Dark Sun Online

lahnmir

After having had a discussion about older games on one of these threads SSI was brought up. I was shocked to find out that there has actually been a Dark Sun MMO running from 1996-1998.

Not only have I never heard of the game, I also have never heard anyone talk about it either. I looked into it for a bit and it actually had a proper graphical interface, a MUD like chat system and turnbased combat.

So I am wondering, has anyone played it? Was it any good? How about its mechanics, the Dark Sun Universe? I would love to hear stories about it being a Dark Sun fan and all.

I am still shocked this game actually existed....

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

lahnmir

Just what I expected from a 90s cinematic, equal part awesome and cheesy hahaha. Thanks for sharing. Seeing the total lack of reactions it seems the game was quite obscure. Still hoping for some info and personal experience.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

revcasy

I played it.

It was a weird experience. It was such a long time ago that I have a hard time remembering details (don't get mad at me if I misremember something), but if I recall correctly it didn't feel a lot like a modern MMO. It was more like one of the single player isometric rpgs that SSI made (which were fun as hell), but with the possibility of running into other people occasionally. If you think about it, it would be impossible to do turn-based combat with a lot of people at once anyway.

The multiplayer aspect almost felt more like Diablo 3, except more random with less player control.

Ultima Online, in my opinion, was the first game that really got the MM part of MMORPG into something like its modern form. This game was before that.

The setting was cool. The way that spells worked was a lot of fun in particular, because of the turn-based aspect.

Asm0deus

Might be interesting to see a modern mmo in this setting.

lahnmir

Asm0deus said:

Might be interesting to see a modern mmo in this setting.

I would die for that, such an amazing setting.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

lahnmir

revcasy said:

I played it.

It was a weird experience. It was such a long time ago that I have a hard time remembering details (don't get mad at me if I misremember something), but if I recall correctly it didn't feel a lot like a modern MMO. It was more like one of the single player isometric rpgs that SSI made (which were fun as hell), but with the possibility of running into other people occasionally. If you think about it, it would be impossible to do turn-based combat with a lot of people at once anyway.

The multiplayer aspect almost felt more like Diablo 3, except more random with less player control.

Ultima Online, in my opinion, was the first game that really got the MM part of MMORPG into something like its modern form. This game was before that.

The setting was cool. The way that spells worked was a lot of fun in particular, because of the turn-based aspect.

I was wondering about the turn based nature of the combat yes, might have been an amazing tactical affair, or a horrible mess of course. Now it sounds even more intriguing.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

revcasy

Dark Sun is a really cool/weird setting. It has that old 2nd Edition feeling to it. So specific and strange.

It was also meant to be a brutally difficult world. Kind of the hard-mode of D&D.

lahnmir

revcasy said:

Dark Sun is a really cool/weird setting. It has that old 2nd Edition feeling to it. So specific and strange.

It was also meant to be a brutally difficult world. Kind of the hard mode of D&D.

Couldn't agree more, you also just described my ideal MMO hahaha.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

lahnmir

Hmmm, it seems almost no one played this game. Somehow I imagined quite a lot of replies with great stories and feature lists. Was this game really that obscure? Would be too bad, I was excited having just discovered it.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

DreadTooth

They had an MMO on AOL. It was D&D but I don't remember the name for which universe it was in. Combat was turn based, and the entire game was graphical. It was just under the normal isometric quality expected in the mid 90s, but was awesome because of the MMO factor. It had one server instance, as it should be. However, back then the maximum amount of players was capped at 500, so you would often be left waiting to play as it was popular.

There were 2 text-based MMOs on AOL at the same time with seemingly no player cap, or considerably higher. Terris and I forgot the other game. I played D&D and Terris, both were a lot of fun.

Talonsin

Wow, I have been gaming since the 80's and never even heard of that game

lahnmir

Talonsin said:

Wow, I have been gaming since the 80's and never even heard of that game

That was exactly what I thought when I discovered this one.

@ZagavaVonn: Wow, what a tale, not just the excellent article you linked but also your own story. Was checking out some artwork for Dark Sun Online and indeed saw a bit too much similarities with the single player games and also Al-Qadim. What a treat so thank you very much for your contribution. Also nice to see Meridian 59 and Ultima Online getting mentioned in the article.

Great read, secretly hoping there are more stories out there.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

BolinRH

Necro thread but,

 I played it for a solid year until TEN went down and with it DSO. Was pretty fun. You mostly quested and leveled up to max which I think was level 15 per class spec and you could tripple spec. I had a Fighter/Cleric/Psionic dwarf. You could quest together and every mob was open tag I believe and if you crossed into the path of a current fight, you could roll a turn in combat.

Mostly once you leveled, the end game was sitting in town chatting it up, or PVP.

PVP was mostly controlled by one guild called Lords of the Dead (LotD) and that guild after getting its start in DSO, went on to be one of the biggest guilds in MMOs with establishments in pretty much every big title MMO that came after DSO, and I think active today. I think they were fairly known in Star Wars Galaxies or w/e the first Star Wars MMO was.

Towards the end the GMs in DSO tried to create a little end game by running scripted events where they would spawn NPCs and some GM controlled PCs and had a running story line for a while.

Actually have pretty fond memories of DSO, but yeah, the community was minuscule compared to later games.

Some of the old DSO gang actually had a running server based on DSO in the NWN DM package game that came out later, but I think its defunct now. 

Relampago

Dreadtooth you are thinking of Neverwinter Nights on AOL.  It was an online goldbox game similarly to how dso was an online version of the dark sun SSI games.  As I was paying for AOL to play NWN I only briefly paid to play DSO on T.E.N.  In my opinion NWN on AOL was the first graphical MMO and this and Meridan followed shortly.

BolinRH

Relampago said:

Dreadtooth you are thinking of Neverwinter Nights on AOL.  It was an online goldbox game similarly to how dso was an online version of the dark sun SSI games.  As I was paying for AOL to play NWN I only briefly paid to play DSO on T.E.N.  In my opinion NWN on AOL was the first graphical MMO and this and Meridan followed shortly.

I remember AOL NWN, but never played it because if I recall you still got charged by the hour to use AOL so it could get rather expensive for my teenage pocket book.

One of the big problems with DSO was the entire thing ran on the local client and it could get hacked to no end. There were no server side checks on anything so duping was every where. I never did it, but I was handed some of the best gear in game sometimes just walking into a tavern lol.

lahnmir

Wow, here’s a thread I wasn’t expecting any more posts to. But thanks for the contribution guys, still miffed that I missed it.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Excanto

Darksun Online was awesome and buggy. When you log in, you had no spells and you would have to rest to reset them. Combat was timer based and you had to quickly choose a spell and some had drag and drop boxes of effects like firewall and some had area effect like spiked plants. If you ran out of time you lost your turn. No casting in town! I would step outside and then remove armor and items with spells and put them back on to get their effects, invis, haste etc, then spell up with stone skin, blink, mirrors etc. PVP was wicked. Monsters had to be handled in a very particular way to be successful. Some were so tough that you had to get a paralyze on them, step up into touch range and do a powerful Harm spell taking them to 1 hp, then blast them down with a spell they were not resistant too. Most did not know about the special buffs, using components together on the ground and having permanent buffs, until you rest or die. Most people didn't know about the amazing midnight fun. At midnight, if you had a special key that you quested for, you could go into a temple and at midnight a bunch of really dangerous ghosts appeared before a sealed door and you could use a sunray gem and cast the cloud right on your head and all the ghosts that came to kill you would die in the sun cloud and then the door would open and you could run in and there was a big giant and you could run past him and up to a sarcophagus and use the key to open it and get an item, sometimes boots of freedom to keep you from being paralyzed or hurt on spike plants, word was you could get a +3 sword there too. Then I would teleport to a spot in the desert one step away from a quicksand pit that you could bring people following you into and down there you one at a time could fight Umber Hulks and then get a chance at a nice item in a chest. Also there was a maze area that was some end game challenge, very deadly area and then make it to a room where there was some big fight and you would get an item making you the one and only person in the game with it, never found that room reset to get that item, but I was told that when undead attacked one of the cities, it was because the person that had that item was killed and that room was reset.

jabujakan

Hi all! I am wanting to run a game in Tabletop Simulator, but am having trouble finding assets. I have downloaded pretty much all of the "Saught" assets and grabbed what I like from each one, but there's not a lot of variety in building types and animals (but lots of nice misc objects).

There's so many good medeival euro esq assets, but desert ones are especially lacking. I was hoping someone may have a link to a good pack I may have missed, or possible other 3d assets from elsewhere that they could upload. Thanks!