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The game was built from a design put forth by [[Simutronics]] founder [[David Whatley]], in response to a production request for a new game to open at the same time as the then-pending [[Ziff-Davis]] online service. While in development, the team called its as yet unnamed game many things, including "GemStone IV" and "Project Bob." When the Ziff-Davis contract was cancelled, the game was renamed as "DragonRealms", and opened on the GEnie service, where Simutronics already had other games including [[GemStone IV|GemStone III]] and Orb Wars.
The game was built from a design put forth by [[Simutronics]] founder [[David Whatley]], in response to a production request for a new game to open at the same time as the then-pending [[Ziff-Davis]] online service. While in development, the team called its as yet unnamed game many things, including "GemStone IV" and "Project Bob." When the Ziff-Davis contract was cancelled, the game was renamed as "DragonRealms", and opened on the GEnie service, where Simutronics already had other games including [[GemStone IV|GemStone III]] and Orb Wars.


The game was implemented by a team of on-site employees and off-site contractors, led by Eric Slick, [[Elonka Dunin]], and John Donham, with assistance from Tina Hill, Stephanie Shaver, David Dean, Nancy Gross, Jim Penrose and Melissa (Callaway) Meyer, who later became producer of GemStone III. In later years, GemStone III was extensively updated and took the more appropriate name for itself of "GemStone IV", though this was no relation to the earlier working title of the DragonRealms game.
The game was implemented by a team of on-site employees and off-site contractors, led by Eric Slick, [[Elonka Dunin]], and John Donham, with assistance from Tina Hill, Stephanie Shaver, David Dean, Nancy Gross, Jim Penrose, and Melissa (Callaway) Meyer, who later became producer of GemStone III. In later years, GemStone III was extensively updated and took the more appropriate name for itself of "GemStone IV", though this was no relation to the earlier working title of the DragonRealms game.


The two games, DragonRealms and GemStone, are said to take place in the same game universe of Elanthia, but in different eras, though it has not always been clear which game world pre-dated the other. Both games are considered flagship products of Simutronics, and have been some of the longest-running and most popular online text games in existence. They were the top two products on GEnie, and in the mid-1990s were the top two games on [[America Online]], together bringing in over one million hours per month of usage. The current producer is Eric Latham.
The two games, DragonRealms and GemStone, are said to take place in the same game universe of Elanthia, but in different eras, though it has not always been clear which game world pre-dated the other. Both games are considered flagship products of Simutronics, and have been some of the longest-running and most popular online text games in existence. They were the top two products on GEnie, and in the mid-1990s were the top two games on [[America Online]], together bringing in over one million hours per month of usage. The current producer is Eric Latham.
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There have been several major wars in the history of Elanthia, some of which occurred during the portion of history occupied by current players. The first major "war" participated in by players was arguably the L'Karm invasion, though some consider it merely an extended series of invasions. The next major war was the two Gorbesh Wars: one during the winter season, and one during the spring season. These wars were an extended series of invasions involving NPC troops, siege equipment, storyline characters, and extensive GM intervention. Players were warned upon logging in to immediately log out if they did not wish to accept the risk of participating in the dangerous story event. The [[Gorbesh]], whom are distant relatives to the [[Kaldar]], were very tough opponents, and many players were unable to fight them. The next major war was the Sorrow war, against [[Lord Sorrow]]. There was also the extended Lyras invasion, in which the newer player races were introduced; however though it is considered a war in terms of the storyline, it was merely an extended invasion in terms of player interaction (though speculation continues that this will become a major part of the future storyline). The latest war was the Outcast war, featuring the most powerful and deadliest enemies yet. The Outcast war was also the first war to prominently feature the player run militias, and many of the militia companies earned respected names and histories from their actions in the war. Currently, the game's provinces are at peace: however speculation continues as to whether the next war will be against the Outcasts, or against Lyras and her undead kin.
There have been several major wars in the history of Elanthia, some of which occurred during the portion of history occupied by current players. The first major "war" participated in by players was arguably the L'Karm invasion, though some consider it merely an extended series of invasions. The next major war was the two Gorbesh Wars: one during the winter season, and one during the spring season. These wars were an extended series of invasions involving NPC troops, siege equipment, storyline characters, and extensive GM intervention. Players were warned upon logging in to immediately log out if they did not wish to accept the risk of participating in the dangerous story event. The [[Gorbesh]], whom are distant relatives to the [[Kaldar]], were very tough opponents, and many players were unable to fight them. The next major war was the Sorrow war, against [[Lord Sorrow]]. There was also the extended Lyras invasion, in which the newer player races were introduced; however though it is considered a war in terms of the storyline, it was merely an extended invasion in terms of player interaction (though speculation continues that this will become a major part of the future storyline). The latest war was the Outcast war, featuring the most powerful and deadliest enemies yet. The Outcast war was also the first war to prominently feature the player run militias, and many of the militia companies earned respected names and histories from their actions in the war. Currently, the game's provinces are at peace: however speculation continues as to whether the next war will be against the Outcasts, or against Lyras and her undead kin.

==Criticisms==

Over the years DragonRealms has become the subject of many harsh criticisms which range from criticisms of Simutronics' business practices to staff behavior to customer service and gameplay specific concerns.

{{POV}}

===Staff Behavior and Business Practices===

====The Rich Mondy Incident====

In 2002 Simutronics announced an across the board pricing increase for all of its games, including DragonRealms, from $9.95 per month to $12.95. Several hundred Simutronics customers spoke out against the price increase on the Simutronics message boards. Many reasons were presented for not increasing subscription prices, including ever-cheapening costs of hardware and bandwidth to run the game and the ongoing decline of the DragonRealms playerbase, which would only be accelerated by a pricing increase. Simutronics itself provided no official justification for the price increase.

One Senior Simutronics employee, Rich Mondy (alias Trevor Rage), was one of these many hundreds of people speaking out against Simutronics' decision to increase prices. Mondy, using a third-party private account to which he had access, posted several messages anonymously on the Simutronics forums opposing the price increase. The account from which Mondy was posting was traced back to a relative of Mondy's and he was subsequently fired for dissent. Mondy's posts were removed from the message boards and discussion of Mondy's dismissal was prohibited. Rich Mondy subsequently went on to form his own MUD, Haelrahv, in response to Simutronics' actions.

http://www.topmudsites.com/cgi-bin/reviews/robboard.cgi?action=display&num=3914

====The Fallen Incidents====
In 2002-03 Simutronics product manager Eric Latham (alias Solomon) spearheaded the release of a new instance of DragonRealms called "DragonRealms: The Fallen." Over the preceding years players had become disgruntled by the levelling grind in the basic DragonRealms instance and desired an instance where botting (automated character training scripts) were permitted. Many players were also disgruntled due to the fact that enforcement of many rules (including rules against botting) were selectively enforced by Game Masters, leading to a caste system of favoritism where favored players were allowed to bot at will and engage in Player vs. Player without consequences. The new instance, DragonRealms: The Fallen, was intended as an instance of DragonRealms where GameMasters would abstain from enforcing these rules entirely, creating a level playing field.

Latham took a great interest in DragonRealms: The Fallen and concern grew among the playerbase of the initial DragonRealms instance ("Prime") that Latham was devoting attention to DragonRealms: The Fallen that could be better put to use on DragonRealms Prime. During this time period, Eric Latham made a great many friendships with a group of DragonRealms: The Fallen characters known for only admitting female players. Over a period of months, Eric Latham became increasingly conversant with some of these players, exchanging Instant Messenging information, pictures, and other personal details. Latham is known to have provided in-game advantages and even free accounts for some players.

In late 2003 a Senior GameMaster known as Damissak was playing a character on the DragonRealms: The Fallen game instance. After having his character killed, Damissak created (using his GameMaster privileges) a number of in-game creatures to enact vengeance on his killers. Reportedly, Eric Latham saw Damissak's abuse of his GameMaster privileges through in-game logs and subsequently fired him.

http://cyanidestorm.livejournal.com/11294.html

In early 2004 Elonka Dunin (a Senior member of Simutronics, ranking above Eric Latham) was notified of Latham's transgressions in providing free gifts to female players in exchange for their attentions. To date no known reprimand has been given to Latham.


====Controversies of 2004====


The year of 2004 saw the creation of an event, instigated by Eric Latham, known as the "Outcast War." The event was criticized by many players as being unenjoyable because the creatures were geared toward top-tier players, often employing abilities that were forbidden to player-characters, leaving many less-advanced players to be killed instantly with no recourse. The event also drew a great deal of criticism from players for being incongruous with the game's known storyline. The enemies of this event, a coalition of Humans and Elves, originated in a desert, deserted region of the gameworld. Attacks were staged upon seemingly random game areas without any apparent justification. For example, the three major cities of the game lie along one road. In order to attack the southernmost city one would need to pass through the middle city. During the event the Outcasts regularly bypassed such physical obstacles that should have obstructed their progress.

For those who are unfamiliar with the game, DragonRealms is a game of permanent character death. Once your character dies, they are permanently dead. The threat of permanent character death is alleviated by "favors" from the Gods, which allow the character to be either resurrected or reincarnated. Favors can be gained but this takes time and effort, and thus characters who die many times repeatedly in a short period of time are at risk of permadeath. During the Outcast War, one particular player, known by the in-game alias Daxlynn, seemed to be under emotional duress. After a particularly frustrating encounter with the Outcast forces, the Daxlynn character either intentionally or unintentionally underwent permadeath.

Some time passed, but it was apparent that the permanent death of the Daxlynn character was causing emotional distress to the player. Many notable DragonRealms characters have undergone permadeath, including the celebrity mapmaker Sablina, whose maps were an invaluable resource to DragonRealms players. Daxlynn's player was known to have some sway with Eric Latham, producer of DragonRealms, and so pressure was put on Latham to restore the Daxlynn character. In an unprecedented move, Daxlynn was restored from permadeath. There is no known prior example of a character being resurrected from permadeath, and no known resurrections from permadeath since Daxlynn's. To this day there is much speculation about what Daxlynn's player could have possibly done to persuade Eric Latham to restore her character.

During the Outcast War Simutronics also announced another price increase, this time raising the monthly fee for a basic subscription from $12.95 to $14.95. The increase was met with a great deal of protest from the player population. Overall unhappiness with the state of affairs of DragonRealms culminated with the dismissal or resignation of five major GameMasters: Cadaya, Deryka, Talian, Westryl, and Tessima.

http://www.gs4.org/modules/mediawiki/index.php/Pricing_Effects
http://cadaya.livejournal.com/2004/04/16/
http://www.drveii.com/index.html
http://houseofdanie.livejournal.com/46077.html

===Customer Service and Gameplay Specific Concerns===

====World Population====

The DragonRealms game population has been in a steady decline over recent years. There is a great deal of controversy over how pronounced this decline has been. The DragonRealms webpage (http://www.play.net/dr/) indicates a number of "players adventuring in DragonRealms." However, the count on the webpage and available to players through in-game commands is not accurate. The number of players visible through these means includes in the count all characters, even if all characters are being "played" by a single character.

To explain the issue here, many DragonRealms players have multiple DragonRealms accounts. This allows them to "play" many characters at once. However, due to the complexity of playing a single character, these "secondary" characters are frequently inactive-but-present in the game world, or are botting (scripting) to perform certain tasks while the player focuses on his "primary" character. DragonRealms players frequently have at least two accounts and sometimes up five or more. The benefit to this for the player is that he can have, for example, a Warrior character on one account which he primarily plays, and on his other account he can have a Healer character running scripts to heal his Warrior.

The distinction is an important one to make because it is the number of players, not the number of characters, that impact the game experience. Many complaints have been brought against Simutronics for turning a blind eye towards (and sometimes encouraging) secondary accounts as well as artificially inflating the game's playerbase by knowingly using an inaccurate measure of active players.

====Skill Based Game====

Many complaints have been lodged against Simutronics for inaccurately advertising DragonRealms as a skill-based game. Although the precise definition of a "Skill-Based" game has a degree of leeway among Game Designers, DragonRealms' system is roughly comparable to Dungeons and Dragons, 3rd edition, which are widely held to be primarily "Level" and "Class" -based, not "Skill" based. The terminology of a "skill-based" game carries within it the idea that a character's effectiveness at tasks in the game is determined by that character's skills and not by arbitrary factors (level or class). Rather than a skill-based system, DragonRealms frequently institutes abilities and powers that are unavailable to characters no matter how high their skill rating is.

A few examples to demonstrate this:
* If a player creates a character with the intent of becoming a weapon merchant that character will be unable to produce weapons that are as good as a Barbarian-class character can produce. A character with 10,000 ranks in the relevant weapon-making skills will still produce a weapon that is inferior to that of a Barbarian character with 500 ranks.
* If a player wants to create a stealthy combatant character that character must created in the Thief-class or else they will be unable to hide when in combat. It doesn't matter if the proposed stealthy combatant character has 10,000 ranks in hiding, they will not be able to hide when opponents close in and attack.
* If a player is a member of the Barbarian-class, they will have access to abilities called Roars. The power of Roars is not governed by skills but primarily by Level.

The examples of this deviation from a skill-based system are too numerous to fully elaborate on. One of the causes for this deviation, from a player perspective, seems to be the development style of DragonRealms.

====Game Development====

DragonRealms is developed entirely by volunteers. As may be expected there are more-productive and less-productive members of this staff. The Bard and Trader classes, for example, have seen minimal development in ten years. Many other classes and systems have had periods of relatively steady activity when under the purview of some Game Masters.

Furthermore, there seem to be somewhat antagonistic relationships between the interests of various staff members. For example, the Game Master in charge of developing the Ranger class will wish to make the Ranger class seem appealing to play compared to other classes. In order to further this goal, the Game Master will add in "perks" to any development he does such that Rangers will always be the best within the scope of the new development. Examples of perks include Ranger-only abilities, Ranger-only skills, Ranger-only areas, and so on. The inclusion of perks seems to provoke other Game Masters to include similar "perks" in their own subsequent developments, leading to an overall devaluation of DragonRealms' purportedly skill-based system.

====Change Policy====

In DragonRealms, level advancement is hinged earning ranks in a suite of predetermined skillsets. A thief, for example, may need thirty overall ranks of survival but is restricted to allocating those ranks to his six highest survival skills. However, most skills in DragonRealms are undergoing a "rewrite" of some form or another at any one point. Although it typically takes years for these rewrites to come in effect, typically such updates will adjust (oftentimes dramatically) the difficulty of learning a skill. For players this creates a problem as the six-highest skills will typically be the six-easiest skills to learn. When a rewrite comes into effect (due to the unpredictable nature of game development and Simutronics' stance on not providing firm release dates it is impossible to plan ahead) a skill may swing from easy to infeasible to learn.

For example, the game skill "Magical Devices" was exceedingly easy to learn during the period from 1996 to roughly 2000. However, at the end of this period a dramatic change was made which made training Magical Devices possible only with one particular method and even then it was time-consuming and tedious to train. The GameMasters promised further ways to train the skill in later updates, but to date (2006) no significant updates to the Magical Devices skill have been made. Due to changes such as this many players have found their characters unable to advance (level) for months or years at a time.

Unlike [[City of Heroes]] or [[World of Warcraft]], DragonRealms doesn't offer any kind of rechoosing of abilities and spells after a major overhaul. For example, on April 17, 2006, a Cleric spell, Aesrela Everild was rewritten and was significantly changed from the previous version. Characters who had this spell before April 17 and disliked the changes are not allowed to "unlearn" the spell. This is particularly troublesome grievance as characters are limited in the number of abilities they have access to, and must often pick-and-choose those which best suit their play style.

Other criticisms include excessive travel time, pricing, character sale enforcement, uneven guild development, customer service, and message boards.


==External links==
==External links==

Revision as of 00:05, 15 August 2006

This article is about the Simutronics multiplayer game. For the set of locations called Dragon Realms in the "Spyro the Dragon" video game, please see Dragon Realms (Spyro).

DragonRealms is a medieval fantasy MUD set in the world of Elanthia. It was developed from 1992-1995 and released in February of 1996. It was originally intended for the Ziff-Davis online service. When Ziff-Davis failed to create said service, DragonRealms was offered instead on GEnie and later AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy. When AOL and other services went to a flat rate fee instead of hourly fees, DragonRealms was offered on the web on its own site [1] and through Microsoft Gaming Zone.

Design

Initial design

The game was built from a design put forth by Simutronics founder David Whatley, in response to a production request for a new game to open at the same time as the then-pending Ziff-Davis online service. While in development, the team called its as yet unnamed game many things, including "GemStone IV" and "Project Bob." When the Ziff-Davis contract was cancelled, the game was renamed as "DragonRealms", and opened on the GEnie service, where Simutronics already had other games including GemStone III and Orb Wars.

The game was implemented by a team of on-site employees and off-site contractors, led by Eric Slick, Elonka Dunin, and John Donham, with assistance from Tina Hill, Stephanie Shaver, David Dean, Nancy Gross, Jim Penrose, and Melissa (Callaway) Meyer, who later became producer of GemStone III. In later years, GemStone III was extensively updated and took the more appropriate name for itself of "GemStone IV", though this was no relation to the earlier working title of the DragonRealms game.

The two games, DragonRealms and GemStone, are said to take place in the same game universe of Elanthia, but in different eras, though it has not always been clear which game world pre-dated the other. Both games are considered flagship products of Simutronics, and have been some of the longest-running and most popular online text games in existence. They were the top two products on GEnie, and in the mid-1990s were the top two games on America Online, together bringing in over one million hours per month of usage. The current producer is Eric Latham.

Main Features

  • Skill and class based system
  • Eleven races
  • Naval system involving travel, ship to ship combat, pirates and player owned ships.
  • Several creation systems that surpass store and special merchant quality
  • Ten classes including primarily non-combat Traders, Moon Mages and Empaths.
  • Four provinces, each with several cities and wilderness areas.
  • Combat system with almost two dozen different physical attacks.
  • Mana Based Magic system with 2-6 themed spellbooks per magic using class.
  • At 600+ players online, 24 hours a day, one of the most popular text-based games on the Internet

DragonRealms 2

During the first half of 2004, the staff of Simutronics and DragonRealms engaged in a major overhaul of the system to make it work with the newer game engine (IFE2). This project was dubbed "DR2" but, unlike GemStone IV, the actual name of the game was not changed.

DragonRealms 2 removed some programming limitations which made it hard to come up with some kinds of new content and new mechanics. DR 2 did not in itself come with major new gameplay systems or content visible to the player, it was a behind the scenes move nonetheless talked about by the Gamemasters.

Servers and upgrades

DragonRealms, like GemStone IV, actually has more than one server, unusual for a MUD. The servers are not intended to reduce load and are actually hosted on the same physical server. They are perhaps better called instances. They each have different rules and guidelines.

Prime

Prime is the main server that contains the vast majority of players for DragonRealms as a whole. Prime enforces rules against AFK scripting and Player Killings. Although killing, strictly speaking, is allowed by mechanics, it is banned via GM punishment against those who have done it without consent. This is a simplistic assessment of the rules against killing in DR, which in reality are almost as complex as real life laws against murder.

The Fallen

For players who want to AFK Script and/or kill other characters and in general desire an unrestricted environment, The Fallen server was created. Today the highest level characters are in The Fallen.

Premium

Premium is not a server, but an upgrade in status on the main server that gives the player additional benefits of several kinds, the biggest being long term rewards and houses.

Platinum

Platinum is a server for people who feel the main server is falling away from its original vision and desire a realm where roleplay is the main motivation of most players. The Platinum server is also seen as an upgrade beyond Premium Status giving people on that server exclusive benefits at extra cost.

Advancement system

One of the most compelling features of DragonRealms is the skill system. While many games employ a generic system wherein skills are increased via experience gained by slaying creatures and leveling up by reaching a certain amount of experience, increasing by level, DragonRealms takes a vastly different approach.

Skills

To advance in level in a guild, you must improve an entire basket of skills to specified levels. To improve some specific skill, you must do tasks associated with that skill. Skills can be categorized by skillset, a grouping of skills which are similar in their purpose.

The skillsets are:

  • Weapons: All kinds of weapons, generally split into skills based on size. Also includes Parrying and Multiple Opponents skill, both defensive in nature.
  • Armor: Several types of armor are represented as skills in this set as well as the shield skill.
  • Magic: Various skills needed for magical proficiency are in this set. Non-magical guilds generally can't train any of these except Magical Devices.
  • Lore: These are a wide variety of skills representing crafts, arts, scholarly techniques and miscellany.
  • Survival: Composed of skills related to survival, either in combat or outdoors survivalism, as well as skills related to stealth.

Skillset learning types are:

  • Primary: This is a skillset central to what the guild does. Skills in this set can be learned rather quickly by members of the guild.
  • Secondary: This is a skillset moderately important to what the guild does. These skills can be learned at an average rate.
  • Tertiary: A set of skills that is a distraction from the main focus of the guild and will be learned with a great deal of effort.

The DragonRealms experience system for gaining ranks in skills has many details related to learning type and statistic levels for a character.

Leveling

Where most games would use the word "level," Dragonrealm's uses "circle." Every guild has a set of skills that must be raised a certain amount each circle to go to the next one. Sometimes the requirement is that the sum of a group of skills is increased by a certain amount, irrespective of the specific ones so long as they allowed. Another type of circle requirement is to say that your N best skills in a skillset must meet certain goals.

As an example, a circle 7 thief may inquire what areas of his skill set he must enhance in order to progress in the guild, to be told by the guild leader that he must advance his skills in the areas of hiding, stalking, backstabbing, lock picking, trap disarming, mechanical lore and overall lore.

Stats

Once our thief has met the demands of the guild leader, he then levels up. Where levels in most games directly lead to gains in things like skill caps and stat increases (HP, strength, agility, etc.), levels in DragonRealms grant Time Development Points (TDPs), which may be spent at the player's discretion to increase any of the player's stats. TDPs are spent at the stat trainers available in most major cities. There is a coin fee for training as well.

The official discussion of the role of stats may be found at the DragonRealms stats page. However for many DragonRealms stats, the webpage is out of date with respect to practical reasons to train them.

Your initial stats are generated randomly, but you can reroll them as often as you want before accepting the character. General advice is to train your stats relatively evenly, not all to one stat as they are all important.

Roleplay, races and mythos

DragonRealms has a great deal of in character history as well as religious and race systems which give flexibility in a character's background. There are 11 races and 13 primary immortals with 2 extra aspects for each main immortal. Races have unique verbs for emoting and in some cases, advantages in some systems beyond stat training penalties and advantages. Characters are not currently identified with respect to which god(s) they are devoted to.

As for mythos, in the backstory there is the Elven-Human War, a sort of world war of Elanthia, as well as the Dragon Priest saga, which was a case where a religious cult took control of society for many years. Many of the song scrolls bards can sing from are about these mythic topics, and library books in game cover the big wars as well. Most of the guilds have backstories too, if not always covered by a library book.

The four provinces of Elanthia have also created player run militias, to defend and police the realms. Members of these militias are given ranks ranging from Corporal to General, and wear special badges and sometimes uniforms to show their allegiances. At this time the highest player held ranks in the militia are Commanders. It has been proposed that some of the current Commanders will be promoted to General or Admiral (depending on branch), though this has not proceeded past the idea phase.

There have been several major wars in the history of Elanthia, some of which occurred during the portion of history occupied by current players. The first major "war" participated in by players was arguably the L'Karm invasion, though some consider it merely an extended series of invasions. The next major war was the two Gorbesh Wars: one during the winter season, and one during the spring season. These wars were an extended series of invasions involving NPC troops, siege equipment, storyline characters, and extensive GM intervention. Players were warned upon logging in to immediately log out if they did not wish to accept the risk of participating in the dangerous story event. The Gorbesh, whom are distant relatives to the Kaldar, were very tough opponents, and many players were unable to fight them. The next major war was the Sorrow war, against Lord Sorrow. There was also the extended Lyras invasion, in which the newer player races were introduced; however though it is considered a war in terms of the storyline, it was merely an extended invasion in terms of player interaction (though speculation continues that this will become a major part of the future storyline). The latest war was the Outcast war, featuring the most powerful and deadliest enemies yet. The Outcast war was also the first war to prominently feature the player run militias, and many of the militia companies earned respected names and histories from their actions in the war. Currently, the game's provinces are at peace: however speculation continues as to whether the next war will be against the Outcasts, or against Lyras and her undead kin.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DragonRealms&oldid=69694940"