Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

what mmorpg most closely resemble DragonRealms?

gagaliyagagaliya Member Posts: 54
Here's a topic for you old people :)   what existing or upcoming(near future) mmorpg most closely resemble DragonRealms? 



Obviously i dont mean graphics but in term of  the core systems such as combat, trading, economy, itemization/rare loots, etc.. and just the overall social aspect of the game (sitting around in guilds teaching skills, festivals, etc..)



After all those years of graphical mmorpg, i still havent found a single game that even comes close to what dragonrealms had to offer.



personally UO had potential but the bugs and balance destroyed it.  anyway what game do you guys think is closest to dragonrealms.

Comments

  • SynexisSynexis Member Posts: 37
    Originally posted by gagaliya



    After all those years of graphical mmorpg, i still havent found a single game that even comes close to what dragonrealms had to offer.



    I know exactly how you feel. Dragonrealms was my first MMO and still my favorite. No game I have tried - and I have tried a LOT of them - has ever come close to the sheer enjoyment of Dragonrealms. To be perfectly honest, I don't think a graphical MMO will ever live up to the level of detail that Dragonrealms has. It is much like the difference between a book and a movie. It is extremely rare that a movie can capture ones imagination like a good book can.



    It all comes down to the game allowing for the player's imagination to be utilized. When we read the text in Dragonrealms, our imagination allowed us to bend and mold the "scene" to exactly how we "thought" it should look. Every single monster, town and item could look a little different depending on who was "looking" at it. That concept added such a level of mystique to the game and no current or past graphical MMO has ever been able to replicate that effect. Well, at least for me.



    In the end, you are very unlikely to find any game out today that will give you what Dragonrealms did. Today's games are targeted at a VERY different demographic than was Dragonrealms back in the late 1990s. It is all about being Uber and having "max stats" and "pwning people in PvP" today.



    Sorry for the mini-rant! ^_^

    ~Synexis

  • HJ-NavarreHJ-Navarre Hero's Journey GMMember UncommonPosts: 102

    Currently, I don't think there is any mmorpg that closely resembles the DR experience.
    I agree, though. DragonRealms is still my best gaming experience to date. I think if any game is going to bridge the gap between the freedom of text based games and the eye candy of mmorpgs, it will be Hero's Journey. That's the hope, anyway.

  • erdrickserdricks Member Posts: 5
    Originally posted by navarredr


    Currently, I don't think there is any mmorpg that closely resembles the DR experience.

    I agree, though. DragonRealms is still my best gaming experience to date. I think if any game is going to bridge the gap between the freedom of text based games and the eye candy of mmorpgs, it will be Hero's Journey. That's the hope, anyway.
    I'd have to say Asheron's Call, if just because of the use of a skill based system... The great thing about DR was you could do anything with any character.  I got to play a gor tog moon mage who used mail and 2he, or a halfling barbarian who specialized in throwing weapons and light edge. And, best of all, they were all successful.



    I hope HJ, or any other game out there, gives people a level of customization that DR gave you.
  • IsaneIsane Member UncommonPosts: 2,630

    It is a very complex mechanism to try to bind 3D and text and provide an equivalent gaming system. It is very difficult to code imagination. Dragonrealms is one of the most pleasant gaming experiences I have come accross and one of the reasons that it plays well is that to survive you have to be :-

    • A member of the community
    • And invest time in the game to contribute to that 
    • Be able to cope with loss of time effort and uncomplete skill ranks  when you die

    Currentl MMOs have such a variety of player types that to meet alll their needs it is difficult to emulate the above ... in sopme ways top acheive it you have to go back to basics and remove a lot of the fluff that makes most current MMORPGs no challenge at all.

    • How many people would put up with questing for lives ... every now and again to ensure you don't die forever ..?
    • How Many people really want to communicate and role play...?
    • There were no gold sellers, no greed merchants, very limited walkthroughs on the Net so you had to communicate with the elders within the game..
    • How many people would accept no auction houses reduced graphical investment ..because thats not what make a game its the mechanics bhind it.

    Currently no game resembles this , but I would agree AC has come the closest,, but that was ruined once the bots arrived.

    sad sad times ... But by some miracle and a lot of Game Masters and the community actually owning some of the intelectual property within HJ then my hope is that it will meety your requirements.

    ________________________________________________________
    Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel 

  • chryseschryses Member UncommonPosts: 1,453

    Funny enough I have spent the last week searching for an mpog that doesn't require me to grind stationary rats to lvl!  So far no luck. I have come to the conclusion that the mpog world is at the same stage as single player games in the 1990's. Remember Master of Orion II, privateer etc?  Poor graghics but I must have played days straight on those. Then company's started to develop great looking games but they all sucked.  2 dimensional story lines and no playability.  Finally now  gameplay has caught up with graghics in games like Total War etc. 

    Right now I find Mpog's like Vanguard etc. Are really gorgeous on the right rig but at the expense of roleplaying and gameplay.  I for one are starting to question the time I play on these games as pretty scenary only goes so far.  However I am optimistic.  Looking at the so called next gen games coming out I can see developer posts that are at least addressing some semi original ideas. 

    One thing is certain.  People in general will not sign up to these multi million projects just because of graghics anymore. If they do it will be the usual 3 months to check it out.  What we need is an in-depth mpog that at least removes grinding and the standard 'kill xxxx' to get 1000 xp points.  Even today I found myself killing 10 scorpions and 10 lions for missions....sigh......

     

     

  • millerapmillerap Member Posts: 21

    The best thing about Dragonrealms (as has already been stated) is that you could do anything you wanted. A halfling barb, gor'tog moonie, dwarven thief... Whatever you wanted to do you could. Hell you could be a thief who used Two handed blunt weapons if you wanted. If you were willing to put in the work, you could make your character successful. I started playing DR very soon after the Beta ended way back in the day. Hell I was in 6th grade at the time I believe. I played for years and loved every second of it. I eventually quit just before college and have gone back twice since then for relatively decent stretches of time. I have spent all the time since DR trying to find a game that keeps me entertained as much as DR did.

    I was thinking about this the other day... So much now you hear about people whining and complaining about the grind in games, but DR was one huge grind. But it was funner then hell. There is not a single other game in existence that would take the same amount of hours to reach the high end of the game like in DR. The highest of the high players have been playing for 10 years, and putting massive amounts of hours in and most aren't at max level. But the whole time it was fun.

    I think it as the skill based advancement that made DR what it was personally. It was your typical, gain X experience points to level up. You weren't out grinding/killing the same critter over and over again fo xp points, you were doing it to gain skills. Whether you played for 1 hour for the day or 16 hours, you constantly saw your character advancing each and ever tme you logged into DR and you saw it in hard numbers by typeing "exp"

    the freedom DR gave with it's skill based advancement is exactly what I have been looking for in a MMO and it will be a happy day if someone actually can make a graphical MMO which uses that system. Until then, I will continue to play games in short stints... There simply is not an MMO which could keep me paying a monthly fee for 7+ years like DR did.

  • ValendrosValendros Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 123

    I know what you mean about plability on simu's MUDs. I recently reactivated my Gemstone account just last week and have been addicted to it since. I played from probably the age of 13 through 20 or so then quit for a year or two, came back for a year, quit again for a few years now since I got into FFXI real heavy, and now I've gotten bored with LOTRO after playing for all of 6 weeks, and am back on Gemstone again.

    This entire weekend I worked on Rogue Guild lockpick mastery, got 4 ranks, and loved every second of it. I just sat in the picking area of the main town (Landing) and talked to people. RPed my ass off. gave my lockpicks little pep talks when they didn't unlock something the first time. Watched lowbees blow themselves (and others) up (BTW my thanks go out to Kat... I needed my heart defibbed... I hadn't died all week... just remember: Disarm the box THEN pick the box... ::grumble grumbe::) Got a few regulars who would come to me to get their boxes unlocked without waiting in line just because I treated them with respect and unlocked their boxes with due haste and accuracy.

    It felt good to be a part of a community again. Not just another faceless 'toon' that is trying to kill spiders all day. A game that takes 70 hours of straight playing to gain 1 single level (and with that level nets you a +3 AS bonus... and thats about it) with people that still play it and still come back to it is saying something. It takes the better part of a year of solid playing to hit level cap... What did they do right? Their projects never get completed... there are empty promices littered around the landscape of Gemstone... The game is decent but certainly not polished... so it's none of those... It's the community, it's the difficulty, it's the dynamic playing environment.

    In LOTRO and FFXI he is just another toon that looks like everybody else in all the same armor killing all the same things... In Gemstone my character is who I want him to be, with a personality of his own. He likes to collect Myklian scale items, he talks to his lockpicks, he feels a lockpick has personally let him down when it breaks and refuses to work with it again, he is careful most of the time - but can be easily lured into hysterics if he can't unlock something he said he would, he doesn't like dark elfs and doesn't trust spell users, and he thinks the wizard "Dumblydore" needs an arrow in his eye (and might just get his wish later today - Dumblydore? really? seriously?)...

  • IsaneIsane Member UncommonPosts: 2,630
    Originally posted by Valendros


    I know what you mean about plability on simu's MUDs. I recently reactivated my Gemstone account just last week and have been addicted to it since. I played from probably the age of 13 through 20 or so then quit for a year or two, came back for a year, quit again for a few years now since I got into FFXI real heavy, and now I've gotten bored with LOTRO after playing for all of 6 weeks, and am back on Gemstone again.
    This entire weekend I worked on Rogue Guild lockpick mastery, got 4 ranks, and loved every second of it. I just sat in the picking area of the main town (Landing) and talked to people. RPed my ass off. gave my lockpicks little pep talks when they didn't unlock something the first time. Watched lowbees blow themselves (and others) up (BTW my thanks go out to Kat... I needed my heart defibbed... I hadn't died all week... just remember: Disarm the box THEN pick the box... ::grumble grumbe::) Got a few regulars who would come to me to get their boxes unlocked without waiting in line just because I treated them with respect and unlocked their boxes with due haste and accuracy.
    It felt good to be a part of a community again. Not just another faceless 'toon' that is trying to kill spiders all day. A game that takes 70 hours of straight playing to gain 1 single level (and with that level nets you a +3 AS bonus... and thats about it) with people that still play it and still come back to it is saying something. It takes the better part of a year of solid playing to hit level cap... What did they do right? Their projects never get completed... there are empty promices littered around the landscape of Gemstone... The game is decent but certainly not polished... so it's none of those... It's the community, it's the difficulty, it's the dynamic playing environment.
    In LOTRO and FFXI he is just another toon that looks like everybody else in all the same armor killing all the same things... In Gemstone my character is who I want him to be, with a personality of his own. He likes to collect Myklian scale items, he talks to his lockpicks, he feels a lockpick has personally let him down when it breaks and refuses to work with it again, he is careful most of the time - but can be easily lured into hysterics if he can't unlock something he said he would, he doesn't like dark elfs and doesn't trust spell users, and he thinks the wizard "Dumblydore" needs an arrow in his eye (and might just get his wish later today - Dumblydore? really? seriously?)...



    Nice post and well put .... I think what you staed above is what we all want sadly if anyone can get near in a MMORPG we will all be laughing all the way to the bankl :) Lets just hope...

    I could iterate the same as above for DragonRealms...

    ________________________________________________________
    Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel 

  • KenorvKenorv Member Posts: 112

    The thing that made the level grind in Gemstone fun for me was knowing that I would actually be able to contribute something to the game world. Gemstone isn't built around standard quests. It's full of real time events. When an event ends it has a lasting impact on the world. Wehnimer's Landing was set on fire once and that had a lasting effect on the town. It wasn't rebuilt in 5 minutes the way it would be in an MMO that was built around standard quests. When Thurfell died he was dead for good. He didn't respawn 5 minutes later. You don't have to go out and find trouble, trouble can find you. You can be sitting in Town Square shooting the breeze with whoever's there and all of a sudden there is a massive troll invasion.

    The best part about Gemstone though is the player community. Gemstone has two servers, one for the basic players and one for the platinum players. I don't think I've ever seen more than 2000 players at any one time on the basic server and while I've never upgraded to a platinum account I have to believe that there's far fewer than 2000 players in total let alone at any one time.That's a good thing by the way. It means that you won't see any out of character chat, or if you do then the GM's will take care of that. No talk about 'pwning people" or "twinks" or anything like that. It's a great role playing experience. That may turn a lot of people off but that's what makes Gemstone a great game.

    But to get on topic here, I don't think that you will see a graphics based MMO like Gemstone or Dragonrealms because it won't generate as much cash for the company like a WoW type game will. WoW is the MMO for dummies but because there are a lot of dummies out there, it's a popular game. The only way we will see a game like Gemstone, a game with real time events and a real emphasis on role playing is if there is a company out there that cares more about creating a great game catered to hardcore role players than they care about how much money they will make off of it.

  • IsaneIsane Member UncommonPosts: 2,630
    Originally posted by Kenorv


    The thing that made the level grind in Gemstone fun for me was knowing that I would actually be able to contribute something to the game world. Gemstone isn't built around standard quests. It's full of real time events. When an event ends it has a lasting impact on the world. Wehnimer's Landing was set on fire once and that had a lasting effect on the town. It wasn't rebuilt in 5 minutes the way it would be in an MMO that was built around standard quests. When Thurfell died he was dead for good. He didn't respawn 5 minutes later. You don't have to go out and find trouble, trouble can find you. You can be sitting in Town Square shooting the breeze with whoever's there and all of a sudden there is a massive troll invasion.
    The best part about Gemstone though is the player community. Gemstone has two servers, one for the basic players and one for the platinum players. I don't think I've ever seen more than 2000 players at any one time on the basic server and while I've never upgraded to a platinum account I have to believe that there's far fewer than 2000 players in total let alone at any one time.That's a good thing by the way. It means that you won't see any out of character chat, or if you do then the GM's will take care of that. No talk about 'pwning people" or "twinks" or anything like that. It's a great role playing experience. That may turn a lot of people off but that's what makes Gemstone a great game.
    But to get on topic here, I don't think that you will see a graphics based MMO like Gemstone or Dragonrealms because it won't generate as much cash for the company like a WoW type game will. WoW is the MMO for dummies but because there are a lot of dummies out there, it's a popular game. The only way we will see a game like Gemstone, a game with real time events and a real emphasis on role playing is if there is a company out there that cares more about creating a great game catered to hardcore role players than they care about how much money they will make off of it.

     Well there may be one, and you can guess which lets hope...

    There will be a lot of GMs who care for HJ with hand crafted areas they love.... hopefully that will come accross...

    ________________________________________________________
    Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel 

  • Dyng-JohanDyng-Johan Member Posts: 46
    Originally posted by HJ-Navarre


    I think if any game is going to bridge the gap between the freedom of text based games and the eye candy of mmorpgs, it will be Hero's Journey. That's the hope, anyway.
    Only you, as a GM, can tell.. I guess

    You're looking at it everyday....

    __________________________
    Reality is for people who lack imagination

  • KenorvKenorv Member Posts: 112
    Originally posted by Isane

    Originally posted by Kenorv


    The thing that made the level grind in Gemstone fun for me was knowing that I would actually be able to contribute something to the game world. Gemstone isn't built around standard quests. It's full of real time events. When an event ends it has a lasting impact on the world. Wehnimer's Landing was set on fire once and that had a lasting effect on the town. It wasn't rebuilt in 5 minutes the way it would be in an MMO that was built around standard quests. When Thurfell died he was dead for good. He didn't respawn 5 minutes later. You don't have to go out and find trouble, trouble can find you. You can be sitting in Town Square shooting the breeze with whoever's there and all of a sudden there is a massive troll invasion.
    The best part about Gemstone though is the player community. Gemstone has two servers, one for the basic players and one for the platinum players. I don't think I've ever seen more than 2000 players at any one time on the basic server and while I've never upgraded to a platinum account I have to believe that there's far fewer than 2000 players in total let alone at any one time.That's a good thing by the way. It means that you won't see any out of character chat, or if you do then the GM's will take care of that. No talk about 'pwning people" or "twinks" or anything like that. It's a great role playing experience. That may turn a lot of people off but that's what makes Gemstone a great game.
    But to get on topic here, I don't think that you will see a graphics based MMO like Gemstone or Dragonrealms because it won't generate as much cash for the company like a WoW type game will. WoW is the MMO for dummies but because there are a lot of dummies out there, it's a popular game. The only way we will see a game like Gemstone, a game with real time events and a real emphasis on role playing is if there is a company out there that cares more about creating a great game catered to hardcore role players than they care about how much money they will make off of it.

     Well there may be one, and you can guess which lets hope...

    There will be a lot of GMs who care for HJ with hand crafted areas they love.... hopefully that will come accross...



    It will probably be the closest thing to GS/Dragonrealms but I still don't think it will match what GS/Dragonrealms has to offer in terms of a true roleplaying experience. As much as I enjoy those games, I'm in the minority. A small minority at that. WoW has sold 7-8 million copies if I remember correctly. I don't know about Dragonrealms but again, Gemstone has two servers and a very small population in the platinum server. There just aren't that many hardcore roleplayers out there and I don't think that Simu is going to pour all of this money into HJ to create a game that turns off the casual gamers. The game itself will most certainly be enjoyable to play but ultimately it will be the players themselves that make the game fun for me or not and if there are a lot of kids and OOC chat in HJ then that will have a negative effect on my gaming experience.

    I know that there will be roleplaying servers but will Simu's staff be able to monitor them as well as they do in Gemstone. I mean in Gemstone you may have one or two bad apples a month. And by bad apples I mean people who don't care about roleplaying, not people who don't know how to roleplay. In WoW it's exponentially worse on the RP servers. I just wonder if they can keep up with bad apples that get off on ruining the gaming experience of others.

    What I would like to see is just one server that's like Gemstone. One where there are NPC's played by GM's running real time events to add to the quests that are already part of the game. Make it as much of a roleplaying experience as possible. I don't care if they charge twice as much as the other servers. In fact that would be a great idea to keep all the bad apples away from that server. They can have 100 normal servers for all the kids that just want to pwn and do PvP all the time as long as they have one server as dedicated to the hardcore roleplayers like Gemstone and Dragonrealms are.

  • VivixVivix Member Posts: 17
    I've been lurking here at mmorpg for about a week now and this thread pushed me into setting up an account. As an old Gemstone player, from back when AOL was still pay by the hour and DragonRealms hadn't yet been released...



    I know exactly what you mean.



    I've only recently started investigating MMORPGs for potential playability and RP ability and, frankly, nothing appears to come close to the depth of either of the aforementioned MUDs.



    Having said that, since no one's bothered to mention any games to the OP (new slang I just learned from being here, ha ha), the only game I've seen that comes close to being "adult" is Eve Online. I've done a lot of browsing in their forum, I even signed up yesterday for their trial offer.



    Is there any RP there? Given the kind of game it is, I don't think it's a true RP kind of game. You don't even have an avatar.



    BUT, the level of complexity seems very high ... approaching DR and GS kind of depth. There's a LOT to learn.



    Now, this isn't a post for people to tell me I'm WRONG.



    After all, I only started playing it and anyone who disagress with me might very well be right.



    But from someone who knows ALL about text-based MUDs there really appears to be nothing out there that attracts the relatively serious, adult gamer that Eve appears to attract.



    My 2 cents.



    ~Vivix

    The Singularity is Near ...

  • EzmaEzma Member Posts: 2

    The game I think most closely resembles DR was Star Wars Galaxies.  The genre was way off but the feel of the game was closer to DR than anything I've ever seen.  In fact, in the year that I played the game I found myself often thinking that many of their programers must have played DR or worked for Simutronics at some point. 

    The game still didn't allow for all of the RP and imagination that DR did, but it had more areas that were conducive to it.  The housing system truly allowed for creativity.  My main character was a field medic and interior designer on the side.  She had her own business with an office that reflected the decorator inside her.  As a wedding gift to a couple guildies, my husband and I created a chapel for them to hold their wedding in.  Being able to create toilet stalls in the bathrooms from assorted dropped loot was quite a rewarding challenge.  That part fed my imagination need.

    There was also the baazar system that allow you to sell your loot or if you were a crafter, to sell your wares.  Quests were sometimes long and very story driven.  With the addition of occasional quests that were limited time and more RP related.  People there also tended to RP a bit more with social times for things like weddings, birthday parties, etc.

    The game was more skill-based that most out there allowing you to train however you wanted.  The sad part was that it could gimp your character if you weren't very careful.

    Then they decided to dumb down the game the way most MMORPGs have lately and it ruined the game for me.

    After playing many, many games out there I'm on my 6th year of playing Dark Age of Camelot and longing for so much more.  Holding out big hope for Hero's Journey.  Praying that it brings back all the things I loved in DragonRealms like Invasions, social RP time, GM driven stories, GM interaction and fun (like the time before a big party in Theren that I sneaked into the castle kitchen to sample the goods and had the chef scream at me to get out and throw a knife my way - hehe good times and an RP bonus).  And the shopper in me, really, really need a good festival again!

    Oh, and one thing I hope no other game ever includes again is the whole Premium account thing.  I don't believe a game should be financially devisive.  It reminds me of a bad high school movie with the have and have nots.

  • gagaliyagagaliya Member Posts: 54
    Originally posted by gagaliya
    Here's a topic for you old people :)   what existing or upcoming(near future) mmorpg most closely resemble DragonRealms? 

    Obviously i dont mean graphics but in term of  the core systems such as combat, trading, economy, itemization/rare loots, etc.. and just the overall social aspect of the game (sitting around in guilds teaching skills, festivals, etc..)

    After all those years of graphical mmorpg, i still havent found a single game that even comes close to what dragonrealms had to offer.

    personally UO had potential but the bugs and balance destroyed it.  anyway what game do you guys think is closest to dragonrealms.

    5 years later, hero's journey is dead, star war galaxies is dead, dozens of carbon copy wow clones come & go like sailors in a whorehouse.  And still not a single mmorpg that even tries to bring some of the system and immersion dragonrealms offered ( i agree swg was the last that tried).

    What a sad state of affairs the mmorpg genre has become.

     

     

Sign In or Register to comment.