Talk:The Realm Online

Untitled
The article says that many consider The Realm to be the longest running MMORPG because Meridian 59 shut down for a while. But Furcadia launched a couple weeks before The Realm, and is also still running to this day. Should that statement be edited?

Its funny because this game was better than meridian 59 and before it as well.

Unless this article is missing important details, The Realm was not the first MMORPG but one of the first. Both Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds and Meridian 59 had been released commercially months earlier. --Mrwojo 18:11, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Neverwinter Nights and The Shadow of Yserbius were both released years before Realm, M59, or Nexus. Realm was a fun game. Anyone remember Man of Chocolate? Siyavash 12:43, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I remember him!! He was basically the generic red-head male character (I was going to say 'human,' but I'm not sure that when MoC was created the elf and giant races even existed yet!) whose skin, hair, eyes, and clothing were one shade of brown. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.45.108.91 (talk) 17:31, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

March 1995??
I was one of the original beta testers of this game (yes, it was open beta, but still), and I know for a fact that it launched in that form (that is, it wasn't available commercially, yet, and wouldn't be for another year or so) in 1996. February of 1996, IIRC.

Article Suggestions
If anyone who has played The Realm Online could expand on this article it would be appreciated. At the moment it has no information on actual gameplay, and I was hoping someone might be able to change that. Thanks! Odie5533 20:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

The realm was originally designed by sega in 1988, if you look at an old copy of ultima I's game book it lists its development in the back coming soon section, it just didnt hit public alpha until 05.

I remember The Realm ver. 1.x being "pushed" (read advertised) inside the Sierra Online magazine that you received for registering any Sierra game. I'm not sure that 1.x could be played outside of the old Sierra Net gaming site (but I could be wrong about that) and it was certainly a year or two before '95. I subscribed to late ver. 2.x and almost immediately accepted the upgrade to ver. 3.x, so I never really had a feel for ver. 2.x. I played 3.x for at least 4 years, and my lead 'toon had over 700 levels when I decided to not renew my subscription.

The lead programmer was know to us as Stephen (Stephen Nichols as I recall) and he took the abuse for the almost static state of The Realm until it was purchased by Codemasters. Stephen then was co-lead programmer with Bryan until Stephen took another job with a different company. It was told that Stephen was hired by Sierra because he was very adept at hacking the old Sierra Net so he could always win whatever he was playing. That turned out to be a good thing because The Realm was beset by hackers in and around '96, and the ensuing chaos led to creating a class of multi-millionaires who ruined the Realm economy. Things that had normally sold, player to player, for 200 - 500 gold were then priced in the millions. Nothing was done to reset the economy, it was said that only a wipe would do that, and Stephen promised that there would be no more wipes. He kept his word, and that hack was eventually dealt with. On the weekend that all of the duped gold showed up the dupers would shamelessly drop hints on Channel 1 which was the start-up chat channel. At that time there was a 500 level cap on the game. I was online when Stephen said his goodbyes on Channel 1, and followed him to the test server where he dropped +/- 100 baldrics that were only available on the test server. By this time the level cap was expanded to 1000 with an ugly "Hunter Green" baldric award. We requested hundreds of times for a level 750 baldric, but Stephen (and later Bryan) always laughed those requests off.

Bryan did make some graphical/gameplay changes to the Realm. The most important were virtually unkillable monsters that first showed up in the desert, a range of helmets/hats, and the Sword of Tiwaz. Before the SOT the most desirable weapons were the Wrath and the Executioner's Axe. During the end of Stephen's reign as programmer the Wrath, the EA, and the SOT were assigned levels so you couldn't hand one to your newbie 'toon and send him out with the best weapon in the game.

There was a massive crash that almost coincided with the launch of EverQuest and many of us who had nowhere to go on a holiday weekend signed up for EQ. When the server finally came back online everyone had lost levels back to Sierra's last back-up, and so many familiar players just stayed away. My lead 'toon lost about 200 levels because of that crash. Level loss was always an issue due to the combat system.

Combat in The Realm occurred in a animated "cloud". While you were in the combat screen, everyone happening by saw only the cloud. The loss of any combat carried the chance that you would drop an item or two from your inventory (including gold and/or mana) and always carried a loss of expreience points. At higher levels, in PvP, you could easily lose 25 - 50 levels that were very tedious to get back. Once combat was lost you had the option of staying there or having a band of wandering ???'s carry you back to the living room of your house. If you stayed, there was a short period of inactivity that prevented you from recovering your dropped items. They could be picked up by a wandering monster, or another player, or the monster that just "killed" you. Your dungeon "party", if you had one, would stay inside the cloud if you died and were dropped outisde. The Realm was one of those few games that would permit a single player to reach the higher levels without ever joining a party, and that was one of the things I most admired about it.

PvP was selectable. You could turn it on from your inventory screen, or simply attack another PvP player, which turned it on for 30 days. You could ONLY PvP another player who had PvP turned on. All others were immune. The Realm had a PvP area where you could turn your PvP on and enter into combat with other players, and that area did not carry the PvP penalty. You did have to remember to turn PvP off before you left that area. There were "jumpers" waiting in every direction to PvP anyone who walked out of that area with PvP still turned on.

I stopped subscribing when Bryan (Codemasters) began changing the locations of the dungeons, and when the really nasty monsters from the desert began wandering the eitire game board. I was no there when Codemasters pulled out.

I once "saw" on a chat channel that The Realm was something to do while you were chatting. There is some truth to that. Turned based combat allowed your party to decide who was going to do what, and let you catch up on a private chat. After you made your selection you could immediately go back to chatting, both on and off of chat channels, while the animations played out on screen.

I really have avoided specific dates because I would have to hook up two obselete computers sitting on the floor beside me to see when those characters were created. You could have 4 'toons per account, and any created 'toon (that you accepted) had a 7 day time period before you could delete it. This was to keep players from creating 'toons for days on end and making their main 'toon wealthy with starting gold.MergtheMerciless 21:00, 17 July 2007 (UTC)MergtheMerciless

Added a gameplay Section
I added a section on gameplay and one on the technical problems in the game.

Quoting "SirGoos" is not remotely a viable source of information, no matter how much he may be disappointed with PvP. Also, flooding of Norseman HQ may be worthy of inclusion, but only if it adds something substantial beyond mere commentary. Llanwar 06:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

As of June 17th 2007
Cleaned up the mess, removed the nonsense about George Bush, and updated with some information from Richard Bartle, as well as some from the messageboards of the Realm's website (all Norseman Games press releases). Should be better now.

As of September 17th 2007
Once again cleaned up the mess. This aspect of the game no longer exists, and as of 2007 its lore and characters were removed from the game by the owners, resulting in a large loss of overall game accounts. - I'd like to see someone provide proof that that outrageous lie is even slightly true, especially since there's no way to tell the current number of accounts active. Also removed the badmouthing of the links section. You might not like the links, but quit stopping other people from forming their own opinions. And try looking at the links occassionally, you'll notice the official site doesn't need you to sign in to see recent information IF YOU LOOK FOR IT. And corrected the problem with not being able to count the number of updates done recently. Even if we don't like them, they still DID them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.79.27 (talk) 15:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Marketing Nonsense
This article seems to have been hijacked by people seeking to advance the interests of the Realm moreso than actually contributing meaningful content to the article. Cleaning up the overly negative content is important; but it seems like there is a non NPOV voice trying to take over the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.53.203.229 (talk) 17:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Contest of 'Facts'
Can we please remove the following -

"Due to the lack of updates, nonexistent communication between Norseman Games and the players, and competition with newer, more complex, and technologically advanced games there continues to be a net decrease in players per month, with more people leaving than there are new subscribers coming in."

They've done updates this year, and they have numerous volunteer teams in the game world. The term 'Lack of updates' seems to imply none at all, which is untrue. The 'nonexistance' of the communication is pure fabrication. This is most likely work of ex-staff, as it is well noted within the community that a LOT of ex-staff left in less than admirable conditions and have taken steps to mud sling at the company repeatedly.

And, since they're a privately owned company and don't release customer records, how on earth can anyone actually know they're losing (Negative Churn)total players each month? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.79.27 (talk) 15:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Possible Source
Described in Matt Barton's Dungeons and Desktops: the History of Computer Role-playing Games (viewable at Amazon) in a very brief paragraph on page 400. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 07:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Not first MMO, nor even an MMO.
This game, along with all games pre UO are missing the number of players to be called legitimate "Massive multiplayer".

The Realm was a second generation MORPG, that fell in with M59, NwN and Darksun Online. The first MORPG was Shadows of Yserbius.

By definition, Ultima Online was the first MMORPG, with the emphasis being on massive. A few hundred players at prime time does not constitute massive, and at the time those games were not calling themselves MMOs. That was an after the fact.

184.100.7.19 (talk) 20:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)TS

In it's prime there was around 2,000 people on at any given time, and to the person earlier, there wasn't a level cap of 500, as far as i remember there wasn't a cap at all until they added one at 1,000 (That is for version 3 of the game). The game was originally designed with a 100 level system but since there wasn't a limit the system broke down. Most, if not all of the characters, no matter how you rolled them could max out every skill in the game, even the ones that didn't work. 02:30, 24 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.181.161.149 (talk)

Actually in the original alpha release there was a level cap of 20, however the needed experience scaled in such a way that only the truly dedicated could reach that level. It was open pvp everywhere except in town, and if you reached level 14 or 15 there were no creatures in the game that would pose much of a challenge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:BC7F:1E50:D156:3260:29B1:3D8 (talk) 01:24, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Unsourced material since (April 2010)
My removal was legit. The unref tag said "Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)." I'm removing the material that's been unsourced since April 2010; unsourced material stayed too long on Wikipedia. It makes most of the article original research in contradiction with WP:NOR. In particular, WP:PRIMARY states that articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. If the sources are clear or easy to find, please provide them. This was my third reversal, so I won't reverse anymore regarding that subject. EternalFlare (talk) 19:40, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The thing is, it's like this on almost every video-game article, but mostly on older or more obscure ones. The quality is often far bigger of a problem than the lack of sources. For example "and then you easily defeat dawnboss 2 which gives you EXP(+20) if your a paladin or DF if your mage allowing you to gank mobs" . This kind of crap is incredibly common. Mostly, I delete it as you have done. I can see your concern here -- We can't know if any of this is true or inaccurate because it has no sources, and I've seen people revert back and forth on these MMORPG articles about whether this version of the game has some feature compared to this version in another country -- No way for a third-party editor to resolve stuff like this. In this particular instance, I'd say the tone and content of the gameplay and synopsis sections aren't that bad. Eik Corell (talk) 02:44, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe that little technical details like that belong in the help manual, random lists of classes, levels, bonuses, etc. unless they are so special/notable that they are covered by good sources. This guideline also explains how to deal with unsourced material: WP:NOCITE. If other video game articles are unencyclopedic, then they need to be edited too. It was unsourced since 2010, so I believe I did the right thing. EternalFlare (talk) 07:26, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: Complaints
Ask anyone who played the game post Sierra and it is uncontested FACT that those mods were powerhungry borderline fascists that got their jollies for sussing and jailing players! I was sent to jail for the use of the word "POO" once. Yes "POO", not the S-word or anything graphic. I thought I cleaned up my language but apparently vocab restrictions were a-la Sesame Street on that crazy game, which is SAD. So I don't get it, I sourced complaints from the poor saps who purchased the actual CD. :P 03:24, 23 March 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hcharry (talk • contribs)

Former Realm player. Here is some Realm info for you to update your main page. :)
I played The Realm from version 2.0 (where I used to hang out in West Bloodwood with many other "gankers" and kill lowbies four hours -- oh, the fun!) and then 3.0. I was there when 3.0's first "wipe" happened, and resulted in a "reconversion" of character data from 2.0, and I still have about a dozen 2.0 and 3.0 screenshots, including the Town Hall - Chapel meeting in Usk where Stephen & Janus explained about the wipe and that it would not happen again. (Try that with a modern MMORPG, the developers actually standing in a room, in game, with all the players, talking!)

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Realm (3.0) was one of the first online RPGs to feature instanced content (i.e. a new instance of a dungeon loading for each new player/group of players that entered.) This was groundbreaking technology for its time, since previously all players were in the same dungeon together.

Stephen Nichols, one of the lead devs for the Realm, started a team within Sierra to develop Middle-Earth Online in 1998, which was cancelled on Chainsaw Monday (along with the rest of Sierra) by Vivendi in 1999 but not before Sierra had laid off most of the dev team. The game (and rights to develop a game using Tolkien's LOTR IP) ended up being eventually redeveloped after Vivendi finalized their acquisition in 2001, and would eventually be released by Turbine as Lord of The Rings Online, so Stephen's dream of a LOTR MMORPG did eventually come true. Currently (2014) Stephen is a developer for a micro-game company in Austin, TX.

I will add some general information that you can incorporate into your article, since I am not comfortable with editing articles.

-- Version 2.0 -- - Players capped at 40 levels. Players had on average around 50-70 hit points at max level and some Mana. - You could PvP anyone outside of town. However, you would incur "bounties" on your toon, and guards would literally throw you in jail if you entered a town, where you had to sit and run out your "sentence" (in minutes, sometimes hours for prolific gankers.) - When you died, you had to run back to your corpse, which was lootable by both monsters and players alike. Often times, the monsters would loot your Orb of Mana/Orb of Healing and your weapon, leaving you unable to kill the monsters to get your gear back. Stuff in your backpack was safe from being dropped, but couldn't be used without taking it out first. - You could pickpocket other players in the same room with you, which rewarded you a random item from their inventory (provided you had bag space for it); the other player had no idea what happened until they saw something missing from their inventory.

-- Version 3.0 -- - Level cap was increased first to 100 and later to (theoretically) infinity and beyond! - Players' existing 2.0 accounts were "converted" during the 3.0 Beta and Live launches. A rather nasty situation occurred as most players were reaching the teens-twenties leveling up their new characters, resulting in a "reconversion" (i.e. player wipe). This, not surprisingly, caused the first mass epidemic of forum whining. The devs Stephen and Janus actually had an in-game town hall meeting with players in the Usk Chapel to address the issue and promise that there would be no more wipes. (They kept the promise.) - Instanced dungeons were added, first with fixed loot. Loot was later randomized. - Lore was added to the game (gods) but there was no story connecting them to the player, so you still just wandered around killing stuff to level up. - PVP (PK) penalty system was removed and certain areas were made No-PK to prevent ganking. The ability to pickpocket players was toned down before being removed entirely. - Mana points were replaced with the universally hated "mana crystals" -- red items you had to buy from vendors for gold, that were used as a rudimentary reagent system to cast spells. - Spells, speaking of, could be in one of five schools (I recall thaumaturgery, sorcery, summoning off the top of my head) and players could stay in one school or spend points in all five.) Originally, more advanced spells were learnt via spellbooks, but this system was removed; a few rare old spell books were left in the loot tables. - A player named Tellah once hacked a GM account and used it to cast a GM-only spell named Hand of Death on unsuspecting Realm players, instantly (and permanently) killing them, including other GMs that attempted to stop him. - Professions included blacksmithing and armorsmithing. You could also learn magic, pickpocketing, and many other skills, but you were capped in how high these skills could be advanced based on your class. - Classes included Barbarians, Wizards, and Adventurers, among others.  At character creation, you could provide a nice little RP backstory that other players could see by looking at your toon in-game. - Players could pick a starting area instead of all being required to start in Leinster/Ratling Run. - Tabards (called Baldrics) were awarded by level, or randomly as gifts, except for black (Developer only.) - You could dye your armor from a pretty wide variety of colors. - Your only gear consisted of armor, weapon, amulet, and ring. These items could be enchanted, to produce effects such as immolation, or regeneration, or resistance, etc. (Some could be enchanted, and some were intrinsic and therefore rare.) - The only way to earn gold other than crafting was to sell all the random junk that dropped off monsters. This was also the only real way to earn experience needed to level -- "grinding", it's called now, and was then. - Each player had their own house, with a chest for storing items and valuables, and gold/mana crystals. All of these houses were identical and couldn't be otherwise altered, but "decoration" was possible with things such as flowers, monster item drops, bear/wolf/fenris pelts, etc. - Dungeons had a graphic that looked much like a rock or something on top of their entrances that would open and close when players went in. You'd stand outside, wait on someone to go in, and wait for the "lid" to reset, indicating that a new instance was available. - There was no auction, so sales were conducted on the OOC (out of character) chat channel. Because there were no safeguards, the most common means of selling something to (or buying from) another player was to use a "middleman" -- Player X and Y would both give the item/gold to the middleman, who would then distribute it to the other players in turn. There were websites devoted to listing fair and honest middlemen. It was not uncommon to see someone asking on OOC for a "mm" middleman or inquiring about their reputation -- the community was small enough that good MMs had many players and even GMs that would vouch for their honesty, and scammers got blacklisted very quickly. - Guilds existed, in a sense, players would join a guild and then add the guild's name or abbreviation to their toon's profile, or as part of their name. Some of these guilds are still around today. - Exploits such as Wrath farming (a certain dungeon chest had a 100% chance to drop Wrath, the best two-handed weapon in the game) and rare spellbook farming caused rapid gold inflation. Within a year, some items were going for 500k+ gold that had gone for way less gold before. There were no real "gold sinks" (except rare baldrics sold by players) or other means to combat this, so an ever-increasing supply of in-game gold drove prices up. - In-game relationships, including weddings, did exist. - Players could create private chat channels, IRC-style. - There were not "quests", per se. To level and gain skills/talents, you killed. And killed, and killed, and killed some more.

-- General Game Info/Miscellany -- - The game was always referred to as The Realm, not The Realm Online, much in the same way that Sierra On-Line was referred to as just Sierra. This changed after Norseman and then Codemasters took over. - The game client ran under Windows 95. It required an Internet connection of at least 28.8kbps, but could be played (by sadists) at 14.4k. The average C2S lag was measured not in ms, but in seconds. (!) As an example, on a "really fast" day, you could have 1.5s latency client-to-server. During lag spikes, it could go as high as 100-200 seconds (unplayable.) - The game was given away in demo (trial) form on a CD bundled with subscriber copies of Sierra's InterAction Magazine. Trial accounts had restrictions on what could be done in-game. - Combat was turn-based with a timer selectable by the player (!) If you failed to act within the required time, you "lost your turn." There was some degree of rudimentary positioning (wizards could cast from further away.) - You "tagged" a monster in the overworld by attacking it, which then placed you inside of a "combat cloud" with that monster + any adds. Other players on your screen could see your cloud. (Gankers waited on players to exit combat with monsters.) - Movement occurred one screen at a time - when you walked to another "room", the game loaded a new screen, similar to how MUDs operate, as opposed to modern MMORPGs where you can explore entire worlds with no delay between zones. - The RP community was very active and public RP was common all over. Guilds had meetings in town buildings, GMs RP'ed, players had RP events of their own, etc. - You could actually get in trouble for talking OOC on the IC channel. - Game masters were very active on chat and roleplaying, and also held world events for players to enjoy. - Monsters were sorted by game area and level, so that players walking out of a starting area didn't immediately get jumped by level 100 Paladin monsters. However, it was often easier (and less painful) to grind lower-level monsters than deal with stuff near or at your level. (I leveled my Wizard to 100 by casting Electric Fury - aoe attack - on many, many wasps and hornets.)

Hope someone finds this useful some time.

- Source: I had a Wizard (SirZantac), Barbarian (SirTagamet), and several other toons. I played from 1997 to late 98-early 99. I also have about a dozen screen shots, as well as the InterAction Magazine write-up on the game, and an original version 3.0 CD-ROM disk. My screen shots include the famous Stephen/Janus town hall meeting. I will link the imgur to someone in private if they request so here. I didn't log in before I wrote this novel. Sigh. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.59.66.30 (talk) 22:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Source

 * https://web.archive.org/web/19990221121415/http://www.noticias.com:80/solojuegos/atrasados/pmeo.htm
 * https://web.archive.org/web/19980219154203/http://www.gamesmania.com/english/news/97/apr/apr17-23.htm