That Little Demon posted:

The coolest MMO type game I never got to play was called Majestic. check this out

Majestic was a science fiction thriller based on a Majestic 12 shadow government conspiracy theory. As an ARG, the game was played by phone, email, AOL Instant Messenger, BlackBerry messages, fax, and by visiting special websites. Gameplay frequently involved the player receiving clues that they would use to solve puzzles and unravel the story. All the messages were automated, with limited dialogue options, but AIM provided some interactive conversations. As an option to warn unsuspecting members in the same house you could enable a warning at the beginning of each phone call, and a small message on the top of all faxes. When this option was enabled, each phone call would begin with a woman saying "This is a phone call from the video game Majestic", before the regular, prerecorded message. Some of the clues were videos featuring the game's cast. One of the more widely recognized actors was Joe Pantoliano, who portrayed Tim Pritchard in the game's final episode.

The game's tagline, "It plays you", emphasized the nature of ARGs and the game's suspense. One of the first things the player experienced in Majestic was news that the game had stopped, yet they would receive messages suggesting that there was a conspiracy behind the stoppage. Majestic was said to have been inspired by The Game, a 1997 movie that featured something like an ARG which repeatedly confused the main character into thinking he was not playing. This game was also inspired by the "Area 51 caller" on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM.[3]

The game comprised five episodes: A pilot episode was free to try but the four remaining episodes required players to join EA.com's Platinum Service, which cost $9.95 USD per month.[4] EA discontinued Majestic on April 30, 2002 citing too few players.[5] There were 5 episodes per season. The game was cancelled before season 2 could be released.[6] Retail copies of the game included the game on CD-ROM, a copy of Internet Explorer and AIM, and some bonus music tracks in MP3 format. Also included was the first season's subscription.

The game's interface consisted of a small application named the "Majestic Alliance Application", which served as both a "friends list" (when playing for the first time, the game randomly selected other players who were at the same "level" as player, in game progress, and added them to Majestic Alliance Application as "allies", enabling players to send and receive instant messages to and from other players for help) and to stream music related to what web page or section of the game you were at. Different web pages and different parts of the game triggered different music. The music was broken down into multiple genres such as techno, industrial, and ambient. The game would choose an appropriate genre for a particular section, and stream it. The track played would be random. Certain sections of the game featured the same track, such as the music heard when logging into the game.

The game took place in real time. If a character said that they would contact the player the next day at a particular time, they would. The game was meant to be played casually. In order to keep a player from going through the game's entire content in one day, progress was limited each day. Once a player had accomplished the goals for the day, they were placed on "Standby", in which no progress could be made until they were taken off "Standby".

It was a massive commercial failure and I think shut down because of 9/11 lol

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

tabula rasa was a failed MMO created by Richard Garriot himself which is only noteworthy because NCsoft forged a letter from Richard Garriot announcing the game was being shut down. Richard Garriot could not dispute this as he was in orbit around earth and did not find out until he returned from space lmao

Kongming posted:

On my server [Galka Sausage] was used a lot.

I didn't have many bad experiences with JP players. One time I was casting cure on a guy soloing in North Gustaberg and he sent me a message that said something like "[Excuse me] I like to feel the thrill of battle" as in "stop helping me". Another time I got called a pig gently caress American and that I should die because I stole an NM spawn from a Tarutaru named Chandlerbing.

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

tabula rasa was a failed MMO created by Richard Garriot himself which is only noteworthy because NCsoft forged a letter from Richard Garriot announcing the game was being shut down. Richard Garriot could not dispute this as he was in orbit around earth and did not find out until he returned from space lmao

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

tabula rasa was a failed MMO created by Richard Garriot himself which is only noteworthy because NCsoft forged a letter from Richard Garriot announcing the game was being shut down. Richard Garriot could not dispute this as he was in orbit around earth and did not find out until he returned from space lmao

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

tabula rasa was a failed MMO created by Richard Garriot himself which is only noteworthy because NCsoft forged a letter from Richard Garriot announcing the game was being shut down. Richard Garriot could not dispute this as he was in orbit around earth and did not find out until he returned from space lmao

Pablo Nergigante posted:

This is ground control to Lord British
They’re shutting down your game
And the papers were signed without you being aware
Now it’s time to sue NCSoft if you dare

Pablo Nergigante posted:

This is ground control to Lord British
They’re shutting down your game
And the papers were signed without you being aware
Now it’s time to sue NCSoft if you dare

Larry Parrish posted:

i remember being excited to try that game and it was shut down within like a month which was crazy because they didn't bother to market for it in a world where wow existed

Pablo Nergigante posted:

This is ground control to Lord British
They’re shutting down your game
And the papers were signed without you being aware
Now it’s time to sue NCSoft if you dare

Kongming posted:

On my server [Galka Sausage] was used a lot.

I didn't have many bad experiences with JP players. One time I was casting cure on a guy soloing in North Gustaberg and he sent me a message that said something like "[Excuse me] I like to feel the thrill of battle" as in "stop helping me". Another time I got called a pig gently caress American and that I should die because I stole an NM spawn from a Tarutaru named Chandlerbing.

Pablo Nergigante posted:

I guessed at that last line but I looked it up and he did actually sue them and won $28 million lol.

Pablo Nergigante posted:

This is ground control to Lord British
They’re shutting down your game
And the papers were signed without you being aware
Now it’s time to sue NCSoft if you dare

Pablo Nergigante posted:

I guessed at that last line but I looked it up and he did actually sue them and won $28 million lol.

Pablo Nergigante posted:

This is ground control to Lord British
They’re shutting down your game
And the papers were signed without you being aware
Now it’s time to sue NCSoft if you dare

Sub-Actuality posted:

here am I sitting with my tin crown

quote:

Find a Fairy Apkallu and make it like you.
Run in front of the Apkallu's path, eventually it will stop and you will receive the message "The Fairy Apkallu is staring at you."

When you receive this message you must immediately stop moving, and target the Apkallu and /bow.
If done correctly you will receive the message "The Fairy Apkallu seems to have let down its guard a bit."

There are confirmed reports in some occasions you may /bow while the Apkallu is targeted and no message is displayed, continue the next step regardless.
Once you see this, immediately type /welcome without moving. You will now receive one of three messages:
"The Fairy Apkallu is wary of your presence."
"The Fairy Apkallu seems curious about you."
"The Fairy Apkallu seems to like you."
If you get either of the first two messages, repeat the previous two steps until you receive the message "The Fairy Apkallu seems to like you."

Immediately after receiving this message, speak to the Apkallu, and you should receive the following messages:
"You give the Hamsi to the Fairy Apkallu."
"You successfully capture the Fairy Apkallu!"
Immediately run behind the Apkallu and keep a short distance.
Roughly the same distance as max attack range. (2-3 steps)

Your goal is to keep a short distance between you and the apkallu at ALL TIMES.

If the Apkallu comes to a complete stop, it means that you are too close, too far, or too much to the side of it. If you see the Apkallu stop and you think you're too close, take a couple steps back. If you think you're too far, walk a little closer. In either case make sure you are directly behind it.

If the Apkallu remains still for about three seconds, spots a pugil, spots another player in front of it, or sees you in front of it, you will receive the message "The fairy Apkallu runs away!"

If the Apkallu runs away you will have to start over from the beginning with a new Hamsi.
Eventually the Fairy Apkallu will find its own way directly back to the NPC, and you will win.
The final way to the NPC is the hardest part because the road is made of different heights of rocks, and Fairy Apkallu moves on them. You need to take care about when it switches the direction it's looking at in all moment, and move quickly behind it. You will need to run around a rock to position at the same height than the Fairy Apkallu but always behind of it, never forget.

Pablo Nergigante posted:

This is ground control to Lord British
They’re shutting down your game
And the papers were signed without you being aware
Now it’s time to sue NCSoft if you dare

Kongming posted:

Final Fantasy XI came out in Japan a year before it hit the western markets and instead of making new servers they just let all the NA/Euro players play on the same servers as JP players so this caused some friction between the different playerbases. When the game first launched in the west many JP players retreated out of the starting cities and hung around mostly in Jeuno, which required you to make a trip through higher level zones to reach. Many JP players were also reluctant to group with western players which lead to the infamous search comment of "JP ONRY".

The game came with an auto-translate feature where you could use common words and phrases as well as in game terminology like zone and ability names. One of the commonly used auto-translate phrases by NA players was [Reward], which was a Beastmaster ability that allowed you to feed your current pet food to heal it. So a common string would be something like "[Teleport - Dem] [Can I have it?] [Reward] 1000 gil". The problem was that the JP name for "Reward" was 労る which, to my understanding, is a term that means "to take care of" like you're feeding a dog or something. So many JP players would take offense to this particular string as being condescending. Eventually SE realized the problem and added a new auto-translate term, [Reward:] with a colon that means the same thing in both languages. This didn't stop NA players from continuing to use the old Reward because they mentioned it as an aside in a patch note without any explanation for why they added it in the first place.

On the other side of things, one of the phrases in auto translate for JP is the common phrase [仕方がない] which we all know and love as "it can't be helped" in localizations. However, SE decided to go with the english phrase [That's too bad.] for their auto-translate for it. Many NA players felt [That's too bad] was sarcastic and insulting and used it as such. So JP players were often confused with the way NA players used the phrase. SE never did anything to address this one, though.

I got the tude now posted:

Imagining jc Denton saying all that

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

tabula rasa was a failed MMO created by Richard Garriot himself which is only noteworthy because NCsoft forged a letter from Richard Garriot announcing the game was being shut down. Richard Garriot could not dispute this as he was in orbit around earth and did not find out until he returned from space lmao

EmmyOk posted:

EmmyOk posted:

EmmyOk posted:

Dongicus posted:

me and my brother ran this really stupid scam in runescape where we would offer 28 "free" sharks (expensive high healing food) if you showed your entire inventory in the trade screen. you'd keep trading people until someone decides to show off something that's more expensive than the sharks, then you'd just hit accept on the trade getting all their poo poo. i honestly don't know how it worked because you get a second confirmation screen after a trade to double check everything but people just got blinded by the idea of "free" poo poo.

anyway my brother made like 1mil doing this once and he gave me 500k and a day later i got lured into a pvp zone then i got pk'd and cried irl

Dongicus posted:

me and my brother ran this really stupid scam in runescape where we would offer 28 "free" sharks (expensive high healing food) if you showed your entire inventory in the trade screen. you'd keep trading people until someone decides to show off something that's more expensive than the sharks, then you'd just hit accept on the trade getting all their poo poo. i honestly don't know how it worked because you get a second confirmation screen after a trade to double check everything but people just got blinded by the idea of "free" poo poo.

anyway my brother made like 1mil doing this once and he gave me 500k and a day later i got lured into a pvp zone then i got pk'd and cried irl

That Little Demon posted:

The coolest MMO type game I never got to play was called Majestic. check this out

Majestic was a science fiction thriller based on a Majestic 12 shadow government conspiracy theory. As an ARG, the game was played by phone, email, AOL Instant Messenger, BlackBerry messages, fax, and by visiting special websites. Gameplay frequently involved the player receiving clues that they would use to solve puzzles and unravel the story. All the messages were automated, with limited dialogue options, but AIM provided some interactive conversations. As an option to warn unsuspecting members in the same house you could enable a warning at the beginning of each phone call, and a small message on the top of all faxes. When this option was enabled, each phone call would begin with a woman saying "This is a phone call from the video game Majestic", before the regular, prerecorded message. Some of the clues were videos featuring the game's cast. One of the more widely recognized actors was Joe Pantoliano, who portrayed Tim Pritchard in the game's final episode.

The game's tagline, "It plays you", emphasized the nature of ARGs and the game's suspense. One of the first things the player experienced in Majestic was news that the game had stopped, yet they would receive messages suggesting that there was a conspiracy behind the stoppage. Majestic was said to have been inspired by The Game, a 1997 movie that featured something like an ARG which repeatedly confused the main character into thinking he was not playing. This game was also inspired by the "Area 51 caller" on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM.[3]

The game comprised five episodes: A pilot episode was free to try but the four remaining episodes required players to join EA.com's Platinum Service, which cost $9.95 USD per month.[4] EA discontinued Majestic on April 30, 2002 citing too few players.[5] There were 5 episodes per season. The game was cancelled before season 2 could be released.[6] Retail copies of the game included the game on CD-ROM, a copy of Internet Explorer and AIM, and some bonus music tracks in MP3 format. Also included was the first season's subscription.

The game's interface consisted of a small application named the "Majestic Alliance Application", which served as both a "friends list" (when playing for the first time, the game randomly selected other players who were at the same "level" as player, in game progress, and added them to Majestic Alliance Application as "allies", enabling players to send and receive instant messages to and from other players for help) and to stream music related to what web page or section of the game you were at. Different web pages and different parts of the game triggered different music. The music was broken down into multiple genres such as techno, industrial, and ambient. The game would choose an appropriate genre for a particular section, and stream it. The track played would be random. Certain sections of the game featured the same track, such as the music heard when logging into the game.

The game took place in real time. If a character said that they would contact the player the next day at a particular time, they would. The game was meant to be played casually. In order to keep a player from going through the game's entire content in one day, progress was limited each day. Once a player had accomplished the goals for the day, they were placed on "Standby", in which no progress could be made until they were taken off "Standby".

It was a massive commercial failure and I think shut down because of 9/11 lol

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

tabula rasa was a failed MMO created by Richard Garriot himself which is only noteworthy because NCsoft forged a letter from Richard Garriot announcing the game was being shut down. Richard Garriot could not dispute this as he was in orbit around earth and did not find out until he returned from space lmao

Pablo Nergigante posted:

This is ground control to Lord British
They’re shutting down your game
And the papers were signed without you being aware
Now it’s time to sue NCSoft if you dare

Dongicus posted:

me and my brother ran this really stupid scam in runescape where we would offer 28 "free" sharks (expensive high healing food) if you showed your entire inventory in the trade screen. you'd keep trading people until someone decides to show off something that's more expensive than the sharks, then you'd just hit accept on the trade getting all their poo poo. i honestly don't know how it worked because you get a second confirmation screen after a trade to double check everything but people just got blinded by the idea of "free" poo poo.

anyway my brother made like 1mil doing this once and he gave me 500k and a day later i got lured into a pvp zone then i got pk'd and cried irl

Dongicus posted:

me and my brother ran this really stupid scam in runescape where we would offer 28 "free" sharks (expensive high healing food) if you showed your entire inventory in the trade screen. you'd keep trading people until someone decides to show off something that's more expensive than the sharks, then you'd just hit accept on the trade getting all their poo poo. i honestly don't know how it worked because you get a second confirmation screen after a trade to double check everything but people just got blinded by the idea of "free" poo poo.

anyway my brother made like 1mil doing this once and he gave me 500k and a day later i got lured into a pvp zone then i got pk'd and cried irl

Lumpy the Cook posted:

New theory: 9/11 was done specifically to shut down this game

Bicyclops posted:

loving howling at the fact that there's a confirmation screen. the In Training Mario Galaxy scheme.

Bicyclops posted:

loving howling at the fact that there's a confirmation screen. the In Training Mario Galaxy scheme.

Lumpy the Cook posted:

New theory: 9/11 was done specifically to shut down this game

Lumpy the Cook posted:

New theory: 9/11 was done specifically to shut down this game