A Tale in the Desert

A Tale in the Desert (ATitD) separates itself dramatically from other MMORPGs by the fact that there’s absolutely no combat in the game. My first thought was that no combat would be extremely boring, but after hearing from several acquaintances that this was a great game, I thought I’d give it a try. Although very sceptic I downloaded the 78 MB game installation file, which is free. There’s a trial period of either 30 days or 24 hours of game play, whichever comes first, and after that you have to pay $13.95 per month.

Seven tests in seven schools

Shortly after arriving in the game I was approached by another player who asked me to go vote for his sculpture. He needed 20 votes in order to complete a test. I went there and was impressed by how many options you had in building these sculptures. There were three sculptures and they looked nothing like each other. The test this guy had to complete was the beginners test in art and music.

The game takes time in the ancient Egypt. People believed you could develop yourself down seven different lines, and if you mastered all seven you would become immortal. The seven areas are Architecture, Art and Music, Body, Conflict, Leadership, Thought and Worship. Each line consists of seven different tests – of which none are not done overnight. All lines starts with a beginners test, but first you must become a citizen. Completing a test is not a waste of time, as it not only gives personal success but also different awards.

Becoming a citizen is not easy

The first thing any new players should do is to become a citizen. Lucky for you ATitD is a game where most players help each other. Not many minutes went by before someone offered to be my mentor and guide me through the first steps of the game. You need to learn a bit about the area you are in, how to gather the basic resources and how to buy different skills.

Mentors are players who, besides from being helpful, also are doing their first test in leadership. This way they sell the game, as they must get the player to build a shrine in their honour. You must get seven shrines and visit them all in order to pass. However you cannot build a shrine unless you’ve paid for the first month of playing, so you cannot just create a bunch of bogus accounts and build shrines for yourself.

Becoming a citizen took about one and a half hour, and by then I was already impressed by the game. My mentor suggested that I moved onto my first beginners test: Building a tent. That proved not to be very easy – it took me a couple of days. By that time I had build seven or eight different buildings learned multiple skills as well as traded with other players to get the resources I needed.

Help Egypt evolve

Besides from personal development this game is also about developing Egypt. It all basically started in the Stone Age. A couple of weeks later people have made it to working on making glass products as well as paper prints.

In addition to a school for each line, there are also seven universities in which you can research skills by giving donations. When all donations are completed, anyone can learn the skill at the university for free. Afterwards the person can pass on his knowledge to other players.

The new skills from the universities opens up for even more things you can build and develop, as well as different ways to produce things. In two places in Egypt they are working on opening some automatic skills. These skills will be used for building bricks and harvesting grain while they are doing something else. Until these skills are opened everything must be done manually.

Affect your everyday life

In spite of all this, it is something completely different that has impressed me the most in ATitD. First and foremost all patches are downloaded while you play. I’ve only experienced the servers being down once in the time I’ve played it. The second thing that almost made me fall of my chair is the ability to create new in-game laws.

The new laws, assuming they are voted in, get coded into the game by the developers. Although the developers do have the right to veto a new law, providing it takes way to long to code, or the law would be changing a game feature in which case it’s not actually a law.

On an entirely different note this game requires remarkably low amounts of bandwidth. While MMORPGs in general are know for requiring little amounts of bandwidth, this surpasses anything I’ve experienced. Even when I thought I was using all of my bandwidth I experienced no lag in the game. Only lag was experienced when I had to download a file.

The Devs are watching you

Like so many other games this game has an official IRC channel on the Stratics network, which is very popular amongst most RPG game players. In the IRC channel #atitd there’s talk about this and that, but the Lead Developer Teppy is there too. And he’s not only there for show – he actually participates in the discussions at times and willingly helps players with problems. He even leaves his mobile phone number if the entire development team is unavailable.

By now you’re probably thinking that I’m a deluded fool who has no clue of what a real MMORPG needs to be good. “No Combat?! Get outta here!” – That’s a sentence I’ve heard from several persons before trying this game. This is a game that needs to be played before you can judge it. It’s a lot catchier than you’d suspect.

For the Nerds out there I should mention that there’s also a Linux version available.

Translated by Bo Kruse (PopNerd)