Tibia is a MMORPG, developed by CipSoft GmbH, that I had played for around 4-5 years on and off. Don’t let the appearance deceive you – I still find myself drawn back to playing this game over the more well known MMORPGs like Runescape, Dungeons and Dragons Online and World of Warcraft.
One of the most appealing aspects of this game is it requires no consultation from a guide or the World Wide Web to get started. You simply create your account and your character on their website, download their 23MB client, and then login to the game. The controls are pretty standard for MMORPGs as well; all I really use are the mouse buttons, arrow keys, shift key, ctrl key, and F1-F12 keys – more keys are available for binding if you desire. Of course, you’ll find yourself using other keys if chatting is something you find necessary in an MMORPG.
No longer a child, you seek to discover the world. You’ve dreamt of attending The Royal Tibian Adventurers Academy all your life – now is your chance. You’ve arrived at the Rookgaard Island with a bunch of other adventurers who seek to be the first to discover all the corners of the World of Tibia. Before you can discover the mainland of Tibia, you must first master the challenges of Rookgaard Island – as declared by King Tibianus III.
Rookgaard Island is basically the tutorial zone of Tibia. Compared to most of the other MMORPGs I’ve played, CipSoft GmbH has done an outstanding job integrating all the basics and more into their tutorial zone.
As you make your way from the port to The Academy, you run into some inhabitants that need your assistance. While assisting them, you learn the fundamentals of the game. Arriving at the village The Academy is located in, you’re quick to realize that the challenges are a lot tougher than anticipated; you must leave The Academy prepared (level 2) to face whatever you encounter in the wilderness and return to The Oracle after proving how experienced you are (level 8) before you’re allowed pick one of four vocations: knight, paladin, sorcerer or druid; and before departing for one of four cities: Carlin, Edron, Thais or Venore, on the mainland.
While studying in The Academy’s library, you discover shelves full of books that give you tips on what you’ll find in the wilderness and how to prepare, the purpose of The Academy, information on the different vocations, information on the different cities of the mainland, creation of Tibia and the gods and much, much more.
What I really like about this approach is if you want to know about a particular creature, zone, etc, you can always find a book or NPC in the game with the information you desire. However, if you’re lazy, you can always do things the traditional MMORPG way - buy/read a guide; refer to the World Wide Web; or even ask a player who’s probably done one of the former.
Tibia makes Runescape, Dungeons and Dragons Online and World of Warcraft feel like ORPGs instead of MMORPGs. When playing these ORPGs, I didn’t feel the presence of the other players. In Tibia, almost everything can be positively or negatively affected by another player’s actions. Another player can block the way a dragon that’s about to kill you or they can block your way so the dragon catches up to you; they can come to your aid when someone’s aggressing you or they can be the aggressor; they can assist you while you’re questing or wait for you to finish the quest before killing you and taking your quest reward – they can be your friend or your foe. You can’t ignore the presence of other players – you need to be good at making friends and even better at ruining your enemies.
Playing Tibia compared to other MMORPGs is like the difference between watching sports on TV with friends and actually playing the sport with friends.
Something else that really stood out compared to other MMORPGs is the death penalty. It is one of the defining aspects of the game because dying considerably more severe than any other MMORPG I’ve played. In Dungeons and Dragons Online and World of Warcraft, death means losing durability on your equipment, which can be repaired, and having battle sickness – a temporary debuff that reduces stats; in Runescape, death means losing all your items except your three most valuable pieces; in Tibia, death means losing levels, skills, your backpack and its contents, and maybe one or more pieces of equipment. Realistically speaking, you basically lost a lot of time. You now have to waste time making money to buy the items you lost back, which could be really expensive if you lost an item that isn’t dropped by creatures, on top of the time it’ll take you to get your level(s) back as well as the time it’ll take you to train your skills. If you hadn’t died, you could’ve spent all the effort making your character stronger rather than regaining what you lost. Dying at a higher level is even worse since how much you lose is percent based and that percent increases the higher your level.
This might sound incredible harsh but it’s actually incredible good. Unlike in other games were you can test if you can combat a specific creature or make your way through a specific zone, fail - with virtually no consequence, and try again later when you feel prepared – in Tibia, you must actually be prepared the first time and therefore your first time combating a creature or making your way through a zone will be extraordinarily exciting and you’ll be extraordinarily tense. This even transfers over to the whole “MM” part of the MMORPG. If you go around being an ass to everyone in Runescape, Dungeons and Dragons Online and World of Warcraft, they can’t do shit about it. In Tibia, if someone offends you, steals for you, gets you killed or kills you – you can lay justice upon them at anytime and anywhere… and they will feel the repercussions of their actions.
The death penalty has dire implications in PvP and world dominance. In World of Warcraft, you choose a side – Alliance or Horde – and fight each other pointless. The biggest reward would be to win Wintergrasp and get to do the associated raids. In Tibia, however, there doesn’t have to be sides but there always is; your participation is the key to your degree of success on the server. Different sides are created by groups of friends that form guilds and align with other guilds. A reason for two individuals to fight and therefore multiple guilds to get involved always occurs and the winning side totally subdues the losing side. What is the benefit of winning? You dominate the server; you control the spawns (leveling grounds), houses, and rights of other players. Ex: You let everyone on the server know if they pass level X, they will be hunted off the server. You dictate what happens on the server. What is the cost of losing? At best, you have to pay for the losses of the winning side; at worst, you’re hunted off the server – every time you logon, the winning side comes and kills you till you go from level X to level 1. If you decide to be neutral, the only loss to you is having to listen to the dominant guild(s) or be hunted down. Potentially, during wars – both sides could kill you and threaten you to give them money and your possessions to fight the war. When you get involved in a war, you risk everything you have in order to gain everything else.
World dominance might sound like a bad thing. If the wrong people rule of the server, there is always a group that rises in the shadows and eventually wages war on the ruling party. No one remains in power forever.
If PvP isn't your thing, don’t worry; Tibia has non-PvP servers for pansies.
One thing that makes MMORPGs stand out compared to other games are the countless updates and vast amount of content – Tibia falls nowhere short in these categories. While Dungeons and Dragons Online max level is capped at 20 (100 ranks) and World of Warcraft’s max level is capped at 80 – Tibia has no max level cap and there are quests for people levels 1 through 300~ and one quest in waiting for the first person or group that reaches level 999. Another thing that makes Tibia stand out is the lack of a quest line. Tibia is a world for you to explore when and how you want. There might be a few “fetcher” quest givers but a significant portion of the quests involve you roaming around and exploring your environment: finding hidden passages, getting past traps, solving puzzles, finding the corpse of a deceased adventurer and the tales of fortune he left behind. You’ll have to team with friends to navigate the intricate network of tunnels below the Jakundaf Desert; as you fight through the fortified orc fortress, Ulderek’s Rock; and as you flee the terrors under the Plains of Havoc. And if that wasn’t enough, you might just have to set your differences with other players aside as rats threaten Carlin with the plague and as the orc armies lay siege to Thais. And just when everything seems peaceful and silent, the strongest willed of adventurers will be called to defend Edron from the Demon Lord Orshabaal and his demon minions…
… only to learn, as the few remaining survivors stumble to their feet as the great Demon Lord falls, that he was nothing more than a pawn to more powerful demons that seek to conquer the World of Tibia.
***
Many people overlook games that don’t seem mainstream; sure it’s not 3D, it doesn’t have sound, and every action isn't animated but it more than makes up for it in every other aspect that counts in an MMORPG. Best of all, Tibia offers a vast free to play environment that rivals other MMORPGs’ pay to play. So, if you want an intense PvE and PvP experience, if you want to be immersed in the game, if you want to know what a real MMORPG feels like – what’s stopping you from trying Tibia?
By: Eric Fernandes
First I'll start out with what I liked in the review. I liked the spacing you had throughout the piece, though you should fix the spacing of the second paragraph before the first picture. I also like how you bolded your general arguments, they helped me focus and remember them as the key parts of your review, and I think that's a good move; it'll definitely help those things stick in the memories of the readers. The picture placement between text was also pretty well done, there weren't any points where it felt like the review was dragging on without a picture, and a couple of them were pretty fitting. Lastly, I also liked the ending of your piece, because it wrapped up your general thoughts of the MMO as well as putting forward a last sentence, which stays with the reader, asking them why they're not trying out a game that's free to play.
ReplyDeleteAs for the bad things...there were a number of writing mistakes that I found throughout the piece, such as: "how creation of Tibia and the gods and much, much more." after the third picture (should be "how Tibia and the gods came to be, and much much more" or "the creation of Tibia and the gods and much, much more."); "It is one of the defining aspects of the game because dying considerably more severe than any other MMORPG I’ve played." (the latter part is bolded) after the fifth picture (should be "It is one of the defining aspects of the game because the repercussions of dying are considerably more severe than in any other MMORPG I've played."); "This might sound incredible harsh, but it's incredible good" after the fifth picture (should be "This might sound incredibly harsh, but it's incredibly good."); "In Tibia, if someone offends you, steals for you, gets you killed or kills you – you can lay justice upon them at anytime and anywhere… and they will feel the repercussions of their actions." after the fifth picture (should be "In Tibia, if someone offends you, steals from you, gets you killed or kills you - you can lay justice upon them anytime and anywhere...and they will feel the repercussions of their actions."); "you choose a side – Alliance or Horde – and fight each other pointless." right after the sixth picture (should be "you choose a side - Alliance or Horde - and fight each other pointlessly" or "you choose a side - Alliance or Horde - and fight each other for no greater purpose than to blah blah blah"); "If the wrong people rule of the server, there is always a group that rises in the shadows" after the sixth picture (should be "If the wrong people rule the server, there is always a group that rises in the shadows" or "If the ruling faction of the server is tyrannical, there will always be a group that rises up from the shadows"); "and as you flee the terrors under the Plains of Havoc" under the seventh picture, the map one (should be "and as you flee from the terrors of the Plains of Havoc").
ReplyDeleteIn addition, your pictures themselves and the relevance they had to the text weren't very good. The pictures, though some like the "Can you move, please?" -- "Nope." were fitting, it was difficult to pick out what the main point of the picture was from the non-zoomed in picture. If you focus on the main aspect of the picture you want by cropping out the rest and enlarging it while fixing the random pixelation, I think it'd be a much more fitting picture for the reader to focus on. On a random note, one of the pictures, the one with the large number of players on-screen, was also completely too pixelated to make out. In addition to the unedited parts of the picture, the pictures also seemed like they weren't very strongly related to what you talked about sometimes, or if they were related, they came before the text, and since the picture doesn't define what you want to focus on as well as your text, I think you should put the related picture directly after the passage it is exemplifying.
ReplyDeleteThis part is not quite as necessary to take into account, but there were some parts of the review that seemed really unimportant or that could have been contracted into a shorter amount of text to address them, but not focus on them. Examples include: the background story of the game, the specifics of the introduction (which didn't actually have specifics), and your introduction of the MM part of this MMO. For the last of those three, I say that it's not quite necessary because it wasn't convincing until the reader reaches the part where you talk about the wars. THAT is definitely something that makes the MM aspect of Tibia stand out, and it seems to practically define the game based off of how you talked about it (in a good way), so if you could integrate them together while weeding out the parts about blocking one's path, screwing people over, etc, I think that would help make it a stronger point. (People can screw each other over even if there are only two or three people in an area, but a war with hundreds of people is something that's more fitting of "massively multiplayer".)
ReplyDeleteOne last thing: Was there anything you felt about Tibia that was annoying, bad, or unnecessary? While I didn't get bothered by anything in Alan Wake, Ahmad recommended that I point out at least a few of the faults to help balance out the review. While your review flows smoothly and I can't figure out where I'd put criticisms of the game except maybe near the beginning to get it out of the way, I'd recommend putting maybe one more major thing you didn't like about the game so that it doesn't necessarily sound like the writer is just an MMO fan whose style of gameplay fits the game.
Hahaha. You beat me to doing a proof read. On the bright side, I don't have to find all my writing mistakes since you've pointed most of them out for me. - I'll go make the corrections when I have more time. Just wait?! Didn't you tell me not to take the review seriously? > "It'll be fine, just go with whatever comes to mind."
ReplyDeleteI was hoping the pictures would lead into what I was talking to. Didn't feel the need to edit the pictures or add a caption since I felt that they were pretty self explanatory if you read the review. Blogger has this wonderful option where you can click on the picture and it'll blow it up for you - just requires clicking the picture. The picture that isn't in HD (sorry?) is just suppose to show a snapshot of one part of any particular war. As you could possible tell, that screenshot isn't one I took. I'm not planning on sparking a war just for a screenshot. - but you're right, I should try to accommodate lazy readers by making it as easy as possible for them to do absolutely no thinking whatsoever.
There wasn't anything I felt was annoying, bad, or unnecessary in Tibia. If there is one thing that is reasonable in the game that I didn't particularly like would be the slight imbalance between the vocations when it came to PvE. Unlike Runescape, Dungeons and Dragons Online and World of Warcraft where [I felt] there was a huge difference in the ability to PvE between the different classes - in Tibia, there is only a slight difference. Why might I consider this a problem? PvP and PvE are intertwined. If you're able to make money, get gear and get levels through PvE just slightly faster - it could offset PvP and therefore offset the order of the world. - I wouldn't mind explaining it in more detail via PM.
About your criticism - please don't say, "the reader" when you're really talking about how you felt about my review. I respect what you think but I don't like when you try to increase the value of your opinion by weighing it with this blog's non-existent reader base.
Thanks for the review. I'm coming into the game a bit late, but your review inspired me to give it a try. (I first heard of it on MUDconnect).
ReplyDeleteI'm still in Rookgaard, so I can't comment a whole lot.
- People are still playing the game.
- It's giving me major 16-bit nostalgia (ala Chrono Trigger).
- It's also reminding me quite a bit of Ultima Online, which I never liked a whole lot. I prefer a kind of cartoonish look over pixelated realism.
- I like the interactive text approach. It feels like it makes the game more "real".
- I also look forward to developing my character. I'm not sure what path I'm going to take, yet, but I'll probably be largely peaceful.
I'm playing as Myoho on Honera. Hope to see you there!