The Realm -- Relaunched

GuardianX

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So at least a few decades ago, I played the realm. The game was pretty fun from a 1990's point of view but once EQ1 hit the game lost the few subscribers it had at the time.

Fast forward to today and an LLC named "Rat Labs" decided to work to partner with the current owner of the IP, "Norseman Games" to breathe new life into the game. Norseman Games was basically a mom and pop shop thing that a husband and wife created so they could basically, legally, run the game from a business perspective. Rat Labs has a lot of ideas in the works for the game overall though, they want to port the game to Mobile devices and attempt to cash in on the lack of legit MMOs on mobile platforms. Overall, their progress on the game has been impressive, they have revamped a lot of back-end stuff, taken steps to ensure they can create content going forward, and created a business model that should work well for the future. Considering the servers for the game are cheap as heck to operate, I don't see a reason why they won't have a good nostalgia product for a while.

The Realm Online

The "New" server launches tomorrow (June 1st 2018)

It is free to play with some restrictions:

The Realm Online --- Free to play restrictions
 
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Siliconemelons

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I loved The Realm, the latest versions were nothing but insane pvp campers and shit - the fact your group mates could kill you made trusting anyone not your RL bros nil

I played it over OU and yeah EQ essentially killed it...

but nothing is better than a good old fashion eviction party!
 
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GuardianX

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Yeah, I didn't know if it would go to MMO or emu...mainly because most of the emu scene is retro games anyhow.
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Pretty cool that a mom and pop shop can pick up an old MMO and just rework it. As making them is so expensive and ridiculous to even consider for a small shop.
 

GuardianX

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How did I never hear of this?

I basically looked once a year for an emulator for "The Realm".

The basis for this relaunch was actually the "Rat Lab" guys made an emulator and it was more populated than the OG servers that were charging like 9 a month STILL...in 2018!!

The lady that ran the OG Realm servers since her husband passed basically didn't know a fucking thing about computers and likely just did the bare minimum to maintain the game-servers as far as I am aware.

There is a "TON" (ton, relative to the fact that like 1-100 people play this game) of drama around the re-launch because apparently 2 groups were working on releasing emulated servers for the game and the ratlab guys made greater progress based on code that someone else stole than group B did. It is kinda funny to read the facebook group news for the game because there are some salty people posting about the game and the changeover.

I played ULTRA CASUALLY on their emulated server before the information hit (the shutdown of the emu server / merge with OG realm), the server was always stable and the people there are really cool. The dev (red is his name) is a really chill guy. He even set up a discord server that basically syncs the chat from the game in a read-only channel. The dev is super aggressive with his plans too, he knows what he wants and is really taking strides to move the game forward as much as possible within the scope of the game.

Last i saw, he wants to basically rebuild the game while maintaining the core of the games mechanics. He wants to re-do a lot of the art of the world and update it in a way that makes sense. He wants to rebuild the client because the current client is a MESS in terms of optimization, running this game basically causes your CPU to go into over-drive.

Ultimately, I know I'll play for free and see whats what. The plans he has for leveling is pretty cool too, basically you hit level 1000 and if you are a paying sub you can roll that character over and it gains bonuses and retains their skill points and what not, a really cool idea for a game that's like 20ish years old.
 

sike

Silver Knight of the Realm
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I have some fond memories of this game.

I was young when I played it, post Meridian 59 but before EQ. I remember you could dye and rename weapons and I pulled this great scam where I dyed and named normal swords ‘The Wrath’ (one of the best swords in game) and sold them via a low level mule (you also had to trade via a 3rd party who would inspect - but I found people who were either naive or stupid). Made a lot of gold and I remember the rage when people realised the sword was fake. Fun times!
 

Bobbybick

Trakanon Raider
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This was probably the last thing I expected to read today, what timeline am I in?

Realm was THE game that got me into MMOs (god damn it) and I played it up until Sierra sold it off to Codemasters. I've peeked in on it now and again over the years but the main server always had like 50 people "online" and most were just statues sitting next to teleport hubs. Looking at the server stats right now, 173 for the relaunch doesn't seem that much better and I imagine that number will be back down to ghost-tier in a week or so after the nostalgia/hype train has come off the tracks.

Such an interesting game though, I remember always having to cast See Invis before leaving the house because people would legit just sit outside of people's houses invis waiting to walk into the front door and rob them blind, or bruteforce passwords on the door since anyone could visit anyones house by just typing in their name to a teleport master. This also let people do cool giveaways where they would just fill their house up with shit ranging from total garbage to BIS items and would just announce in general channels for people to come and get ready then open the door and watch the vultures go wild. 10 Year old Bobby also somehow managed to get himself suspended right before a gold wipe and managed to keep 100+ million after the rest of the server got nuked down to like 100k, that was an awesome surprise and shopping spree when I came back, free Wraths and Glowies for everyone!

The cybering in that game was unreal too, like how much it pervaded everywhere, but I don't really think that's surprising when there were literal wedding chapels in almost every city and characters could strip down to underwear and dye shirts/pants flesh colored. They (Sierra) knew exactly what they were doing.

I don't think I'll end up giving this a try, what made Realm so interesting to me I don't think can be recaptured or recreated in 2018 with such a tiny playerbase but it's cool to know that someone out there is still trying to keep it alive.
 

sike

Silver Knight of the Realm
246
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This is the kind of game that would be awesome on a phone - a real gap in the mobile market.
 

Siliconemelons

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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So, anyone could "do" anything - you just sucked at it - like a warrior could use spells to an extent, they just sucked.

One of my friends was a oger or whatever warrior - and he learned the "home" spell - aka like gate. The thing was his int stat was like 3 or someshit and he would fail the most simple spell- in the realm you "say" your spells, home was something like "halome saldar" or whatever- so whenever IRL we wanted to make fun of this friend we would say "HHAAALLLOMMEE SAALDARRR" like chunk from the goonies at him.

Stealing shit from peoples house was legit

Being a legit trusted middle man (MM) for trades was fun, I had a stellar reputation and made so much money from doing that. The scam scene was fierce even at the beginning - fake fleshies, wraths, defenders, vulcan edges etc. etc.
 

Siliconemelons

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Decent population 200+ today when I started...

Fun, it's very EQ grundy, people are already like 800level + lol

I forgot all the tricks, where to do defender and Vulcan edge runs etc...

Started as adventurer - blah it's all hitter or all caster - hard to do a hybrid
 

Jait

Molten Core Raider
5,035
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This game is only slightly less obscure than DSO. Folks racked up some telephone bills back in the day. Glad it’s still around.
 

galgor

Bronze Knight of the Realm
128
16
This game also got me into MMO's. It was the primer to EQ for me. Honestly it was the friends I made that hooked me.

I remember the enchanting scene getting pretty fierce. You could enchant Wraths for extra stats. The kicker was that for every enchant (a "bang"), the chance of exploding the item went up. 10x banger wraths sold for prime money.
 

Siliconemelons

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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10x musta been during an expansion and SDM or whatever was above 189? Or whatever the classic max was. And even if you did a 10x, some where showoff lol FIVE SDER then what.. Immo? Lol

On this new server I just got a FIVE maul of the mist - as I went maul... trying to trade up to a FIVES before I bind it
 

Chukzombi

Millie's Staff Member
72,944
214,177
This was probably the last thing I expected to read today, what timeline am I in?

Realm was THE game that got me into MMOs (god damn it) and I played it up until Sierra sold it off to Codemasters. I've peeked in on it now and again over the years but the main server always had like 50 people "online" and most were just statues sitting next to teleport hubs. Looking at the server stats right now, 173 for the relaunch doesn't seem that much better and I imagine that number will be back down to ghost-tier in a week or so after the nostalgia/hype train has come off the tracks.

Such an interesting game though, I remember always having to cast See Invis before leaving the house because people would legit just sit outside of people's houses invis waiting to walk into the front door and rob them blind, or bruteforce passwords on the door since anyone could visit anyones house by just typing in their name to a teleport master. This also let people do cool giveaways where they would just fill their house up with shit ranging from total garbage to BIS items and would just announce in general channels for people to come and get ready then open the door and watch the vultures go wild. 10 Year old Bobby also somehow managed to get himself suspended right before a gold wipe and managed to keep 100+ million after the rest of the server got nuked down to like 100k, that was an awesome surprise and shopping spree when I came back, free Wraths and Glowies for everyone!

The cybering in that game was unreal too, like how much it pervaded everywhere, but I don't really think that's surprising when there were literal wedding chapels in almost every city and characters could strip down to underwear and dye shirts/pants flesh colored. They (Sierra) knew exactly what they were doing.

I don't think I'll end up giving this a try, what made Realm so interesting to me I don't think can be recaptured or recreated in 2018 with such a tiny playerbase but it's cool to know that someone out there is still trying to keep it alive.
you know why it was a cyberfest? because before TheRealm there was (INN) ImagiNation Network from Sierra . INN was basically all chat all the time and if you were chatting, you were likely cybering.
ImagiNation%20Network_7.png

i started playing INN in late 1993 i played for a year, then Sierra offered everyone in INN a free beta pass for those interested in playing their new game, The Realm Online. so instead of just chatting with your friends and cybering landwhales using little cartoon portraits to jack off to, you could have full sized tunes to be naughty with.
habitat_3.jpg

i hopped right on over to The Realm because i was more interested in gaming than cybering, but there was a lot of that going on. i stayed for close to 4 years on my human Adventurer got every conceivable bling there was, lost EVERYTHING in a masive itemwipe intended to control mudflation. as a consolation, Sierra or whomever was running the game at that point gave us all a plaque on our doors so we could brag about being oldschool. i rebuilt all my bling from naked. got even more powerful because the levelcap was raised from 100 to 1000 and we got a few new dungeons with mobs that were level 100ish. that was it. 2 years of killing the same King Kilroggs and playing dressup gets real boring. the pvp was the most fun when you got over lv 500, but their content was nonexistant.
realm.gif

you thought EQ travel was boring? try running through each one of those little blocks and having to wait for your screen to load each time on a 14.4k modem. you could port to different towns, but if you wanted to kill one of the bosses in a dungeon, you had to take a long fucking time to get there.
before encounters became trivial. you could have some fun with your friends in each dungeon. if you PK'd too many players the Warden would automatically gank you when you went into a major town like Leinster and there you would sit in a virtual prison and serve your sentence in REAL TIME. i once had to sit there for 3 hours with nothing to do but stare at a rat walk around the room until my sentence was over.
jailmousie.jpg

i had one friend who had acrued something like 3 months of RL jail time for pickpocketing and PK 'ing mass amounts of people. when the Warden finally caught up to him, he said fuck it and quit the game. i quit the week EQ went live. i had had enough. i said on general chat farewell to all my friends and where i was going. i told them to Everquest, the GM told me not to mention other games in general chat. i told him to fuck off and then i got banned too. never looked back. TRO was fun for a time, but it didnt age well.
 
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Siliconemelons

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ahh the old UI :)

Yeah TRO was a wild west of mmos as it emerged from muds and whatnot into "real" MMOs - that is why, while TRO and UO were really the "first gen" -- EQ was the first /real/ MMO - you never did anything massive with the population on TRO except be a townie, cyber or PK
 
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Chukzombi

Millie's Staff Member
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ahh the old UI :)

Yeah TRO was a wild west of mmos as it emerged from muds and whatnot into "real" MMOs - that is why, while TRO and UO were really the "first gen" -- EQ was the first /real/ MMO - you never did anything massive with the population on TRO except be a townie, cyber or PK
you could do a lot as a townie craftwise in TRO, but you really had to level first. i didnt get into crafting until EQ and only with Alchemy because i was one of the few people doing it. remember how slow the leveling was in TRO? you could kill rats, but they only gave you 2 or 3 points at a time, the Kilrogs and banshees were much better, but they were heavily camped so you had to log in late as fuck.