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Alternate Middle-east / Eurasia setting? (Staring the Broken Crescent)
Hokibukisa
Member Posts: 185
Most north american and western european whites can identify with one of the 3 cultures and lores featured in DAoC.
I love it, don't get me wrong, if you go with the same 3 lores and cultures its a solid plan and will work well.
If any of you have played medieval total war mod "Broken Crescent", you'll know that it takes most of us out of our familiar historical lore territory and into a different part of medieval times that we know very little about and isn't covered by a typical american education.
http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Broken_Crescent
What was going on in western europe during the speculated authorian times was downright BORING compared to what was happening in the relevant parts of the world. Being that we're from western europe, and thanks to the victorian age british empire digging it up in order to form a cultural identity (basically GB went through an identity crisis after conquering earth), our culture has developed a fascination for medieval western europe, chivalry, knights in shining armor, etc.
But the truth is that WE was still an underdeveloped backwater during the "dark ages". In fact "dark age" only ever applied to WE. After the fall of the western roman empire (dark ages), the ERE continued to thrive. The great cultures and civilizations were all to the east.
Now for purely fictional dwarfs, elves, trolls, firbolgs, giants, lurikeens.. I'm not sure what kind of ancient folk lore those cultures and civilizations had, you'd have to dig those up.
A couple of rich civilization groupings you could consider for factions during medieval times could be:
1) ERE aka the Byzantines which by this time period were a much different civilization than the Rome we are familiar with before the dark ages, but it remains a culture that western europeans would find themselves being able to relate to. In fact the western "Regnums" or "Kings" aka roman govenors, modeled themselves after the ERE. Marrying a byzantine princess was like owning a bugatti veyron back then. DAoC realms had frontiers that were constantly under siege by enemies, well that is the ERE in a nutshell, constantly under attack from enemies in every direction as well as from within. Easily a game of thrones analogy. You could even enclude norse lore in this faction as the renowned varangian guard were drawn from the scandinavian and english regions. Also russian lore as the ERE had many dealings both good and bad with Rus, Keiv, and the rurikovich dynasty.
I did a google search on byzantine monster lore and apparently they slayed dragons too, and dispatched other monsters from the greek mythology, so races and classes shouldn't be too much of a problem. Also apparently the hungarians have an extremely rich mythology as well.
"Yeah, I slayed a few dragons. No biggy."
2) The muslim factions in the middle east are easily the richest, most scientific, and interesting cultures during that time period. To give you an idea, if the culture had not spread across northern africa and up through spain, western europe would probably still be a backwater 2nd world region. Technolgy and culture flowed from the east. To give you an idea, most of the stars have arabic names. Algebra is arabic. A daoc2 could easily make the middle eastern arabian cultures interesting by focusing on their higher technology, science, and education.
"Do NOT rub me the wrong way!"
3) Ancient indian cultures and lore. I don't know much about it other than there is nothing else like it. They had the most deadly and dedicated professional soldiers in human history, and their ancient lore and religion is the most colorful imo. You definitely would not have a hard time coming up with races and classes for this one.
This may actually be a god, so perhaps a little too overpowered to have as a race.
4) The mongols but incorporating the pre-mongol eurasia lore and culture before the mongol invasion killed literally everything. Most of the people died but a lot of thier culture survived. There are nearly infinite races and classes you get from that culture grouping. No pandarens though. Unless they were actually a thing.
This shouldn't be too hard to balance.
Comments
Emeryc Eightdrakes - Ranger of DragonMyst Keep - Percival
RED IS DEAD!
Yeah and thats actually what got me thinking about this. Like what could the same factions do differently that would make them interesting.. and I honestly think I'd get bored playing another viking midgard. How many new / different classes could you make that don't already exist in daoc? For authorian times, Saracen was what they called all people from the eastern desert areas, egyptian, arabic, whatever. That is extremely broad. Then there is a race called the highlanders, which is extremely narrow and could easily be called a celt.
I mean for the hibernian faction, you will have celts, elves, firbolgs, druids, wardens, etc.
I imagine they put a lot of thought into the names of the different classes when they made daoc, so if they wanted to mix it up, they'd be falling back to the second best name, which probably nobody would know. Hell for midgard a thane was a healer, both names already taken, how do you mix that up?
That and maybe I'm just tired of western europe lore. I'm hate to say it, but if you go with the same 3 factions I'm afraid the game would feel like a regressive rehash. :x
LOL! Have you been in my developement meetings?
Yes, the world is a huge place. And always having the fantasy genre games base itself in and around northern Europe seems very biased.
Where there is land, you wil find people. Where there are people you will find conflict. Lores were built to answer questions. So they are litterally everywhere.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Heh if Arabs brought civiization to europe.. then English clearly educated and civilized the whole world lol
Anyway game like that would be a ton of fun mainly because of how much hate, both religious and racial would be on the forums. As a company I would stay away from this, FAR away.
Easy, you don't focus on the religion just the folk lore. :>
Same thing they did with Albion. At no point did they mention the catholic church or jesus and pretty sure there aren't even crosses in daoc.
Well Albion is dark ages so Vikings are Pagan(so who cares), Irish(not sure? I think Christian already) and Albion is Christian so it was a non-issue.
Christians vs Muslims vs Hindus ya.. that will not go well.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Ya you could try, not saying it is not possible just risky. Maybe go deeper in history Rome vs Macedonia/Greeks vs Carthage?
But I agree. Themes like this have a larger margin for demographic error than more traditional ones.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Are either Age of Wulin or Heroes of Three Kingdoms which take place in ancient China also biased? How about Age of Wushu which takes place in an Asian fantasy world?