UWCrash
10-09-2008, 04:58 PM
So who out there actually played either of these? I remember playing both of them back when they were just a part of AOL, which I guess would've been middle school for me (early 90's?). After that I paid for a few months while in the dorms my freshman year of college (98-99), and played the trial month two or three years ago.
The leveling system in Dragonrealms still greatly appeals to me. For those who never played, there are over 100 skills broken into about 6 major disciplines (lore/magic, weapons, armor, etc). To reach each new level you need to get a certain number of ranks in specifc skills, such as Targetted Magic for a mage, as well as a number of general skill ranks in your classes primary and secondary disciplines, like weapons and armor for a barbarian. Unfortunately you don't simply get skill ranks as you perform the associated actions, you also have to wait to "absorb" the skill into actual numerical increases. What it becomes is more of a grind than any MMO I've ever played, and FFXI was a pretty bad grind for the first 2 years.
What really keeps me from going back and messing around with it is that play.net is still charging $15/mo for their games. No idea if they still put on any new events occasionally, but that's a ridiculous sum for a fully text-based game. If it was $5/mo I might actually play around with it a bit, maybe even try to drag friends into it for the trial month. I can see the rationale: that there's no way to significantly increase their user base and a drop in price will create a equally proportioned drop in revenue.
I still have some great memories though. Whenever you get what would amount to critical hit, you're treated with a graphic depiction of what exactly you just did to the mob. I will always remember when I called down a lightning bolt from the heavens and threaded it through a Rock Troll's eye. Trust me, he had it coming.
The leveling system in Dragonrealms still greatly appeals to me. For those who never played, there are over 100 skills broken into about 6 major disciplines (lore/magic, weapons, armor, etc). To reach each new level you need to get a certain number of ranks in specifc skills, such as Targetted Magic for a mage, as well as a number of general skill ranks in your classes primary and secondary disciplines, like weapons and armor for a barbarian. Unfortunately you don't simply get skill ranks as you perform the associated actions, you also have to wait to "absorb" the skill into actual numerical increases. What it becomes is more of a grind than any MMO I've ever played, and FFXI was a pretty bad grind for the first 2 years.
What really keeps me from going back and messing around with it is that play.net is still charging $15/mo for their games. No idea if they still put on any new events occasionally, but that's a ridiculous sum for a fully text-based game. If it was $5/mo I might actually play around with it a bit, maybe even try to drag friends into it for the trial month. I can see the rationale: that there's no way to significantly increase their user base and a drop in price will create a equally proportioned drop in revenue.
I still have some great memories though. Whenever you get what would amount to critical hit, you're treated with a graphic depiction of what exactly you just did to the mob. I will always remember when I called down a lightning bolt from the heavens and threaded it through a Rock Troll's eye. Trust me, he had it coming.