A Tale In The Desert Gets Second Telling

Thanks to Stratics for its interview with the creators of indie PC MMO, A Tale In The Desert, discussing the 'rebooting'/upgrading of the game: "ATITD was never intended to be a single persistent world but a chapter like-story in the development of Egypt and the 'creation' of that perfect society. However, Tale 1 was a large undertaking and lasted longer than originally intended. ATITD2 will have a 6-month life-span before ATITD3 begins the cycle anew." Among topics discussed are better graphics ("We've had a new scaling graphics engine so, if you're using a newer card it will take advantage of fragment shaders for terrain, etc.") and dealing with griefing ("The community has tools to deal with griefers, including inventing laws to permanently exile those people from Egypt.")

Comments

I like ATITD.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one of the original ATITD players, but I just couldn't take the clicking. My work life is centered around typing and clicking and I just didn't have what it took to conduct two million clicks every night to play this game and just barely keep up. Not to mention, all the griefers leaving bonfires over all of your property so you couldn't expand your domain, raise bees or dig for minerals and gems got to me.

Re:I like ATITD.

[Drawkcab]

There is a negligible amount of actual griefing that occurs in ATITD. Really. What I'm inferring happened is that you were a relatively new player who ran afoul of the unwritten social conventions. There is a huge amount of land in atitd. In some ways too much land for the few thousand actual players. And resources are spread all over the huge map, meaning that if you look for a while, you can find a place to build your camp and acquire resources without any interference. The problem is that new players start near welcome banners, and usually start building without looking around very long or hard for a good spot. You can't blame them for that, of course, but it does lead to conflicts with more established players who have already built in the area. When new players start building very close to them it causes them problems (the same problems you see from bonfires), so a small minority might respond undiplomatically to what they perceive as an infringement. Also you may build certain kinds of buildings in places that can cause pollution problems for others or collapse their mines. Once you learn the unwritten courtesies of how to coexist with people, nobody would have any reason to grief you. And even if you don't know the rules, most people would try to talk to you first rather than grief you. If you're polite in response, you'll find many people are very helpful to newbies, and you may end up with more in return than you bargained for.