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ATITD2 Early Impressions
Darniaq writes "While a relatively small game as defined by player count, A Tale in the Desert was a rather robust experiment into just how much crafting a massive online gamer would like to do. The game is also more evocative of a massive online real-time strategy game than a roleplaying one ala Everquest or City of Heroes. And now there's a sequel. The staff at Grimwell.com has temporarily relocated to Egypt, and provides a live report."
First the good. You could download the game and play for free to see if you liked it. This is a very, very good thing. That the Star Wars Galaxies & others don't do this says a lot. There is also a Linux client.
The free period has some restrictions on what you can do, but it gives a good taster for the game. So I paid for an extra month and played during that period.
Additionally the play world is truly massive. You can wander around, find a spot by the river and start building a little village. Join a guild and everyone can start communal factories specialising in one thing or another. In theory therefore you have a little community and you could barter with another community, specialise in one particular thing and so forth. Still, you have to good at doing something and that means a lot of time is spent producing 'things' to trade with.
If you become bored by the constant grind of producing items you can become an artist or a politician. For example a politician can have laws enacted into the game (e.g. rotten flax becomes public property after 20 minutes). An artist can make sculptures that others can rate. There is also points to be had for leading newbies through their initial tests, so you'll find yourself being helped as soon as you enter the game.
As the world as a whole advances you can contribute surplus items to advance the world's technology. For example give enough of one thing and oil suddenly becomes available and with it items that require oil as a component.
Did I mention there was no killing? Yup the whole game is communally based, although there was a ritualised combat game (think Yuh-gi-oh) you could play, though I never did.
Now the bad. The intent of the game is that you wander the desert and set up shop where you start weaving, baking bricks etc. This becomes exceptionally tedious. Making anything is extremely long winded. Collect straw and mud to make bricks, dry bricks on a rack (made from wood you gathered and planed), make a kiln, pour water on mud to get clay, spin clay into pots, fire pots, use pots to collect water to make more pots. Look forward to this because this is your life. If you're not doing that you're growing flax, collecting thorns to make a flax comb etc. Did I mention it is tedious? If you're lucky, you find some generous soul has donated some equipment such as kilns and forges to the community. If you're unlucky you'll have to make them from scratch too. The tedium can be broken by creating works of art, or fishing or other pursuits, but this game is one long Skinner box. That's not to say other MMPORGs are any different, but ATITD turns it into an artform.
Now the world is massive, but it looks the same. The graphics are pretty sucky too. I'm sure the real Egypt is grass and sand too, but it could still be made more interesting than it is. Wandering from one end of the world to the other to collect seeds or fungus, takes ages and is also very tedious even when you gain waypoints
So all in all, ATITD feels more like a brave but failed attempt to produce a communal game.
It's hard to tell what the second version is like without downloading it (the screenshots are postage stamp size), but my opinion is that ATITD2 would be better if it included: