worse is that the 6 or so people are all telling him what a great job he's doing and pretending not to notice all the horrible problems the game has. How can he really improve if he thinks he's doing everything right? He needs a real team who isn't afraid of hurting his feelings to tell him that the game isn't ready and needs to be taken offline until he's done a lot more work, but he won't get that cause everyone is such bestest best good buddies.

In conclusion,

Don't buy RC it is difficult if you don't know what your doing and I suspect you wouldn't be able to figure it out. (I'm not taking a hit at you it just doesn't seem like you would have the patience).

Everything in MotG was already included in RC. Only the terrain had to be generated, and he didn't even bother to retexture it. There are many other RC devs who are really 'making' games. You should look at some of those to compare and see what can be done with real effort.

MotG is not a game yet. Right now its just a demo of the RC engine. Think of it more as a place for hardcore (really bored) roleplayers to hang out chat (between server crashes). The community is really nice, but nice isn't going to make the game better.

Iceman32 · October 2008

You said:

Firstly, yes I do in fact know what it takes to make a game. A lot of hard work and planning.

I didn't ask you to reassure me that you know what you're talking about. I asked you "Have you ever made a game with it (realmcrafter)? If so, what game and how long did it take to make it? Did you have to do any programming or does realmcrafter do all that for you somehow?"

If you have made a game with realmcrafter and will show me the game to prove it, then I'll admit you know what you're talking about. Saying a game takes a lot of hard work and planning is obvious. Even I know that. You're the only one saying the devs of MotG haven't done that.

You said:

All those cool features you listed, how many are already implemented? I don't mean you can do it and get away with it, I mean there is actually programming that makes it part of the game? Pretty much just fishing has really been worked on. All the rest is just ideas of what could be or things that are side effects of other features being turned on in the engine.

I only listed things that you can already do in the game. None of them are just ideas. I have no idea whether programming was involved or not and I don't see why I should care. If it works, it works. This isn't a programming contest. If you want to say that you're the Uber programmer and all, maybe you are. So what? I'm looking for a game, not a programmer.

Why do you say fishing is more worked on than hunting or cooking? They seem about the same to me. I'm guessing fishing is the only skill your character learned. It's the first one most people learn and the easiest.

You said:

Take your kingdom for example. Does anything in the interface actually declare that land as yours? No, basically you found some islands and said hey these are mine now. What's to stop anyone from just plopping down on one and saying it's theirs? Nothing. I guess you could fight them, but if you win your a murderer.

You're wrong about that. If you click on the map icon on your toolbar, the map actually shows my islands labelled as the "Radnarian Isles". I think that qualifies as something in the interface that declares the land mine. I named the isles that. I named them after my character, Radnar. That's why they are called the "Radnar-ian Isles". The Kingdom of Radnaria has a write-up in the wiki too. Plus, I have other players acknowledging me as their king and doing as I command. I'm not a murderer, I'm a king. Especially since I haven't killed anyone so far.

You said:

What about guilding? Same thing, you just say you are in a guild. No titles, tags or in-game benefits (guild hall, vault, accessories).

I heard there were titles that do appear in the game, but I don't remember seeing any. I also heard that one of the guilds is working on building a guild hall on Sheep Island. The Lord of Sheep Island gave them land there for their help in recapturing the island from the ogres. You have a good point. I need to get one of those titles so it says I'm a king next to my name.

You said:

Yeah you can script your own spells and make your own models and basically request all kinds of groovy stuff. You know why? Because he doesn't know what to do himself. He didn't plan it out that far ahead.

How do you think you know what he planned or didn't plan? Plus, why should I care? I think it's really great that I can create a kingdom or script my own spells. If that didn't take much work for the developers, great.

You said:

So about your RC questions. No, it's not easy to use right away, that's why there are tutorials. Yes I do have it, but it's not nearly as powerful as it could be and the advanced version which will make the graphics a little better is still in beta. It doesn't require programming expertise (see magic of the gods), but if you know programming you can make changes to the engine and make better games.

You answered my question about whether you have realmcrafter. Maybe you could answer my other question - Have you made a game with it?

You said:

My only real complaint against Magic is that he didn't plan and build it the way he could have. Instead he took the easy way, just used what was included and didn't add any content of his own and people like you who don't understand how easy it is are running around saying it's the second coming or something. If you go to the RC forums you will see people who are really working on games with the engine and some who are making great progress. MotG will never be one of those until the dev takes it offline and puts a few more years of effort into creating something instead being so excited about having a game that he doesn't bother to make one first.

Oh great. So what you're advocating is that my favorite game should be taken OFFLINE for YEARS! Thanks a lot. Then, when it meets your standards, it might come back. Maybe I would still be playing MMORPGs by then. Or maybe I would have quit because so many of the other games SUCK.

You think highly of those people "who are really working on games with the engine" and "making great progress". Well I don't. Until it's done and online, that's called vaporware. Maybe that's the way game developers think. Hard work counts. Having a game online now is irrelevant. Putting in years of real programming is what counts. Who cares what the players want.

You game developer types can get all snooty about who is doing more work and who programs better. Why should any player care? He took the easy route. So fricking what. If the "easy" route were easy enough, I'd take it too. Isn't the whole point of realmcrafter to make game development easier?

If it's so easy to make a game like Magic of the Gods, why has no one else done it? Where is there any other world where the players can do things that permanently change the world like that? Where is there any other world where you can create a new crafting skill and a whole new type of item? You criticize that, saying he's waiting for the players to build the game for him, but I've been looking for a sandbox type game and that's even more sandboxy than I thought possible.

Maybe it really is easy and maybe all the "real" game developers are just stupid and never listen to what people on this forum are constantly saying about wanting sandbox games where players can shape the world instead of just grinding away, alone in an instanced dungeon, carrying out linear quests to save the world - that don't actually affect the world at all!

All over this forum people are saying that it's too difficult to program a world where players have tremendous freedom of action and those actions affect the world for all the other players, but wouldn't it be great if it were possible. Magic of the Gods seems to have that and your criticism is that how they did it is TOO EASY??!! Somebody is badly mistaken. Either you are wrong about how easy it is, or the other people are wrong about how hard it is or I'm wrong about whether the game lives up to its claims. But I started a kingdom already. I've met a mage named Allort who wrote his own spells and they WORK! Player actions really are changing the world. Sheep Island was occupied by ogres. Players defeated the ogres and now the ogres are gone. They aren't respawning. They're really dead. Players are talking about building a guild hall there now.

I really hope you are right. I hope Magic of the Gods was easy. I hope those guys saying it's impossible or really hard to make games like this are the ones who are wrong. I hope we get a lot more games with these capabilities. There's a whole lot about Magic of the Gods that could be much, much better. I wish there were a hundred games out there where I could change the world in as many ways as in this game.

You said:

Don't buy RC it is difficult if you don't know what your doing and I suspect you wouldn't be able to figure it out. (I'm not taking a hit at you it just doesn't seem like you would have the patience).

I'm confused. Is it so difficult I shouldn't bother or so easy that the devs of MotG didn't do any work? You've said both at this point. You said everything they did could be done in a few weeks. I'd put in a few weeks to make another game like this. I might be willing to work on it for two whole months. Part time anyway. Do you still think that's all it would take? A lot of people out there are saying you can't create a game without millions of dollars and hundreds of programmers working on it for years. It seems pretty clear that that's not true.

You said:

Everything in MotG was already included in RC. Only the terrain had to be generated, and he didn't even bother to retexture it. There are many other RC devs who are really 'making' games. You should look at some of those to compare and see what can be done with real effort.

Okay. Assume I use all the models included in RC and take every available shortcut. Could I really do this by myself in a few weeks? If you reply, please answer my question about whether you've ever created a game with RC so I'll have some idea how reliable your estimate is. If you haven't, just say so. If all you've done is work on a game that's not finished yet, okay, just tell me how long you've been working on it so I'll know how much experience you really have with this. I hope you're not going to now say you've never actually worked on a game using RC. Your comments indicate that you have at least SOME experience with using RC. How much?

ZodiaEclipse · October 2008

Christ this whole thing is making my head hurt. Look I already told you I don't care if you believe me or not since you clearly either won't or can't understand what I'm telling you. My whole point in posting was to let people know that this game is nothing more than a demo of the features available in RC engine. There is no additional content added outside of that. I've given a link and they can look the RC site and the MotG site and screenshots and find out for themselves.

I find it amusing that you seem to think I need to prove my credibility to you, as if you are some kind of authority on the matter. Besides even if I go into RC and take some screen shots to show you you'll just keep wanting me to invest more and more time into showing you that a game like MotG can be recreated as easily as I claim when anyone who is familiar with the software already knows it can. Even if I remade the whole lot of it for you (and why would I if I think it's terrible?) you'd never be satisfied. You'd just whine that Sheep island should be bigger or that Worfin island is in the wrong place. So what would be the point?

When I talked about programming I'm not even going so far as to suggest that the devs need to know C or C++ to make a game, especially not with RC. What I'm telling you is that some of the things you named, like exploring new worlds or creatures staying dead aren't really features. You can explore new worlds because there is a ground under your feet and you can move around on it. Creatures stay dead because they didn't tell the engine to have them respawn. It's not rocket science, but since you won't go find information for yourself you don't understand and no amount of explaning on my part is going to change that.

Oh great. So what you're advocating is that my favorite game should be taken OFFLINE for YEARS! Thanks alot.

I actually laughed at this. You sound like a whiney little kid who doesn't want to give up his favorite toy even though its broken. To answer your crying, yes, I do think it should be taken offline so that it can be properly worked on. I actually thought I was being nice by not saying that the whole project should be scrapped, but whatever.

Your argument loses even more ground when you start complaining about developers who actually have a sense of pride and want to make a good game for people to play. It seems you'd rather play around in an incomplete world where you can pretend to be important then let devs do their job and make games. By your definition any game that is "in development" is vapor-ware. So all game companies should stop paying people to make games and anytime someone has an idea for a setting, plop down some terrain and release the game. Who needs content or objectives or goals anyway? I'm sure the players can just pretend there is something going on.

The fact that you don't respect the people who actually have to work to make a game good proves how truly ignorant you are about mmo's and gaming in general. There is really no point in me trying to educate you any further. It's like trying to reason with a brick, at the end of the day it's still a brick.

So for the last time...

Is RC hard? Well any program is hard if you don't know how to use it. MS Paint could be hard if you don't know how to use it. Once you know how to use it, no you don't need to know programing. You could make a game just like this, you have to make the lands and select the correct options and place the models, but it wouldn't be difficult as it wouldn't require anything other then RC and time.

Why doesn't everyone make a game like MotG if its so easy? Because most people who are serious about making a game actually want to take the time and effort to make the game good. I'm sure there have been people who bought RC and tossed some stuff together real quick and put it online, but you don't know about them because it didn't work and they aren't online anymore.

Have I made a game? I'm working on a project and have been since this summer so I have several years worth of work ahead of me (when my game is done it will really be done, not just a wip that I put online so people could stroke my ego). I've played around with RC, but I've not made anything I'd consider a full game. Since MotG isn't a full game either (the dev's have said it's not anywhere near complete) I think I'm more than qualified to critique it. Since you haven't used the RC engine or attempted to make a game, or even understand the value of developing a game it sounds to me like you're the one who doesn't know what they are talking about.

Oh, and based on what I'm reading on the forums the other MotG players and the dev take you and your kingdom about as seriously as I should have from the begining.