Wizardry Online

[CeeKay]

so, you have rights to a property that was always a decent single player RPG.  What do you do with it next?  might as well make it into an MMO!

Massively has a preview up, and it sounds like it's going to be fairly hardcore.

The faint-hearted need not apply, and the Headlock devs are blunt about your chances: "Wizardry is a very difficult game and delights in killing the player. MMOs today coddle the player, but we're taking a different route. That said, this is a fair game that rewards the strategic and skillful player."

[Hotfreak]

Wow, permadeath!

That's hardcore alright.

[CeeKay]

Wow, permadeath!

That's hardcore alright.

don't forget:

Even the treasure chests, if improperly opened, may spell certain doom -- a familiar scenario for any classic Wizardry player.

I bet if you have a typo some in chat some orc pops out of nowhere and kills you.

[Baroquen131]

Yeah, I'm not sure how that permadeath is going to work. I mean, if I lost a character I'd been nurturing for weeks (or whatever) because of lag, or boneheaded tactics of a party member, I'd be pretty peeved.

[Harkonis]

I'd love a mmo with permadeath.  The key is that you have to have mangeable risks and you HAVE to have a pvp system that has consequences. 

[Freezer-TPF-]

Permadeath sounds like a bad MMO business model, unless your goal is permadeath for your balance sheet as well.

[skystride]

Didn't they announce (before LOTRO came out) that a LOTR game was being worked on with permadeath?  It sounded intriguing at the time.  I would like to see it done well in a MMO.

EVE has sort of permadeath if you consider your ship as an avatar.

[CeeKay]

preview from E3. 

Such touches give Wizardry Online a bit of a Dark Souls vibe, even down to the fact that the default camera position is in the third-person--a departure from the traditional first-person dungeon crawling of Wizardry. It also has that same dark, dank look that seems to define much of the aesthetic of the Souls games. I suppose you could say that I felt right at home. The action, for its part, is in line with World of WarCraft, complete with command bar, but the similarities end there. See, what you have to understand about Wizardry Online is that the developers are secretly crazy. Even crazier, perhaps, than the good people at From Software. In a sub-genre defined by the purchase of premium goods, it's actually possible to die permanently in Wizardry Online. And if you are indeed reduced to a pile of ash, the Infinite+1 Sword that cost you $9.99 will follow you to your grave.

it sounds like you have to be pretty unlucky to truly die though:

Now, It's not actually that easy to die. If you do happen to bite the bullet, you become a spirit, and you are given a chance to return to your body. It's only after your spirit is killed that your body turns to ash and your items are lost. So basically, you have to die twice, which is not the easiest feat. But the very fact that it's possible is what makes it so weirdly compelling. Beyond the way that it flaunts established conventions and business models, I suppose the other reason I find Wizardry Online so maddeningly interesting is that it just looks like a solid, fun dungeon crawler that I would want to play, and it's completely free to boot. It's exactly the sort of free to play game that I could find myself playing at 3 AM as I slowly grind my way up to level 99 (which supposedly takes something on the order of five years). It's completely old-school, and it's just what the genre needs--a take-no-prisoners RPG with the low barrier of entry that comes with costing no money.

[Scraper]

This game is definitely on my radar, and since it's free I will try it out for sure.

[sgoldj]

Can I "tiltowait" or "forfic"?   

[Harkonis]

Lorto and haledon pop into my head. Those valid?

[sgoldj]

http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/wiz15spells.shtml

[Harkonis]

sweet, flashbacks!  Halito is what I was thinking of I think.  Tiltowait was the nuke, that one I remembered when you said it.  I miss that game

[Misguided]

sweet, flashbacks!  Halito is what I was thinking of I think.  Tiltowait was the nuke, that one I remembered when you said it.  I miss that game

I would wear a t-shirt with "Tiltowait" printed on it.

[Toe]

Didn't they announce (before LOTRO came out) that a LOTR game was being worked on with permadeath?  It sounded intriguing at the time.  I would like to see it done well in a MMO.

EVE has sort of permadeath if you consider your ship as an avatar.

I know at one point Atriarch was planning on having permadeath, and, on top that, your character is persistent in the game world (24/7). But supposedly it would be very difficult to permakill someone that was not online at the time.  They offset the death penalty with offspring. As your matured (leveled) you could have offspring that grew (leveled) as you continued to. So when you died, your offspring would inherit your wealth (items and gold) and your stats (genetics and all that). So basically you would start over by taking over your offspring.

[Scraper]

This game released yesterday. Is anyone else going to try it out? I'm going to DL it when I get home, I'm not sure what to think of it though, the perma death and PVP mix scares me. Hopefully the game isn't filled with griefers.

[rittchard]

I'll probably give it a try for old time's sake.  I'm curious to see how fast (and fun) levelling is.  If it's relatively fast/fun (like a Diablo game) I don't mind permadeath so much, just reroll and hopefully get back to business in short order.  If it's slow and all that happens is you play an hour to get to level 2 and then you get griefed by level 99 people and then perma-die, I won't last long.  The key for me is just how fun the basic game is, and how well controlled and balanced it is for PvP.

[skystride]

Let us know how nostalgic it is to reacquaint yourself with the beloved anime characters from the world of Wizardry 

[Fez]

Right now it's suffering from typical SOE opening week jitters. Interminable waits to get online due to invisible queuing, and often you don't connect at all.  I've gotten in game once so far.  I can post more once I actually get to play for a bit.

[rittchard]

Let us know how nostalgic it is to reacquaint yourself with the beloved anime characters from the world of Wizardry 

So far I got reacquainted with trying to make a Sony Online account, which was an adventure in itself since my browser seemed to be incompatible.  After a lot of hullabaloo and a couple hours downloading, I got it installed and then.... just couldn't connect.  They get one, maybe two more chances and I am done.

[faide]

Thought I'd give this a shot.  I logged in and got the tutorial quest.  A female adventurer told me I had to learn about 5 things for adventuring and to go talk to someone to learn the importance of items.  I went to that person.  She said "Items are real important for adventuring" and sent me back.  I went back to the main quest giver.  She said" I hope you've learned about the importance of items and adventuring!"

I sure did.  I logged out after that... 

[Fez]

Thought I'd give this a shot.  I logged in and got the tutorial quest.  A female adventurer told me I had to learn about 5 things for adventuring and to go talk to someone to learn the importance of items.  I went to that person.  She said "Items are real important for adventuring" and sent me back.  I went back to the main quest giver.  She said" I hope you've learned about the importance of items and adventuring!"

I sure did.  I logged out after that... 

lol, well you made it further into the game than I did.  Apparently one of the reasons the game takes so long to connect (usually if you wait for a while you will eventually connect) is because the character builder follows the old Wizardry formula of granting bonus points.  The bonus points vary, and very rarely you can get a humongous roll of up to 80!! in bonus points. This is fairly significant, because usually you only get rolls of 12 or lower. So, most people are using bots or macros to keep rerolling until they get a bigger roll.  I'm sure this leads to the extended queues.  Overall, a very poor design decision.

[Scraper]

This game is not good. That is all I have to say about it.

[rittchard]

This game has all the negative features from Shadowbane I remember without any of the good ones - crashes, login issues, rubber banding, grainy graphics...  it's like some demonically spawned game from 10 years ago complete with bugs and crappiness.  I honestly don't understand the release of this game at all.

[EngineNo9]

It's really surprising to me that SOE would have this many serious issues in a game that seems, on the surface, to be pretty similar to what they've been doing for the last 15 years.  Not that they ever launch totally stable, but this seems like a bit of a trainwreck and no promotion besides.

[CeeKay]

wait a minute, I thought this was available on Steam?  now all I see is links to two trailers and even those don't seem to go anywhere.

[soulbringer]

From the SOE wizardry forums

"It wasn't steam, we've removed the download for the time being as we resolve the current issues. "

Piestro  SOE community manager

[Scraper]

From the SOE wizardry forums

"It wasn't steam, we've removed the download for the time being as we resolve the current issues. "

Piestro  SOE community manager

From what I've played they can't resolve the biggest issues with this game. It actually looks and plays like an MMO that was developed and released in 2004 instead of 2013.