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Here's a link to GS3, actually. They made some major fixes to its flaws and renamed it Gemstone IV.

https://www.play.net/gs4/

Note: I still play it, as Lothsahn. Still fun!

Not really. The servers themselves are the same cost whether it's the cheaters-server or the normal-server. Partitioning the accounts might take a little work, but you'd get it all back with the reduced CS claims, and the effort would be almost identical to any special-case rules you'd need to implement for your suggestion. You can even make them pay for the privilege of playing on the "No-Rules" server, as an option instead of a permanent ban. It worked a decade ago for Dragon Realms -- no reason it couldn't work in other games.

http://www.play.net/dr

Perhaps they could get something going with Simutronics/HeroEngine.

One of the longest running text-based role playing games, GemStone IV by Simutronics, is still active with a fairly dedicated user base. Wikipedia has a pretty good overview.

It's not as popular as it used to be, no doubt due in part to the explosion of graphical MMOs. However, it still provides the environment for some of the best role playing available on the intertube and still shines with the hands-on attentions its GameMasters give to the player community.

It's not free, but I'd suggest anyone with interests in role playing games to give it a look and take the trial for a run.

I actually grabbed that example from a MUD called Gemstone that I used to play. It's class and level based, and due to the way it handles skills it makes each profession valuable and really gives you a role in the world. Not to mention there aren't a bunch of annoying 1337$@uC3r$ running around trying to sell you gold and/or being dipshits in general. It's a good game.

Rulemaster... errr I mean Rolemaster, was the basis of Gemstone, which limps along as a text-based game to this day at http://www.play.net/. At its peak, pre-EQ, it attracted perhaps 3000 simultaneous players. They parted ways with ICE a long time ago, and renamed all their lore (ummm shaalk to vultite, lien to mein iirc). I remember having 'old' gear as novelty items for a long time.
The game managed to cause both class and skill-based constraints. You *could* stray off the 'best' point allocation system, if you wanted to suck. If you ever messed up point allocation on levelling, your character would be left severely broken. To pick a simple example, a rogue who mis-allocated lockpicking points could find themselves unable to open locks at their level. Since you got experience for doing things (rogues opening locks, healers healing, everyone for killing stuff), you would be left with a major exp path being untenable.
The game was also completely wide-open PVP for ages, and a small number of very powerful players kept the peace, with GMs intervening mostly only when the stuff hit the fan.

http://www.play.net/aoh/

Well, there's this: http://www.play.net/mo/

Excellent points. On the 'expensive' issue, though.. GEnie was charging up to $36 per hour for dial-up connections for "prime time gaming". At it's worst, AOL only extorted $6 or so per hour.
I remember having to explain the $300+ monthly bills until I took an in-game "job" with SimuTronics (now Play.net ) so they would pay my net bill.

I'll take that bet. ;) Wasn't me, and I didn't even know that the Whitedust interview had been posted, until the Simutronics CEO (David Whatley, another slashdotter) IMed me and said, "You are about to be slashdotted" (and no, it wasn't him either). A couple minutes after that, a bunch of other IMs flew in with similar warnings to batten down the web-server, and I've been dealing with the related deluge for the rest of the day. As slashdottings go though, it's been relatively light (only about 5000 visitors), probably because the Whitedust folks didn't actually put any links to my website in their interview. The traffic has been coming in from the secondary links in the /. thread, from my Wikipedia bio, and from Google.

If I would have started the thread, you can be sure I would have linked it better, to my site, my company, and my upcoming book. ;) My guess is it was posted by someone from Whitedust.

Elonka :)

I think it's just that she's intelligent enough to realize that the idea of marriage doesn't appeal to her, though of course, there could be more to it than that. I don't know her personally, but I did meet her one year at SimuCon and the conversation I had with her strongly suggested to me that she is quite sexually liberated, and this may account for her apparent aversion to monogamy. She was flirtatious and didn't seem socially awkward to me, but then I suppose you have to consider the setting (the St. Louis Hilton populated by hundreds of inebriated gaming geeks.)

A lot of men would probably feel threatened by this type of woman, and that might make it difficult for her to find someone to settle down with, assuming she wants to.

Or course she could be wacko-nuts, for all I know, but I kind of doubt it. She's certainly different/special, and that alone, in the perceptions of many, would make her at least a little "crazy".

I know I've stopped playing. Haven't unsubscribed, but that's only because I'd purchased a 6 month chunk of time. I just can't handle the constant lag, wait times and stupid server-side crap that has become integral to the WoW experience.

Blizzard can't handle the success it's won. I hope Hero's Journey doesn't suck.

Have a look at Hero's Journey - an upcoming fantasy MMO that apparently will have even greater opportunities for customization:

http://www.play.net/hj/

http://www.kmtdesigns.com/hjfaq/index.php

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/screens /gameID/174/setStart/1

I think it's somewhat less in WoW, if you know what you're doing. Maybe a week minimum, though I'm honestly not sure as I haven't played it since the closed beta.

Meanwhile, in a different game I used to play, it took over a month of 24/7 training (which you can generally only accomplish by macros and scripts, which are illegal if AFK) to get to level 100 (while not the max as there is no cap, it's pretty much the peak right now).

Text based games, including MUDs and MUSHs are still alive and strong and have quite a following despite all of the hype and eye candy of modern console/pc games.

I play most of today's MMORPGs and have a lot of fun doing so, but they all are missing a level of immersion that you can only get in a text based game.

My favorite game ever is DragonRealms, a text based world with thousands and thousands of players that has been going strong since the early 90s!

I am glad to see people are still taking an interest in keeping this genre going. I hope some of the younger gamers give text based games a chance and do not miss out completely on these great worlds of fun.

RTS along with D&D? Something definately worth while. I have always been rather surprised that Wizards never came up with a MMORPG that is D&D related. Lets hope they do... dragonlance related too. I would love to run around Krynn beating up the baddies! I shall settle for gemstone IV click here for link for now. text Muds PWN too ya know :)

Talking about player created content in MMORPG...

http://www.play.net/hj/

It is now known as Gemstone IV, and is produced by a company called Simutronics. It's your typical MUD (and one of the most successful ever at that), except it was on AOL, Genie, and Compuserv before they moved to being their own website/independant of these ISPs in the late 90s.

http://www.play.net/

Its still around.

I've been playing MUDs for about 8 or 9 years now, and MMOs for maybe half that. I've found that the only two things the latter are better at are
1. Graphics (obviously) and
2. Sheer numbers
For everything else, from combat to PVP to player housing, I've found some MUD that's done it better. If I found a MMORPG that was nothing more than a graphical conversion of one of my favorite MUDs (say, DragonRealms), I'd be there in an instant. I have to also wonder how many additional people would try it out then, when they wouldn't give consideration to a MUD.

Those screenies are WAY out of date.

Try the http://www.play.net/hj/ site directly for screenshots that aren't 6 years old.

That was a totaly different game than what it is now.

Royce

No that wasn't a typo. I believe the base price is around $10/month, Premium $25/month and the Platinum service is $49.95. At that price you're pretty much guaranteed that you'll only be playing with mature adults and having played Dragon Realms for a few years with an ex girlfriend it was really rare to encounter a problem that actually required a GM.

http://www.play.net/dr/platinum/

http://www.play.net/hj/gallery/

http://www.play.net/hj/

MMORPG.com has quite a few things from E3, including a review for Hero's Journey by Simutronics, which blew them away.

I doubt too many players would object to the concept of Permadeath if it wasn't Hardcore style (die once and you're done).

In DragonRealms, a large MUD, all players can gain a number of 'favors' from various gods. When they die, as long as the player has several favors they're good to go. If not, they have a good chance of permadeath, if not resurrected by a cleric.

Many quality commerical MUDs require a monthly fee to play. DragonRealms/GemStoneIII http://www.play.net/, for example, costs $15 a month for a standard account (as much as EQ, SWG, WoW, DAoC, ETC.) and $75! a month for a Platinum account, which many people are happy to pay. On top of this is the extensive buying and selling of in game items, money and charcters which sometimes go for hundreds and even thousands of dollars! Simutronics has been going strong since the early/mid 90s.. No other MMORPG has such staying power.

I would imagine it is much more profitable, at least in the short run, to do things like this. Same would be true for Everquest if it's possible to steal items in this manner, but I am unfamiliar with how exactly the item system in that game works (was always a Diablo fan, not a EQ fan).

The prices some of these things fetch is insane even to the most hardcore of gamers..But I guess if you've got that much money to blow anything starts looking good. Hell, you should see some of the prices the shit on the text-based MUD DragonRealms fetches. Upwards of thousands of dollars for characters, rare items, and currency. And it's easy to shell out anywhere from $30-$500 a month directly to the company that runs the game itself, nevermind the underground networks of illegal buying and selling of characters/items/money. But I digress...

Not free, but free trial available. Simutronics has been running very large text MUDs since 1988 (on GEnie), later on AOL, and now on the internet. Gemstone 2 and 3 have evolved into Gemstone 4, and Dragonrealms is its own beast. They also have a Hercules and Xena world, plus Modus Operandi. http://www.play.net/ if you want to look, and I think you can review the discussion boards anonymously if you want.

The way a game plays (control, core gameplay) and is designed (the way specific challenges are tailored) are the most important things in a game. If I want to enjoy a good story, I can read a mediocre novel and appreciate better plot and character development than the better stories found in video games. If I want to be wow'd by cool visual effects, I can watch a big budget action or sci-fi movie.

Don't get me wrong, I love it when a game has a good story, and I'm not totally unfamiliar with MUDs myself (used to play GemStone IV among others, and was an active member of that game's role-playing community when I did play) but if the actual process of playing the game isn't great, the game's story isn't going to work as a saving grace.

Graphics (but really I should say "style", as a game can be very technically advanced graphically, but still lack style, which is what's important), storyline, music, sound effects collectively work together to give the game polish and immersiveness. Games that don't have polish and immersiveness may be fun to play (which is what's most important), but a game that's fun and immersive is a gaming masterpiece.

Games like Deus Ex, the Ocarina of Time, Star Control 2, Grand Theft Auto III, Metroid Prime and Yoshi's Island are a few games that I'd consider masterpieces for their time. Some of them have a greater emphasis on story than others, but the key is, each of them is built first on a solid foundation of fun and compelling gameplay, and thestoryline and/or other elements intergrate with the game near-perfectly and enhances the overall gameplay experience so it starts to feel like something greater than a mere game.

Some of the early arcade games like Asteroids, Ms. Pac-Man, Missle Command, ect. can still be pretty fun to play, despite the fact that the plot and storylines are as primitive as the graphics. Also a lot of games (simulators, sports games) don't have a plot either, they just have a premise. I'd rather play those types of games than an RPG or FPS with a first-rate story but poorly designed gameplay, maps, levels, encounters, ect.

That's just me though.

The game was called Gemstone III. You wouldn't know it from their blubs, though, because they sort of didn't ask permission or give credit... they just used the Rolemaster rules and milieu (Shadow World). When the game started getting attention and players on CIS, ICE came down on them for copyright infringement.

I don't know the details of the settlement, since it happened before the AOL gateway opened, but they changed the names of everything in the milieu, keeping the underlying mechanics... there was just no way to reprogram the entire game. (Technically, Dragonrealms, or GSIV is the result of that effort.) But GSIII was already making money and had hordes of devotees, so it only recently was updated to GSIV.

The timeline of the parent company, Simutronics, is here.

Gemstone III was a Rolemaster player's wet dream. Rolemaster was ideal for porting to a game system, since the biggest complaint was the number of tables that needed referencing, and the tracking of all the bonuses and penalties. Automate that, and the freedom that the system allows really shines through. Of course, the automation processes adds additional limitations, but none that aren't there regardless of what system you use.

If they could come up with a way to make it dynamic enough where you wouldn't see a website with the list of all possible spell combinations within a week.....*cough*Asheron's Call*cough* I think it could be incredible.

If you want just a broad range of out of the ordinary spells.....check out a MUD called Dragonrealms by Simutronics. It's $10/month, but I've been paying it for years......simply the most engrossing game out there. Don't believe me? Check out their spell list.

You create a character with six vital statistics, a spell/skill book, and a bunch of empty slots for inventory. You put armor and weapons in your inventory slots. You walk your blocky 100-triangle avatar out in a third-person view, you click on a monster to target it, and you hit a key to start auto-attacking it. You sit there twiddling your thumbs until either it dies or you die.

I played Gemstone III for quite a long time as a rogue. Attacking could take a variety of paths, but my usual methodology was hide (as best I could depending on terrain) and then when the enemy was in a particular position, go full offensive and jump out and ambush their leg. Hopefully I didn't miss or they'd be all over me. If I hit, they'd fall to the ground, and I'd do the same, ambushing their head or neck (for a more effective and critical attack). It would even show you the rolls of the dice if you wanted. It was a great game, and I enjoyed playing it for quite some time. However, eventually I tired of paying the monthy fees and decided to cancel my subscription. I still miss it to this day. Supposedly the DragonRealms game from Simutronics was even more advanced than Gemstone III, but I never got into that. It's a text-based game, though, so if you don't have an imagination, you should probably look elsewhere.

I found Gemstone III much more fulfilling than Everquest. GS3 was magnitudes beyond EQ. After it became a pay service (it used to be free if you were on AOL), the loser-newbie level dropped like a rock. I found most people who played the game were there to be part of the larger community. It really was a lot of fun.

Gemstone III, a fairly popular pay MUD, also has a lively platinum trade going where people pay real cash. As such, it's not unreasonable to clarify exactly which online game it's for, even if people already assume it's virtual platinum.

That was one of the funnest games I have ever played. I enjoyed it so much more than the quake games. You can check out the game on play.net It was great, friendly people and operators always kept the games running smooth. Then AOL got greedy and the contract expired. I miss that game more than anything. I'd give testicles to get it back how things were in '94 - 97. I miss GEnie also :)

<Simutronics Whore>

</Simutronics Whore>

Our company offers service on a subscription service and we have had to face this issue as well. Though our history goes back to the days when CompuServe was the big banana and GEnie was #2 (and no one really had heard of the Internet thing), we ultimately ended up providing our service through the web.

When we made this transition, we eventually discovered (quite by accident) that when our online cancelation system malfunctioned our numbers improved noticeably. This lead us to look around and see what others were doing. Sure enough, many others were discovering that their business models worked better the harder they made it to cancel.

And its not a small thing either. You would be amazed by what a difference it makes.

I will admit here and now that we specifically ripped out all our online cancelation in order to improve our business. To cancel, you had to email us or call us. And we didn't make this procedure very obvious either. On purpose.

And it made a big difference to the bottom line.

But there is more to this story than just a confession....

Not long ago we did a complete overhaul of our web presence. During the planning and right up through implementation and release we wrestled with this issue. We knew that having cancelation online was the right thing to do for the customer (present and future). But we knew we had a business to run and lots of competitive pressures barking at the door.

In the end I just decided we needed to do the right thing. There is a way to cancel online, one that is as automatic and painless as we could make it. It's right there under our "my account" area in plain sight. Along with multiple links both textual and iconic on how to email us and call us. And when you call, the person who answers the phone is the person who cancels your account on request.

Like AOL we do ask for a reason, but not to engage in an argument. But rather to collect information and see if there is something we can improve. AOL CS people are paid a bonus for "saving" a customer which is why there was that bizarre exchange reported here. Sure we like to save a customer, but we don't push our CS people (or reward them) in that way.

Are these practices the optimum business strategy? No. I know for a fact they are not. But they are the right thing to do. At the end of the day we all have to do our part to make the online world a better place.

(Feel free to check out our site and browse the 'my account' section to see if we've done right as an online citizen. You don't need an account to go to that page.)

We have unlimited hunting of orcs in GemStone III. Join us against Blizzard's foolishness and help us destroy the orcs while we still can!

This blatent plug for my game brought to you be the number 1 and the letter Z.

At least one or two people here avoided AO, UO and EQ as the sole topic in their post... Only one mention of the original MMOG, MUDs (and related) type text-games (of which, one commercial venture done by Simu remains and at least one of their games (Dragon Realms) has an average population of 800 players (lows around 450, highs well over 2000))

Granted, those games mentioned frequently have received the greatest number of players (even in Beta stages, for AO). I just thought I'd mention a few places where I see MMO-type games really taking off. First, I think Verant's other works, such as Sovereign should be considered instead of just EQ. It looks to be an excellent game in both MMO and RTS catagories. The idea of an RTS where once you've won an area, you can continue to resource in that region to fund later attacks is good (though I think it has been done somewhat in games like Earth 2150)... As is the idea of having an entire planet to fight over rather than a small chunk of ground. Without any map edges to build against, players will finally need to surround their entire base with defenses rather than only 2 sides. Also coming from Verant (and Sony), Planetside should be a good extension of games like Tribes. Where Tribes had some nice versions of games (like Capture and Hold) where out-lying base buildings could hold a tactical advcantage, generally there was little in terms of being able to seriously gain or lose ground. The front-line was in the middle, and it stayed there. With a game like Planetside, you have the capability (I don't know if this will occur, mind you) of having a moving front. One of the previous games to do something similar to this was Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, where they had a server set up that allowed the games which were played to alter a more global map. The matches were just standard battles, but what was happening in theory was that each win allowed the player's side to gain or retain a section of land. Enough wins on one side claimed that territory and moved the fight forward into the next. Eventually one team would conquer the planet and the map would be reset.

The expanded nature of these games is a real improvement, IMHO. Instead of having a meaningless battle on planet X over a flag (ok, I'm willing to go further and say that the flag represents data or materials or some other tactical advantage, but the battle remains meaningless as there is no tangible benefit to winning in the subsequent match) the players will be able to achieve a victory that (hopefully) will have other benefits to aid them in later attacks. If a few good commanders appear in Planetside who happen to know where various useful buildings are, coordinated assaults on outposts would be possible, lending to the atmosphere and frankly to the fun factor in the game.

Of course, if winning a section of land in Planetside has no benefit other than more land to retreat over, I'd say it probably isn't worth the effort of making the game function in a MMO fashion... I'd even put forward small benefits gained, like capturing a vehicle factory allows for faster or better or even just more available vehicles for your team would be good enough.

(This is mainly in response to anothr comment) As for Neverwinter Nights being MMO... That's debatable. Some might say something like, "Massively Multiplayer should mean more than a standard Multiplayer. If NWN is MMO, then so is Tribes..." Almost. Tribes allows for an equal number of players on a given server (I believe NWN is currently slated for a maximum of 64 players per server). However, the NWN servers can be linked via portals, which would allow for a set of 10 servers so linked to handle 640 clients. The other complaint leveled is in regards to a persistant world. Nothing in MMO says persistant, though a good NWN server should be able to maintain itself for several months if so desired.

WW2 Online sounded like a good idea gone wrong. Personally, I wouldn't have played it, but I can see how it might've been a good game. Especially if they'd included hooks for other games to be linked in, such that you could have an FPS client, a commander client (available to those who've risen far enough in rank, so only a few get the priveldge is they want it) plotting out attack routes for the FPS people, a flight simulator so you could allow bomber runs and fighter-plane pilots to join in, and a few tanks and such (which I believe were included)... things to take all the fighting aspects and include them.

The only other game I know of in the works that looks interesting is Star Wars: Galaxies... but not for the RPG aspect. Instead, I'm looking at the propsed Space Expansion, which is the only genre I feel is seriously missing from the current MMO arena. A good MMO Space-Sim would be a lot of fun, I think... Having the capability of being a trader, a fighter pilot, a gunner or maybe even a capital ship commander would lend itself to some great gaming opportunities. Especially if space was limited to play-bubbles (here I'm thinking of something like Wing Commander or maybe Terminus, where you might be able to range over a single solar-system in your ship, but interstellar travel would be limited to jump-points) it could be an excellent strategic game as well as a fun Space Sim. Having blockades and blockade runners alone would be something neat...

I think I'll cut this short here and not go on to mention the plethora of other MMOGs that have been announced. I've covered those genres where I think expansion into the MMO arena will be good. I don't think many other game types will be able to make the switch (Sim City Online? Pharoah Online? Maybe some trading or something...)


~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"

Sweetness. Yeah, Simutronics rocks. I still play DragonRealms & a little HX from time to time.

As a matter of full disclosure, I was formerly a GM on HX. Nevertheless, I was a player before and after I worked for Simu, and I loved and continue to love the games. A longtime MUDder, I found that Simu's games had the best from MUSHes and MUDs without the worst.

But the reason I played and continue to play, is that the roleplay is terrific. Graphic-based RPGs can't compete, and both player and GM run events are immersive. There's a war going on now, you ought to log in and check it out.

---

Love them or hate them, Simutronics has done a good job of building and maintaining text based adventure games that have managed to stand the test of time. (10+ years!) I happen to be a fan of Gemstone, but they have several other games as well. For people that enjoy MUDs, it can be rather fun, especially when there are as many as 2000 people on at any given time. Hey, I hear they use Linux too. :-)

Sure, single player text games could be managed on existing cell phone interfaces. But, it really seems that the appeal would be the ability to dial into a text world that's maintained and hosted elsewhere, and inhabited with other hapless addicts. After all, it is a phone.

At any rate, on the topic of charges...remember that while the current cell phone users may not be accustomed to paying exorbitant charges for the joy of gaming, there are scads of old-style gamers out there who routinely spent up to thousands/month on connect charges for multi-player text-based gaming. In addition to which, there are still those who continue to actively play non-graphical games, and do pay for the privilege. Compelling content, vibrant environments, thriving community...makes it still worth it.

Now on the practical side of it, I'm not so convinced. I mean, what will happen to my carefully trained ability to type 'parry/slash gargolye' or 'emote: growls fiercely' faster than the wind? Will I have to translate it into repeatedly hitting 9 on my dialpad? Bah!

But there's potential...


---

I know this is tangential to the topic at hand, but neither Ultima Online nor Everquest "started" the MMORPG genre. They aren't even the first graphical MMORPGs.

Between 1993 and 1997, subscribers to online giant CIS and a little online system called AOL could play a text based, for profit, fantasy MMORPG called Gemstone III. After going flat-rate, AOL dumped it because far too many users connected for far too long to play Gemstone. Now Gemstone III players get along quite happily connecting directly via the internet. As far as I know, these were the first for-fee MMORPGs employing "gamemasters" to maintain the code, servers, and portray NPCs for the players. But there could have been even earlier ones, considering all the MU*s and MO*s out there... However, it was definitely the first to hit 1,000 simultaneously connected players. I was there. (And I was disgusted... I started playing when 30 players online was a huge crowd.)

Simutronics, the company who ran Gemstone, also offered several other games, all connected via gateways to several major online services. They're all still up and running, and quite fun, if you can harness enough of your imagination to abandon all the pretty graphics.

Then there was AOL's Neverwinter Nights. (Okay, it wasn't AOL's - they just hosted it.) I know little about this game, except it looked very similar to SSI's old Pools of Radiance series of single-player games, and it was multiplayer, and graphical... and offered no client for my platform at the time. (If someone knows more about the old NWN, please chime in.) Of course, if you've been paying attention at all for the past 10 months, you know that NWN will soon be reborn as the first networked virtual tabletop-style roleplaying environment.

Although I'm sure most players of EverQuest and Ultima Online have never heard of Gemstone or DragonRealms, and believe Neverwinter Nights is a brand-new title, the only innovations in these games are the pretty graphics, and perhaps some interesting server-side hacks... but the genre is an old one.