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This is an historically important game
singfast
Member Posts: 5
This is one of the very earliest MMORPGs, possibly THE earliest with most of the concepts of current games. Its appearance was really primitive because it was totally generated on the host and sent to the user at low-bandwidth; there was no client to generate the display. But in spite of its "crappy" appearance it has a lot of fairly sophisticated game features in it.
It has progression thru experience and training, choice of profession (fighter, mage, healer, etc.), kinships, fellowships, kinship private rooms, lockers, banks, player-player and player-group communication, quests, item trading between players, and a large geographical area with a variety of terrains. It had a couple of cool things that current games lack.
I played it around 1980 and hasn't changed since then except that now it's playable through the Internet. So you can consider this working game to be a kind of museum piece. I spent (or wasted) hundreds of hours compulsively glued to my weak little computer with its 2800-baud modem trying to grow my character. You were charged by the hour, not by the month, and it wasn't cheap, but it seemed worth it.
For most of the people who played it, it was the first and only MMORPG they had ever experienced so it seemed miraculously powerful, and most players were very addicted to it. You really did develop a personal attachment to the little stick figures and a sense of fear or excitement in the various areas your entered. And strong bonds developed between some players just as they do in current MMORPGs.
It had one dreaded feature, and that was that when you died and resurrected elsewhere you lost all the money you were carrying plus some of the items you were wearing, usually your most valuable items. And in some areas you could be "one shotted" (killed by surprise with a single hit) so dying couldn't be totally avoided. Typically you would be wearing precious weapons and armor that you had spent hours questing to get and those would be the things you would lose. In some places you would lose everything and not have a single weapon or armor unless you had spares stored in your locker. The lost items would stay on your "death pile" at the spot where you died for several hours (maybe 24 hours) and could be retrieved if you could manage to get back to that spot. But of course without your best items you were a lot weaker than when you were killed, so it would typically be impossible to retrieve your items solo. People spent a lot of time recruiting friends to help them get back to the spot where they were killed so they could retrieve their death pile. On top of that, whenever you died you lost one "constitution" point, which made you *permanently* weaker. A constitution point could only be restored by drinking a rare potion that was very hard to obtain.
Comments
I played Classic Kingdom of Drakkar. I believe around 1989. I do remember it cost me $6 an hour to play and my budget for the month went fast.
For the time it was a great game. It probably had the best community of any game that I had ever played in--and I have played in a lot.
It used to be text based and would send you an ASCII map. They eventually made an 8 bit gui interface to go over the top.
The things I remember most were the deathpiles, meeting people at the lockers that would get you a yeti or rd scales if they were up.
I remember one of the first times my then girlfriend but now wife came over my place for a date. I was very late as I had an opportunity to get a baskie shield. She still rolls her eyes when I tell her "I gotta get my shield".
Kingdom of Drakkar did probably borrow from a lot of Muds. I know there was another graphic thing out there at time called Kesmai (or something like that). Of course, it is dated now, but still a classic.
The only thing I do not like about it is that when last I played a gold account with locker access for multiple characters was about $30 a month (this was early 2000's). Also, instead of embracing the classic that they had, they tried to update it with talent trees, level restrictions on gear, ect.
Anyway, I will always fondly remember KoD.
Nice to know there's at least one other person in the world who remembers KoD. I'm playing Lotro now (Lord of the Rings Online.)
every old game with multiplayer had amazing communities because back then gaming wasnt as cool as it is now there werent such a thing as casuals / hardcore and people actualy had to deal with actions they made. Now adays people ninja loot items and no1 even cares etc just different times its become very popular and faceless its not just kod etc.
Gosh .. people actually remember this.
I use to play it on MPGnet accessing using telnet and it costed like $2 an hour.
In restrospect, obviously it cannot hold its own against modern games but it was a huge thing at the time.
Reminds me of Legends of Kesmai.
This was my first mmorpg so I remember it fondly.