What a wild and crazy two days it's been...
Since the stroke of Sunday midnight, through all of Sunday and a carefully preplanned Monday off, I have been spending most of it double-logged onto virtual Egypt, with four hours of sleep on the first day (six hours in the afternoon were pre-slept in preparation on Saturday) and another six stolen somewhere in the middle, before going to bed properly Monday night for a Tuesday work day.
There is something about A Tale in the Desert that drives me to Herculean excesses reminiscient of the MUD days. Fortunately, it is only for a couple of special days, else I would not be able to cope. But oh, what a wonderful feeling I get out of it. No other MMO, not Eve, not CoH, not Wurm nor Guild Wars can produce such a complex blend of eagerness, adrenaline, sociability and drive.
It has been interesting to see how people have chosen to settle this Tale. There are more regions, resulting in more fragmented territories and chat channels. Midland Valley has Universities and Schools very close together and is the second northernmost region. A small ensemble of self sufficient pairs and veterans from earlier Tales, especially recognizable from the Bastet shard have chosen to gather there, myself among them. There are fewer newbies out in force and our region is more laid back and less pushy with research, but we've got a public works set up and it is looking like a number of us will be in for a fairly long haul. Hard to say though, as Bastet residents are pretty flaky on staying power.
North of us is Old Egypt. A fair sized group of ATITD vets from shard A are holding ground there and are pushing research avidly, but the names look like second-stringers.
River Plains is south of us and it is trending toward the most populous region. Many names I recognize here, really old vets from multiple Tales that are friendly to newbies, as well as people who like to congregate near crowds. My guess is a fair bit of newbies are attracted here. Zfree, my old newbie-devouring handholding guild, is in this region and Wampak is still going strong at its head. The two Aussies that built the public works on Bastet and are crazy awesome pro with like four characters or moe in their stable are also here, much to my admittedly selfish relief - both Pameow and Tamunefret are quite friendly, and the guy can create the land's most high quality hatchets for a pittance in trade.
South of River Plains is a small gap, which is part of a huge region known as the Hinterlands. Essentially it is all the leftover bits after drawing a few small rectangles to demarcate the named regions on the map. This makes for a very -interesting- chat channel as you can be communicating to some guy way north or way away from your position. tehm and merek (Verix), two guys I fell in pretty closely with on Bastet, are in this region with four other characters and possibly two real people, apparently old guildies. They are also across the river from Midlands Valley, so they're essentially part of MV as well as a little ways into River Plains.
Further south of the gap, in what I used to know as Meroe, is the region of Seven Lakes. This is the region of the uber clique vets, a number of which used to be part of the region of Stillwater (ironically, I think that is near to where we are now.) Certainly I recognize the notorious Tammie among them. They are likely to be both strong contenders for research aswell as Tests. They've so far commandeered most of the demonstration of Principles to open them for the land.
The other regions, South Egypt (aka our old southernmost Queen's Retreat), Cat's Claw Ridge, Four Corners, Sinai, etc. look to be sparsely populated by hermits of the quiet-seeking sort.
A notable aside goes to the Desert of Nomads, where the most famous guild of ATITD the Followers of Anubis (FoA) have settled down. Breaking from a tradition of the last 5 Tales, they have announced their decision to retire from the hardcore research grind and have run off to seek rest and relaxation. Time will tell whether they will get stir crazy, if they have something up their sleeves, if someone else will step up to the heavy duty research chore of opening techs for all the land, or if they will have to be begged out of retirement to help.
As I've said before, there's something magical I get out of ATITD that I was only able to get from the old MUD days. The sense of knowing the whole community, a sense of place and belonging, of recognizable famous names walking past you on your way to somewhere else. This could be a Dunbar's Number effect, the max players on ATITD range from 400-900, a very MUD-sized number, and they tend to stick around longer with the same names. Name recognition has a value here that does not exist in the big MMOs except with guilds. People are also unique for their personality, not just a class and a role in combat that can be interchanged with a better behaved bot.
This could also be due to being able to stake out territory, create a home base from which to venture out from. I remember in RoD having favourite "rooms" to hang out in. Often, once you're in an org, it would be guild recall point or a special order hangout zone like the Asc log. In ATITD, home is your compound, and public home is normally the area by the Chariot Stop where people gather.
In standard MMOs, you rarely have a personal home. Some exceptional MMOs might create a special guild hq or hall or superbase for your org, but because it is instanced away from the rest of the world and the meat of content, one would have to be very bored and hopeful to hang out there assuming you might run into another person.
Public areas in typical MMOs are even worse. A big city is chaotic, full of bank, auction, crafting and gold farming alts standing around, especially on mailboxes and other essential services - not real people that you could get to know.
Eve might have been a contender, except it is so huge and predicated on distrust and not knowing what has happened in different pockets of space.
ATITD, well, ATITD gets that small town feeling just right.
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