Friday 3 October 2003

Pic of the day: "Beauty" may not be the first word that comes to mind. My first character in Rubies of Eventide.

Rubies of Eventide: Day 1

So I caved in to the lusts of the soul, or whatever, and got the MMORPG Rubies of Eventide. Here are some first impressions.

Registering was a snap. The forms were simple and straightforward. Yes, it refused to believe that a town could have the letter Ø or even Ö in it; but once the extraneous bits were removed from the O, it went through. And my Norwegian credit card was evidently quite well received. I then proceeded to download the game (325.1 MB) at an average speed of 43 KB/s. Not bad.

The installer spent so much time with no output, I seriously considered terminating it and trying again. Of course, this temptation would not have happened if I did not have a very silent hard disk (a good thing) and a hard disk light that has been on constantly for months (a hardware glitch). Once it finished whatever it was doing, it worked without a glitch. The game updated with the latest patch when I logged on. Again, if you use dial-up, you should probably set aside a couple days for this whole process, or hope that it will eventually hit a retailer near you.

***

Character creation: Not spectacular in any way. Once you got your race down, there was actually less choices than in DAoC, where you can vary your height by 3 increments. I only found a few faces, some hair styles and the dozens and dozens of hair colors. Why this color splurge, I will probably never know; it's not like the colors are all so different that you could tell them apart at a distance. Or even close up.

The male dwarf was so broad and chubby-looking, I was seriously tempted to go with the female instead; she looked much better. But I still don't know what the relationship between the sexes are in this game, and so I stayed with the real thing. In DAoC it is generally understood that most females are played by males, unless they giggle or hug excessively. So playing a female there is not a Big Deal. I hear that in EverQuest there is more romance which spills over into real life. Of course, it could just be that it gets more publicity, it being owned by Sony and all. Since I don't want boys to get a crush on me, I'll stay in my male form for now. And with a form like this, I don't think there is much risk of female falling in love with my imaginary self, either. Of course, they may still be attracted to my great personality ... eh.

***

Starting out: You land in a location where a few computer-controlled characters guide you through the absolute basics of close combat, ranged combat and magic combat. Also you can choose from a list of basic questions that they will answer. There was no training ground for non- combat magic, but I used the combat magic NPC long enough to learn how to ready a spell. (I started as a Paladin, my favorite class elsewhere, and they are built for close combat and for healing magic. But you have a lot more freedom here than in DAoC to branch out, you just get a bonus to these types and a penalty to thief skills and destructive magic. This freedom is the cause of the RoE slogan: "Choose wisely!")

The help system is non-obvious, except for one part. As a newbie, you are born with the Help Channel set to ON. This relic from the age of MUD allows you to overhear the questions asked by other newbies and the answers to them, and so avoid asking the same questions yourself to random strangers. There is also a /help command, but I assumed it just controlled the Help Channel. (Actually, talking in elp channel is /h.) When I finally tried it, it did list a few helpful commands; but those were ones I had already picked up from the website. To learn how to change between first person view and external view, I had to log out and go to the configure keyboard option, then read the various functions without changing them. I also learned the key for selling, but I have still not been able to sell any of the loot I got from killing newbie goblings. Unlike DAoC, most merchants seem to only sell, not buy; and even those named as "traders" give me no option for selling. I guess I shall have to ask on the help channel ... if I find out how to write to that channel, not just read it ...

***

The interface is nice enough. A strip of icons along the bottom of the screen let you open various windows where you can do your tasks or check statistics. There are also 10 hot keys which you can program with spells, tools etc. (DAoC has 100 of them, but I usually used less than 20, and this game seems simpler in the combat area.) (EDIT: RoE does have 100 hot keys! I just did not realize that the arrow symbold in the middle of the strip scrolled through them.) A small, circular radar window floats in one corner (you can move the windows as you choose). It shows friends and foes in a circle around you. This is nice, although I would have preferred if up was north instead of ahead. Now the radar turns around you, so you have to actually read the faint markings around it to see which compass direction you are headed.

You can interact with non player characters by right-clicking on them and choosing talk, or attack, or follow. Possibly also others, depending on the character. Right clicking on items will give you options about what to do with them. It is refreshing to see some Windows thinking here.

When you enter combat mode, some of the function keys change meaning, and you automatically get an Enemy window. If more than one enemy stands against you, you can select them here and choose to attack them directly from that window, and your body will snap to attention and attack them. Fighting is semi-automatic, and more than semi if you set it on auto-repeat. Of course, if you use spells in combat, things get a lot more complex. Since my two spells are both healing, I am not likely to use them for a while.

After the battle, you automatically get a loot window where you can grab all or just some of the items dropped by your enemy. If any. Not all monsters drop loot. I would guess humanoids only, but there is a hunter skill that lets you find useful body parts on dead animals. I have not come that far, maybe I never will, but it is a nice feature. Another reason for bringing a less combat specialized character with you. I am not sure if that skill is implemented yet, though. Several harvesting skills are supposedly still in development.

The music is OK. Not spectacular, so far, but OK.

The graphics are inferior to DAoC and the newer versions of EQ, but perhaps on the level of the EQ starter pack. An ugly thing is that characters at the edges of your field of view often look distorted and flat. Compared to the high-end graphics engines today, this one is a sad sight. But it is not so bad as to constantly irritate. You get your things done. At least if you have the necessary hardware.

Yes, despite the inferior graphics, this is a system hog. Loading zones take quite a long time. The first minute after I load the game, things move only in slow jumps, while characters gradually blink into existence. If I had exited in a monster infested territory, I would probably watch my character die horribly without being able to aid him. In battle, movement is very jerky. When not in battle, it is less jerky but still jerky. The character in particular bounds about like a hyperactive toddler, moving from standstill to leaping to standstill again. After playing for a couple hours, I exited (which in itself took a long time, fully comparable with Morrowind) and found that Windows had needed to increase the virtual memory swap file.

Bad code. Bad, bad code, needs to be spanked. If you have less than the newest equipment, you should probably set the screen resolution low and turn details off. Even with details high, however, don't expect anything like Morrowind or DAoC. The beauty / performance ratio here is unimpressive for a game of this century.

***

On the plus side, the game has the chat channels you would expect from a MUD, such as Help and the good old OOC channel. A mentor system is being established, although it did not seem to be implemented yet. Eventide representatives are present and ready to help; you are likely to find a couple GM characters even in off-peak hours. Their presence guarantees the positive atmosphere that is a main selling point of the game. The game is declared a griefer-free zone, and they seem ready to enforce it. This is not the place to go if you want to play a multiplayer game in order to harass, humiliate or frustrate other players. The nice part of this is that if you don't like being harassed, this seems like a nice refuge. Helpful and enthusiastic players and staff do their best to make Rubies of Eventide a place to enjoy, despite the substandard graphics engine and a smaller size than the competition.