A Tale In The Desert II Progress Report

MMORPG.com has a progress report available for the indie egyptian MMOG A Tale in the Desert. They detail new implimentations in the game, such as recent trials, petitions, and some information on the uber-political test of the demi-pharoah. From the article: "Periodically, there is a test of the demi-pharaoh. This test takes all applicants and puts them into juries of seven. The seven people in each jury are given a set amount of time to converse, argue, discuss and pick the most worthy among themselves to advance to the next stage. If all seven cannot agree on one of their own to advance, no one advances."

Comments

ATITD: flawed but reinventing the MMOG

[Finkbug]

Most ATITD players do not pursue Leadership (one of the seven Disciplines). For those that do the jury rounds of Demi-Pharaoh voting are very tense. I've never made it out of first round. Too big a mouth and what good works I do under the radar. The jury rounds move forward until the final candidates go to voting from all of Egypt. It's an important vote: the Demi-Pharaoh can kick paying players. Yup, you read that correctly. Covered Cartouche, also in Leadership, is Survivor: Egypt. Not one of my favorite tests.

ATITD is breathtakingly innovative. While not for everyone it is watched by all MMOG insiders. A short list of its most surprising features:

1) It ends. Each Telling has a concrete and player driven finish. Those who have mastered the tests of a given Discipline design a test in that Discipline for the next Telling.

2) The players are in control. If someone is running around building giant swastikas the devs won't step in. Players must organize and pass laws to ban the player or (as happened once Tale 1) change their name and shame them into quitting. Player written and passed laws can change anything short making flying camels. The devs rewrite the code on the fly to implement them.

3) Addictive drugs with both up- and downsides. As disruptive as it sounds. Drugs can cause death (account deletion) so combine that with #7 below.

4) It's full of adults. Most kids or dorks quit out when they realize there are no rats to kill. Game skews both female and older. Nice side effect of the no combat bit. The game is still very, very, very competitive. It's a GAME, not a There or Sims Online chatline.

5) Ridiculously generous trial on PC, Mac, Linux in English, German, and French. All on the same server. There are French cities. Heck, I've tripped over the guildhall for the Belgian Linux Users Group. Game is lousy with penguins. ;)

6) With few exceptions there is no leveling or skill building. Every major and most minor tasks are mini-games. The implications are enormous. One new player discovered he had a knack for gem cutting, a knack few shared. Within a week he was selling that ability--to cut others' raw materials--throughout Egypt. No leveling of his Gem Cutting Skill before he could tackle the tough ones. (Selling it mostly for trade but also to player run banks and for player maintained currencies.)

7) The Test of Marriage (in Worship) allows the spouse to log in as you *without knowing your password*. There is no divorce. Tale 1's leading artist was murdered by his spouse.

8) eGenesis has three full time employees. They are running a commercially viable and industry shaping game where the likes of Microsoft's Mythica crap out before launch after years of development and millions invested.

9) Nothing is known at game start (and game restart in a new Telling). How does pollution effect crops? What are the patterns of mushroom spawning? What equations govern Thought puzzles solved v. Perception stat increase? Game's a giant nerdtastic set of nested puzzles. Players spreadsheet data and experiment to answer mysteries both great and small.

http://wiki.atitd.net/tale2 is the player run wiki. Info discovered, info wrong, data craved. It's huge and testament to the game's depth. (Also got the flaws of all wikis--not well organized.)