A Tale in the Desert III Launches

Teppy writes "The third version of the unique Egyptian MMOG A Tale in the Desert is now available. Changes from previous Tales include the new Discipline of Harmony, a game-wide Events system, and 'Principles'. Principles consist of 49 snack-sized challenges that provide a gentle introduction to a hugely complex game. Other enhancements include regional chat, community-unlockable Tests, dozens of new and changed Skills, and of course the Legacy Tests designed by the Oracles of A Tale in the Desert II. Windows, Linux, and OSX clients are available for download."

Comments

Khartoum is empty

[Anonymous Coward]

Go there if you don't like crowds.

2 Thumbs UP

[TheCarlMau]

I've played since Tale 1, and I've always enjoyed it. I think eGenesis has finally perfected it with Tale 3. The travel system and level system is completely revamped, and a great community. If you're interested in a non-convential, unique game, go for it. There's even a Linux client with a very technical community. ie: everybody whinced when this was posted on slashdot! ;)

Re:2 Thumbs UP

[turtledawn]

It's great if you don't have anything else to do with your life. I played for about six months last winter (Whoo Karnak! Hi Guardians of Re!) and had to quit because the boyfriend couldn't handle me talking about breeding scarab beetles any more. The only problem I found was it was impossible to be a casual gamer- you'd come back after a weekend trip and find that not only had three new techs been opened, you were now good for nothing but growing cabbage. Sigh. I was in a research guild, YMMV.

Great Game!

[zapster]

I have been playing this game for a couple of years and I still have not done everything in the game. The content is very deep and Teppy (the lead developer) does a great job of keeping things interesting. The best thing about this game is there is no up front cost, you get to download and try it out for 24 hours of in game time for free. Very cool.

Yes! Oh wait...

[Durumbrain]

Although I only played the trial version of ATITD 2, I always say that ATITD isp the best MMOG out there. It is about as far away from the traditional Hack n' Slash you can come today, and I loved almost everything about it (it's a little too expensive for my taste).

I want to see more games like this one! Although it is far from perfect, it shows that out-of-the-box thinking is not only possible, but successful. There is a market for social, intelligent games! It may not be big, but it is there.

Second Life is another step in the right direction. The more high-budget games, the more popular will the "genre" get and the market will grow, which means more and better games. Because of ATITD, we are entering a good spiral of innovative online gaming. Rejoice!

Re:Yes! Oh wait...

[ErikZ]

There is a market for social, intelligent games

If you don't buy a copy, and you love the game, then there really isn't a market.

Re:Yes! Oh wait...

[Durumbrain]

I'm a student without any real source of income. If I did work, I would most likely play it.

BitTorrent

[SlickCow]

So we don't overload their sever :) Here is a torrent for the Windows install.

What's different since tale 1?

[aapold]

I played in the first one, really enjoyed it for a time (especially the non-obtrusive client that let you do whatever else you wanted while it ran, a good things ince many tasks involved long wait times).

I didn't mind the lack of combat. There was plenty of challenge. I loved the ability to influence the game's design. However, finding a good spot always seemed a challenge, it seemed the good ones in the starting areas got gobbled up quickly, even given the relatively small playerbase... and the main frustration I had in time was the insanity of trying to compete in challenges with large well organized guilds. FOr example, I remember a challenge to make a tower taller than all in the area. The first one was easy, the next had to top that, and so on. In time it required weeks of resource collecting to top the next one, and people, once they were doing it, would routinely exceed the previous height considerably, taking out several tiers in the process. Your only hope was to find an area where no one had done so yet, and that quickly got snapped up...

The camel thing... that was another insanity. Whoever had the most straw in an open camel pen at midnight when the camels spawned got a free camel (which ate all that straw). Presumably the camel was then too fat to escape via the open gate. Because routinely insane amounts of grain, enough to feed the entire nation of egypt several times over were not enough to compete with guilds that had acres of harvesting combines all pumping straw into one pen just to outdo the others.

And these were relatively early things in my game experience, i never got near pyramids, optics, fireworks, lasers, and so on... I can only imagine how those went...

I tend to solo a lot in games. Its what I like to do. And I found the game to be solo-unfriendly. I don't want to get into the then-why-do-you-play-mmorpgs argument, I do like to interact, between long bouts of solo time. That's just my playstyle...

So, what has changed on this front?

Re:What's different since tale 1?

[Teppy]

Actually, the new Principles that I mentioned in the article submission may appeal to you. Each one is a miniature version of a corresponding Test. For instance, Principles of the Obelisk challenges you to build a 7 cubit tall Obelisk. All Principles are fixed-goal, and nearly all are non-competitive. Tests, including the Test of the Obelisk that you describe, are still mostly competitive.

Completing a Principle advances your level by one (yes, we have levels now), and unlocks new Principles/Tests, Skills, and Technologies.

It's still going to be difficult (impossible) to lead construction of one of the final 7 Monuments with a solo spproach, but you may find Tale 3 to be much more fun for your playstyle than Tale 1.

If you do decide to come back, play for a bit and then tell me if I'm on-track with this analysis. (In-game, /chat Pharaoh)

Re:What's different since tale 1?

[Baddas]

I find it very hardcore that you read slashdot.

Re:What's different since tale 1?

[Psychochild]

Hah! Us small-scale game developers (I run Meridian 59) do it for the love of gaming and technology. What kind of gaming and technology geek worth the title could avoid reading Slashdot? ;)

Re:What's different since tale 1?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is less impressive once you find out he doesn't even read the "unofficially official" forums that the majority of users frequent.

(There are no official forums are the game -- like much else, it is left to the players who have to put it together on top of the monthly fee).

What do you like about a tale in the desert?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I have only played the game for about 4 hours. I plan to play it for longer to see what comes about, but here's my initial impression:

From what I could gather, the game seemed to be recursive resource gathering/building in order to unlock higher tiers of items that could be built, along with challenges of increasing difficulty that could only be accomplished by having an army of people below you taking care of the base level resource gathering.

Seemed a bit too much like the opening of the gates of Ahn'Qiraj to me in World of Warcraft, where only a clear couple people on the server get to "ring the gong", fight the high level dragons, while the rest of the server is killing 1,000,000 level 12 humanoids for cloth.

I asked some people about the puzzle aspects (which is what drew me to the game in the first place) and received an example of people trading seeds at random to try to grow a certain type of vegetable. That just seemed like another time sink to me that didn't involve clever or intuitive thought, just brute force.

I asked some other players what they were doing for fun, and they explained they were unlocking new types of techniques at the university, which was done by, again, gathering oodles of resources.

I'm not saying this style of gameplay is terrible, but resource gathering and refining is something that's not my cup of tea. My only complaint is that I just kept hearing that a Tale in the Desert was a different type of RPG, but to me it just seemed like it had all the resource gathering elements of other MMORPGs without the instances to explore and monsters to fight.

Re:What do you like about a tale in the desert?

[Danny Rathjens]

Why was this moderated to -1? Too bad I just had some mod points expire. His perception seems quite accurate to me.

I feel the same way, and I paid for a month a couple years ago, so I played for a bit longer. It is a nice change of pace from other games, e.g. creating artwork to be judged by others, but the primary goals of the game are way too repetitive for my personal taste.

Re:What do you like about a tale in the desert?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you only play for the first month you are missing out on a lot!
None of the real thinking elements are brought into play until later like the smithing puzzle, gem cutting puzzle or even the less complicated but still challenging ones like coal production and glass making.
There is still a lot of resource gathering though which can get repetative but as the technology increases so does your abillity to get resources faster. Some people will find that too tedious but it can be fun if you try and see just how effecient you can get.

Re:What do you like about a tale in the desert?

[Finkbug]

Heck if I know how he could do it, but Teppy needs to find a way to drag people in at various points along the timeline of a Telling. The game experience is *very* different the first days, the first couple months, and a year in.

For example, getting a camel. In the first week or two you'll be up against experienced, obsessive guilds. Whole regions. Chance of doing it solo? Zero. Three months in, your only competition is the unlikely other solo newb trying in your region that night.

ATITD is the bomb throwing radical of the MMORPG market. Second Life + deep gameplay.

Dammit. I've kept my account active for six months without playing. (Couldn't afford to do so but did it anyway.) Lots of complaints. But I think I've finally talked myself into gathering some $!@#!@#% grass to get the first #$!@##!@ camel in the region. The girlfriend, who never left, is going to be thrilled. Dammit!

Re:What do you like about a tale in the desert?

[varcher75]

From what I could gather, the game seemed to be recursive resource gathering/building

That's only part of the game. If you pursue the path of Body, almost everything requires zero resources. Instead, you will have to travel across all of the game world, to find people/items/locations. Or Worship (does the alignment test still exists? That one require you to find 4 other people "astrally aligned" with you) Then, you have the "basic resources" which is the highly repetitive part - but also the part that every player can do, regardless of their abilities (as a player, not as a character). Then you have whack-a-mole resources (from very simple whackamole like Flax, to barley or glassmaking). Then you have puzzle resources (gemcutting. You have a 6x6x6 block with random holes, and you need to cut sides until you get a specific 3d shape from the block. Require good 3D perception, and each gem is different). And the, you arrive into the various "artistic". Using the same resources as everyone, you need to make something that people will judge better than the others'. Basically, you've judged the game from the newbie game. However, unlike Eq-esque games (like WoW), the game changes dramatically once you find a niche to play (the game is all about various niches which you can choose) where fantasy RPGs basically play the same from level 1 to 60, with just different weapons, items and spells.

Misleading labeling

[Arker]

Required Operating System: Any Linux distribution built on the XFree86 4 or X.org release. Must include GLIBC 2.3.2 or greater.

And they recommend a PIII/700 or better. Sure makes it sound like this would run fine on a fast PPC or SPARC machine, doesn't it?

Bet you it won't though.

Re:Misleading labeling

[GooDieZ]

There is also OSX client, check it out at http://atitd.com/

so much about misleading...

Re:Misleading labeling

[Arker]

Are you telling me THAT will run on a SPARC? Or my Gentoo powered G4? Huh?

+0 Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Teppy's path to riches:

#1: Get Slashdotted
#2: Register a % of players to pay to play.
#3: Profit!

Where's "#X: ???", you ask? Not sure. Teppy's managed to actually get to the profit stage. It's the main reason it's lived to a third tale (thankfully).

So, let me be first among the citizens of Egypt to re-welcome our old Pharaoh Overlord!