This game was so incredibly beautiful and enforced lifelong friendships and also just a general understanding of different cultures around the world (especially because of the poor graphics; it was playable for any kind of computer). I started somewhere in 2001/2002 (I was 11 or 12) and have played it intensively to on-and-off up until I started taking my career more seriously 5 years ago. The game is like crack and I found myself returning to it every now and then and it would always make me forget about space and time.
In the early days playing this game everything was just so incredibly hard. It would just take an incredible grind to level-up and you were always wary if someone came to ruin your day for whatever reason (because if you would be ambushed and die, you would lose up to 10% of your total ex). This also made you take the game super serious and so friends would show up and help out if you did get into a fight, to try and help you. It also wasn’t abnormal to have to “mana sit”(sitting around, doing nothing but wait for your mana — your magic skill - to regain) for hours on end to be able to make runes that would let you “hunt” for half an hour (because you couldn’t buy them in stores)
I found it so incredibly rude of CipSoft (the maker of the game) that they kept “ruining” the game by, well, making it more approachable to newer generations of players (automated aiming, more ways to heal yourself, lower damage dealing to other players, outfits-and-animals, buying/selling items in Stores) but now, working in Product, I completely understand the decisions they made (it’s a business, after all).
I still miss playing this game, the old game, incredibly much and I think there is still a market for an OG versions. The last years I used to play mostly on open-source servers that tried to emulate those OG mechanics. RealOTS, one of the more succesful ones, managed to recreate that initial experience — also giving me lifelong friends again.
In the early days playing this game everything was just so incredibly hard. It would just take an incredible grind to level-up and you were always wary if someone came to ruin your day for whatever reason (because if you would be ambushed and die, you would lose up to 10% of your total ex). This also made you take the game super serious and so friends would show up and help out if you did get into a fight, to try and help you. It also wasn’t abnormal to have to “mana sit”(sitting around, doing nothing but wait for your mana — your magic skill - to regain) for hours on end to be able to make runes that would let you “hunt” for half an hour (because you couldn’t buy them in stores)
I found it so incredibly rude of CipSoft (the maker of the game) that they kept “ruining” the game by, well, making it more approachable to newer generations of players (automated aiming, more ways to heal yourself, lower damage dealing to other players, outfits-and-animals, buying/selling items in Stores) but now, working in Product, I completely understand the decisions they made (it’s a business, after all).
I still miss playing this game, the old game, incredibly much and I think there is still a market for an OG versions. The last years I used to play mostly on open-source servers that tried to emulate those OG mechanics. RealOTS, one of the more succesful ones, managed to recreate that initial experience — also giving me lifelong friends again.
Man, what a beautiful game.