Linkrealms - UO meets Diablo?

[Mrbloodworth]

Video

[schild]

This is old, isn't it, like I saw news of it 2 years ago.

Anyway, from the video, combat is too slow to even be a distant cousin of diablo.

[Venkman]

The screenshots I saw awhile back didn't do it justice. That video shows it to be nice and fluid. Probably worth a looksee if free and not some stupid pita for an account creation process.

Doesn't have the energy of a Diablo though. But that's fine because we're getting another one soon-ish* anyway.

* Yes, measured in lifetimes.

[raydeen]

They had me at multiple undead minions. Sign me up.

[Falconeer]

What does it have of UO other than a similar look?

[Goreschach]

There seems to be an abnormally large amount of vomit-based attacks.

[Falconeer]

Old, 2007. But hey I missed it and I am sure I am not the only one:

Linkrealms
December 19th, 2007 (Visited 1951 times) Tags:

This post is about Linkrealms. In the end, anyway. Time for another anecdote, which I have told some of before.

There were always questions about what to do with Ultima Online after it launched. EA was moderately baffled by the project, and the lawsuit didn’t help. People had figured out the network protocol, they had figured out the asset file format, they had figured out the map format… it wasn’t long until there were people making better tools for UO data than we had in-house.

The most notable of these was probably UOAssist, which prompted the creation of a program called “UOPro” for tools that we approved for usage and didnt’ consider exploits… as I recall, the UOPro program didn’t last very long. My favorite, though, was the one that let you edit hues, the palette files that were used to tint clothing and monsters — our in-house tool for that was so terrible that we promptly stopped using it and used the fan-created one instead.

At the same time, we were talking a lot about ways in which players could affect the world more. Vendors had just recently gone in; there was talk of letting players place quest NPCs and build their own quests (something which I think went in eventually… gosh, my memory of these days is getting hazy).

Anyway, I came up with a crazy idea.

How about we release a binary of the server, and full docs on Wombat, the scripting language. Sure, the hue tool is nicer than what we have, but we do have nicer map edit tools and stuff than third parties do now. Let people buy a license to run UO elsewhere. But make it so that you cannot connect to these servers directly. Instead, you have to come through an official OSI server. People who run servers can place red moongates (the moongates that in the Ultima fiction meant travel between parallel universes) on the official map. These moongates would reconnect your client to the player-run world. And we can do a unidirectional copy of their character, so they can visit these worlds without losing anything — they just can’t bring anything back.

The date was 1998. Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights didn’t exist yet (it came out in 2002).

Well, it never happened — all the questions about control, brand identity, etc, got in the way. What if someone makes a world that features XXX content? Or racism? Or… you get the idea.

Instead, the UO gray shard phenomenon happened. I don’t think people realize that to this day, UO emulators are one of the most popular “mud” platforms in the world, with free shards in aggregate racking up thousands if not tens of thousands in concurrency every day. The server emulators at this point are hosted on SourceForge, open source, GPLed, etc. And to come full circle, the latest update for UOAssist came out just a few days ago (!).

So along comes LinkRealms, the ostensible subject of this post. Boy, does the camera angle look like UO. :) And what is it? A classless MMORPG where users can effectively add their own zones to make a giant patchwork quilt of a world. It looks interesting — I’ll be curious to see how they handle the issues that scuttled the original idea.

[Ghambit]

There's something oddly hypnotizing about the graphical format.  It's like looking at a wall painting that moves; kinda creepy... maybe it's the animations, I dunno.  I actually kinda like it.   Definitely giving this one a shot, if they ever open up beta again.  (I guess they got flooded and had to shut it down)

[Signe]

For some reason, I want to play this game but I need a "creation code" from someone who has an account.  Anyone? 

[schild]

For some reason, I want to play this game but I need a "creation code" from someone who has an account.  Anyone? 

You want to play it because loot. I get it. No need to pretend no one knows. I'm in the same boat. I like loot. I want more of it.

(I want to play it to make an area called Bat Country, hur hur)

[Signe]

Yes.  Loot.  I'm not ashamed of wanting loot.  I just didn't realise what it was until you just said so!  That and cooking.  People say this is like UO but it seems more like Diablo. 

Loot.  Even the word is nice.  Not like ooze or lube or sausage.

[UnSub]

Not like ooze or lube or sausage.

Paging Dr Freud...

[Nonentity]

Signe, I need to place an order for cooked goods. WEARING ALL THIS PLATEMAIL MAKES ME SWEATY.

[Valmorian]

Yes.  Loot.  I'm not ashamed of wanting loot.  I just didn't realise what it was until you just said so!  That and cooking. 

There needs to be a Cooking Mama MMO so you can cook loot.

[schild]

There is a Cooking Mama DS game where you cook loot.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/43968.html

[Lantyssa]

Loot.  Even the word is nice.  Not like ooze or lube or sausage.

Lube is pretty close to loot.  Luuuuuu-be.  Looooooo-t.  Ooze, too, but ooze sounds like something leaking that shouldn't be.

[Signe]

Sausage, though, is just a wrong word.  Nothing should be called sausage.  Thank god someone came up with bangers. 

[Redgiant]

Loot.  Even the word is nice.  Not like ooze or lube or sausage.

Lube is pretty close to loot.  Luuuuuu-be.  Looooooo-t.  Ooze, too, but ooze sounds like something leaking that shouldn't be.

At least you had the courtesy to put the lube before the sausage.

[Lantyssa]

You can keep the sausage.

[Ghambit]

Lube sausage or not, when the hell can I try this game out?  It's perpetually closed.