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Trackmania, the ideal MMO.

oscarianoscarian Member Posts: 116
in General Gaming

Trackmania, the ideal MMOg (long):

 

I've played many different MMORPG's and some various MMORTS's over the years. My first experience with online gaming on the "massively" scale was in a game called Saga of Ryzom. It was August 2004 and I had just left my job at a major Telecom's company here in Australia.

 

I liked crafting in Ryzom, because at that time, crafting was a necessity to playing the game. Before you could go hunting, you had to have weapons of some sort, and since the game was brand new, there was no one around who could make that stuff for you. That was the charm of the game. Then in December the infamous WoW was released and within a few weeks we'd lost around half of our population to the draw of a fully developed quest system, which seemed to be what people wanted. I don't think we really understood what a Sandbox was back then, although I do know that there are game which predated SoR that were also Sandboxes. But I digress.

 

After some years of jumping around various MMORPG's I reached that point where I was seeing the same thing happening over and over. Move to an area, kill mobs for XP, sell loot, buy and/or make stuff, rinse and repeat.

 

So then I started playing something I don't usually play, a Racing Sim. It was called Trackmania Nations ESWC back then, and followed the "arcade" principle of not having realistic controls or physics. You can't crash into opponents, tracks can have jumps, loops, and wallrides, and there are only 4 controls; up, down, left, and right arrow keys.

 

And there was pride in being able to complete a track in a "good" time, which was not necessarily the "winning" time, although that might sound strange to an outsider.

 

Today you can still download Trackmania Nations ESWC for free, but there are later versions of the same game available. One called Trackmania Nations Forever (TMNF) which is free for download, and Trackmania 2 - Stadium (TM²) which is the very latest version, but is a pay for game.

 

And what I really like, along with everything else, is just how many of the elements TM has in order to fulfil the criteria of many, many posts of gamers on this site who are looking for a new MMO to play.

 

It's online (you play on servers of up to 250+ people, but usually around 10-20); you can "create" your own maps with the in-game map editor; it's not WoW; it's a "skill" based game, where the players own skill determines their time on a map, not how much equipment or how much xp you have; and it's fun.

 

The theme is, you drive a F1 style car, that has 4-wheel drive, can be made to drift around corners (it just takes the correct technique), has loops, wallrides, jumps, and also the other road tiles don't merely lie flat on the ground, necessarily (as in any other F1 game). You can make your own maps, host your own server, has offline play, has a world records system, and if you get good enough, has professional racing teams (mostly based in Europe).

 

There are many fine elements to this game, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also tell you, the game also has some whacky bugs - such as if you're driving at speed over the border (we call it the rammstein) you can sometimes get suddenly flicked into the air for no apparent reason, when you land sometimes you experience a massive slowdown (usually when landing on borders of some kind), and occasionally, just occasionally, some other freakish things happen when the car lands (youtube for "trackmania bugs" you'll get the idea).

 

But at the same token, some of those very same bugs are taken advantage of. The rammstein is also a little more splippery than the track, so it can sometimes be used to execute a power-slide (a high speed drift), and can also be used to execute a very low speed drift (usually not possible unless travelling at a higher speed). How many games do you hear about where the bugs can actually benifit play?

 

Well, in conclusion, I think that if you're looking for something that is "different", try downloading a copy of Trackmania Nations Forever (the free version) and get online, find a server with some people on it, and try it out! The community is very curteous and always forthcoming with information if you ask for it.

 

Technically it's not an MMO, but to me, Trackmania is the perfect MMOg.

 

/Oscarian

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