TibiaNews

Tibianews contains a massive ammount of articles, the oldest dating all the way back to 2004. However, many of those articles are unknown by the newer players. So why not revive them?

I will occasionally post an old article, starting with the oldest. I won't post them all, since most of the old articles were event announcements. But enough talking, let's start. Here's the first article!


13/04/2004 · Nahir Tollkühn of Antica investigates the truth behind Tibian real estate.

Fewer and fewer houses have been up for public auction, there has also been a significant rise in housing prices on about 500% over the last year. Is this a sign of house shortage? I decided to find out, so I hit the streets of Darashia in order to find out how many percent of the population that actually owns a house nowadays. After spending some time asking around I found that 55% of the Tibians I asked didn't own a house and thought that housing was too expensive.

But this is not just a problem in Darashia but for the entire Tibian continent, every city lacks sufficient housing and the city rulers refuse to expand the city borders. It might be an expensive task to move the city walls but houses need to be build all over Tibia in order to meet the rising demand. The high demand has also caused the prices to reach new heights as I mentioned earlier and as days go by prices are expected to go even higher. So if ye want to get rich nowadays get into the real estate business.

Perhaps it is even time to found a new city somewhere in the wilderness? A few days ago I overheard a group of adventurers talking about building themselves a boat and travel to distant shores to find both adventures and housing. Expeditions into unknown lands have been done in the past and have been successful when it comes to founding new cities. Look at Edron for example.

Let's tell our regents that this is not the time to lock themselves up in their castles. The Tibians demands housing and they want them now.

Nahir Tollkühn
Darashia
Antica

i like the actual idea of bringing the new players (oh well, do we really have anyone new in our forums?) to attnetion of older articles, which were indeed rich in value.

I agree, Elu ... there's a lot of cool stuff in the archives ...

Canti ...

23/04/2004 - The situation in Rookgaard.

Rookgaard: New Outlaw Campament?

Rookgaard, once a beloved and beautiful southern isle for many, is becoming to be named The New Outlaw Campament.
Rookgaard is quickly becoming wild. You just have to spend perhaps 10 minutes in the town to realise the rude environment our fellow newbies have to face in every session, everyday: thieves, pushers, spammers people yelling all kinds of nasty words, looters and, lately, lurers, are the particular fauna of Rookgaard.

Populated by newcomers and high-levels with newbie scouts who wishes to take a break of the sometimes stressing continent, Rookgaard is a land with no laws. It is impossible to take revenge on someone who has just robbed your monster, spammed or insulted you, because killing is not allowed. This is why the old phrase "you will die in main" echoes between the island trees here and there.

The situation has become even funnier just recently with the incoming number of lurers. Those people, who loves to attract wasps or spearmen into the town (where a lot of level ones are), are growing quickly in number. "I died coz a wasp and lost my 12gp when I was at Obee!!" yelled a young warrior when he was asked. A classic thing to do in Rookgaard is of course getting drunk of wine (which effects lasts an awful lot of time!) in the town, since an unlimited supply barrel was provided with an update years ago; now picture a lot of drunken Level Ones trying to battle a wild wasp in the narrow streets of the town and you will know how Rookgaard looks lately!

"It's horrible! It is impossible to hunt", argued Druman, a passing-by Rookgaard inhabitant, when asked about his experiences. "The isle is crowded to the last bit and fights for deciding who owns a monster are the everyday bread for newbies". You realise how hard the situation is when you have a view at Tibia population census and checks that Rookgaard throws a massive +15.000 citizens in most servers while for comparison purposes, Kazordoon population census has around 610 citizens in the last count.
However, Premium users does not complaint that much about Rookgaard becoming crowded. Their special area is big enough to accomodate a big number of hunters and guarantee a fast and smooth transiction to the continent.

"The worse are the spammers", said someone else, hidden inside the shop of Tom the Tanner. "I wish CIP could implement an anti-spam feature soon, and also for the game channels!"

We are praying that the Gods will pay attention to that beautiful isle, full of secrets and lovely hunting spots, specially because it is suppose to be the first place that a newcomer visits in his first glimpse at Tibia, and trust me: is an ugly view!

(pic from the article above for those who are too lazy to open it)

I'd rather have Rookgaard like it was back then, filled with spammers "BUY MACE" "BUY SHIELD" etc than how it is today... Nowadays the x-road is at most times empty and same goes for most of Rookgaard, when you finally run into someone the person is most likely completly afk-botting anyways. It's just sad.

i agree. rook was way better before. i mean you would be able to actually buy/sell something then. now i drop 3 leather sets in crossroads, after half h our i return to city, their still there.

An interesting article about elves written by Knightmare


16/04/2004 · Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

The Elves of Tibia. The cities, the players and the Monsters

Races like dwarfs and elves have been an issue from the earliest days of Tibia. Even in a time we had no magic there were people who claimed to be elves and dwarfs. A look in other games with fantasy settings show us that there are numerous, often playable races avaliable. So there IS some need from the playerside to interact with other races or even play some 'exotic creature'.
Still there are thoughts about enabling races for players and in which way it could be done so that the effort would actuall make some sense (speaking of of advantages and disadvantages). However this is of low priority with all thosethings to be fixed first. All in all such updates would suit only a minority of players and probably present a new bunch of problems and imbalances, not to mention the need for more Graphics (there are no female Versions for all races but humans). So they MIGHT be implemented sooner or later but nothing is for sure (as usual). With this option in mind and given the opportunity to create a base of mythology and behaviour patterns for the races I started to create the 'racial cities' of the dwarfs and later of the elves. I will give a deeper inside in tibian dawrfenism in another issue. For now lets concentrate on the creation of Ab'Dendriel and Shadowthorn.



As much as I apreciated the enthusiasm with which people in other games incorporated othere races, I disliked the 'I want to be something mean and dangerous' atitude they displayed. All in all they wanted to be 'better' in some way and 'feared' by other players for what they represented. Of course its more easy t be feared then to be respected, but I still think this need to be 'dangerous' was still a try to earn some respect. If you looked into certain 'free RPG shards' of certain games you saw world croweded of player vampiers and drow (dark-evil elves). You met more of them then any other race, not to mention humans or the like. Even mor pathetic as soon as someone tried to play a 'cute' and harmless race he was marked as target by those players who saw a change to emphasize their 'evilness' by slaughtering the harmless. So for me one agenda was NO DROW in tibia.

Still there was a need to play diferent types of elves so i incorporated the castes. I choose castes instead of subraces to allow more variety and rolplaying elemtes and to aviod to become too similar to other worldesttings. With the Cenath, Kuridai and the Deraisim I introduced castes to suit most general player whishes. We have the 'magical elves', the forest dwellers and the more warlike ones. For convenience and as a credit for the dark elve lovers i made the kuridai even to underground dwellers. So in theory we have some 'proto dark elves' at least.

In general the castes might be seen as proto subraces at all. In the far (not planned out) Tibian future they MIGHT become separated subraces, but for now its sufficient to deal with castes.




In the library of Ab'Dendriel you find a wealth of information about the elven history. Its bound to the context I founded for Tibia as a whole. The elves are a older race. Like many seemingly abandoned and discarded by the gods who used them in their creation wars. Like most of the older races they are no longer tied to whorship of the ancient gods. Through the nature of the tibian cosmology some of the older elven Heroes MIGHT be in the process of ascension to some form of 'godhood' on their own. The elven pantheon is more or less open and undefined.

In the future I might have a look of the actual 'whorship' of the ascendant elves by players and perhaps emphasize the roles of those most liked 'gods' in the elven comunity.

For now I have to admit I lacked the time to implement most of the information contained in that library into the NPCs. I certainly plan to do that, but that needs time and I might better spent it on more pressing issues first. Since Ab'Dendriel is a 'real' town, the elven 'monsters' were not used that much in its creation. Hostile elves did not realy fit in my concept of the city so you will find only a few elves you can fight in that area. Most are outcasts by choice or punishment.

Of course I might have picked up the idea of evil underground elves but for obvious reasons I did not.

As I created Ab'Dendriel I focused on 'natural' walls and houses. Due to a lack of graphics I had to stick to trees and use 'normal' walls above ground since I wanted to gice each layer of the city a certain look. On the other hand I am not that happy with the looks of the upper areas. Perhaps it can be changed in a later update if graphics are avaliable but I doubt it will be possible for the player owned houses up there which have to remain save from changes.

Later the new plant barrier graphics was aded which I'd liked to use for Ab'Dendriels groundlevel from the beginning. But first of all the groundlevel looks good as it is and still the houses there would have caused some problems (not to mention I had no access to that area after it was added in). Still I wonderes how Ab'Dendriel would have looked with such Graphics. Aditionally I still thought of all those elven monsters as a waste. They were almost impossible to be hunted on purpose because they were so few.

And in a growing world thenumber of orcs and minotaurs increased, causing the players to get bored. So as I got the huge area around venore to be edited I picked up those ideas. So I created a 'huntable' elven city. Definetly more dark then Ab'Dendriel it suited the purposes as huntinground on a visual base and by putting a greater emphasize on the warlike Kuridai and underground areas I added some interestig places for a hunt.

All in all Dhadowthirn is a good example for a elven town emphasizing more on the bitterness for the fate of that races. Theese elves feel betrayed by the gods and the younger races and certainly don't welcome visitors. Not ready for war with the humans (yet?) but a dangerous place for a daring adventurer for sure. For CIPs sake I had to restrict the 'eye candy' part of that area and so most things have an actuall hunting opportunity and added not huge chunks of 'good looking but useless' parts that would have been unnoticed by the majority of the tibian population anyways. So basically theres less sightseeing and more opportunities to kill (and beeing killed). Now we have a first good use of all those elven 'monsters' and not this pathetic cameo apperarences in dungeons with other themes. I still have the idea of another elven caste or spin off colony but that might be hard to be implemented and I am not sure it would realy fit the theme of the areas to come so I won't spoil the surprise here or make promises I can't keep.

For now in am contend with the spreading if elves over the gameworld and could put more emphasize in creating background and making some points in elven society and history more clear and give it more impact in NPC reactions. Its still an enourmous task and my tima is as limited as my insight in CIPs plans for the future ;o)

-- Knightmare

10/05/2004 · Royal Scandal!

Royal Scandal: Queen Eloise and King Tibianus secret photos!

Queen Eloise of Carlin and King Tibianus of Thais has been spotted today together in Queen Eloise's Castle in Carlin, completely naked and in loving attitude on the Queen's locked bedroom.
Druid Brithael Hurgal of Venore, who is working hard in order to get his Promotion, went today to King Tibianus' Castle to ask some questions about said promotion and did found the Royal Hall empty. Since Brithael has businesses in Carlin he didn't mind much and took Captain Bluebear's ship straight to Carlin with the purpose of trying to see Queen Eloise.

His surprise was huge when he found Carlin's Royal Hall empty aswell.

But somehow Brithael sneaked to the upper floor, thinking that the Queen could be on any of the rooms above, until he slammed with a locked door. It was the noise of some moans and sweet words on low voice reasons enough for him to have a peek through the keyhole, revealing a scene he could have never guessed.

Brithael was quick enough to catch the momentum using the known spell Ess Kreen Shott:



The news are in everybody's mouth from Edron to Kazordoon. Edron and Venore's majors has filed an official protest to King Tibianus saying that they understand now why the Queen can issue promotions and they cannot, and added some comments about King Tibianus and Kazordoon's Emperor relationship.

Where this scandal will bring more serious consequences to Tibia is still to be seen.

An article about a proposal that was made AGES ago (read: 6 years), and that we now take as granted


26/05/2004 · Skill Bar?

Guido pronnounces about the Skill Bar

On November the second, 2003, White John, a young knight of the server Amera opened a thread in proposals regarding the Skill Bar. The thread couldn't be more brief: "We should have a bar by each of are skillz and it shows a bar how long till are next skill... or we click on the skill and a new window pops up saying how long till next skill level"
Somehow the thread has never gone down. It is safely sitting there, on the Proposals board first page, with some whooping 130 pages, 2591 replies and 27.084 views!

While CIP has never tried to favour the more pure powergaming side of Tibia, it is a Fact that Tibia is, love it or hate it, populated by powergamers. Advancing towards the next level and raising skills is everybody's favourite pass-time. And it's not like there are no statistics in the game already, no?

This is the aspect the SkillBar could have, in a proposal designed by Sirios.



We approached Guido of CipSoft and asked him about their thoughts regarding this massively-appraised proposal, since in our opinion it wouldn't take much time to code the Skill Bar:

"You are right this would not really take a lot time, but if I compare this little idea with the tasks we could do instead, I can tell you that this would help Tibia much more. All I can do is to acceopt the fact that this is indeed a feature many customers wants and that it would be a nice add-on for the next update. Maybe I can put it on the todo-list there and then it will be easier accepted by the others, even I have to be a bit diplomatic because I am not alone here. But I do not think that we can do more now and this will take some time".

While we suspect the Skill Bar did not managed it way into the incoming update, it is at least something that CipSoft has noticed the thread and there could be a positive reaction to it.
We will keep you informed.

i wonder, am i the only one reading those articles?

I read them every now and then I've read most of them before though

07/05/2004 · Tibia in 1998

A Document reveals how Tibia was back in 1998


It's amazing how time develops and you do not even realice it fully. We have been sent a document with a little image on the top which says "Tibia News"; however, all the dates are related to 1998! Out of curiosity, we used some online translators to solve the little problem of the website being completely written in german By doing that, and thanks to a bit of help of Taghor for translating some bits where the translator failed miserably, we got some interesting pieces of information which are unceremoniously shown here

July the 11th, 1998
The new server does not run faster and more stably, unfortunately. Good enough, it is also stated that there could be more players online simultaneously, when with the beta version nearly there were ever more than 10 players (in the alpha version such a number was already a suspicious record! ^_^). And have Caution! The Cyclop is now more strong and Rotworms respawns very slowly, which makes the old strategies in the temple senseless.

Bite me... 10 players online at once!? CipSoft has surely walked some path in all this time, eh? Lets read some more...

July the 15th, 1998
Tibia has a new guild. They call themselves The Riders of the Apocalypse and place a bad guild there. Its Leader, Betrayal, promises to re-establish reconciliation between Chaos and order. Now under "reconciliation" he probably means something else. Understand that if us or them kills a player, his code of ethics does dictates that we will surely have a few problems with the guild!!

A bit obscure; I think the online translator did a bad work. But for sure Riders of the Apocalypse was perhaps one of the first not 100% good guilds


This is the so called "Trollbar" in the Troll caves, East of Thais. There you can read scrolls with menus including all kind of delicatessen involving dogs, but no dog is there to be seen! Well, back then in the old days... there were dogs!

June the 5th, 1998
For some hours now, Tibia 4.1 is online. The most important changes to version 4.0 are: One does not loose so much experience points when dying anymore. In the north there is a large new underworld. There are 2 new monster races. Killing animals and monsters
does not brings so much experience as before. Some monsters does not have so many magic articles now. The inventory closes now if one goes into another level. The character now runs substantially more slowly.

So the inventory closing when taking a ladder or a hole was a feature? And they loose much more experience points when dying? Surely 1998 was not the best year for online computer gaming eh? Sheesh.

June the 23th, 1998
According to a Message from CIP at the Forum, we can expect some new features in the future. We can enjoy new monsters, a mapeditor and mostly the removal of the annoying not-able-to-log-in bug, which did ruin us many evenings. CIP also plans for the next months to implement a Direct-X Client, more intelligent NPCs (Guards, which react on thefts and PKing) and the traveling with different types of transportations, like horses, coachs or ships. If this really will be implemented, stays in the stars, cause one of the 3 Developers is going to America to study......

It seems that the loginbug is something that has been with us from the very old days, and funny how the Direct-X version is mentioned back in 1998 when
it only came many years later. Pity the guards idea about reacting to PKs were never approved, it would have been cool ever when some could have pointed out
that the idea was took from Ultima Online. Horses, ships... maybe soon!


The old Madmage Room. Notice the demons, the beholder, the cyclop... the funny ghoul?

Richard is an inspired Tibia player and is level 8 at the moment with 20.000 ExpPoints. It's future level is 12, as he wants to become gladly a knight. However, without the gift of magic live is not complete! therefore he has decided to become knight in the 8th level (this value is over the minimum level 5 and under 12).

Seems in the old days you could decide vocation at any given moment between level 4 and 12? Strange it is...

April the 14th, 1998
Watch out! In the temple of the red worms a completely badass has trapped everyone by closing the door, which can be open only with the proper key. He has not yet return! Some are imprisoned, and so I am. I will wait until this evening in the hope all is again ok.

Go figure... players trapping others in the Temple of Rots in Thais back in 1998. I guess this is why Gamemasters landed in Tibia .

Have fun!

31/05/2004 · Rats infects paladin guild


Unexpected wave of rats infects the Paladins Guild in Thais.

A pale and shy Sun highlighted a yelling Elane early this morning, when she came to attend at the Paladin's Guild in Thais as everyday. Elane discovered with shock that the entire guild was infected by Rats and quickly yelled for Help.

Alerted by the aforementioned yells, Little Dre, a young druid of the Krin Fan Club, came promptly to inspect the situation. "That was reaaaaaally fast...", explains Elane, "The rats forced him to retreat to a corner and was bring down to Death much before than I could react".



Mistic Girl and his friend were also too late to offer some help assisting the unfortunate Little Dre against the plague of furious rats. "You can argue they are lowclass monsters", mutters Mistic Girl, "but teamed they constitutes a fabulous enemy, for Guido's Sake!".

The situation quickly attracted a bunch of experienced adventurers who arranged some chairs to trap the rats inside the building. Frojin raised an eyebrown when he could inspect the situation. Eye-witness has reported to Tibianews that it was agreed that the number of rats were posssibly too much to solve the problem with arrows or swords, and Frojin decided to cast a mass-poison spell to finish off with the Rats and any descendant who could be hidden in the floor or walls. "If this doesn't stop them respawning, nothing will do", commented a passing-by warrior, nodding enthusiastically.



Elane spent the rest of the morning at Frodo, who was trapped by furniture, to calm down her nerves.

When asked, a level 13 druid who was standing close to the depot commented: "Adura Vita".

I found this interesting article about a certain study that was done around "gender-bending" in mmorpgs. And some of the remarks made by people are funny xD.


27/06/2004 · Gender-Bending

Tapping the pulse on gender-bending

The Norrathian Scrolls, is a website that contains demographic studies about MMORPGs, and has called our attention for one of their articles about Gender-Bending.
There has been some famous cases of tibians playing male or female characters that later on were discovered to be of the opposite gender. Curious enough, some of those players, once the "fraud" was unveiled, did quit Tibia.

The Norrathian Scrolls have asked a decent chunk of MMORPG players about their reasons to play with male characters when they are female, and viceversa.

Interesting enough, players who have characters of the opposite gender were asked to indicate their main reason for doing so from a list of reasons given. About a quarter of players who did gender-bend (27.4%) did so for role-play reasons, while another quarter (25.6%) did so because of the visual appearance of the opposite gender.

1) For role-play purposes: 27.4%
2) Visual appearance: 25.6%
3) Other: 16.8%
4) To gain advantage in game: 11.8%
5) Gender exploration: 7.1%

Female players who did gender-bend were significantly more likely to do so for gender exploration (%male=6.2, %female=21.1). Male players who did gender-bend were slightly more likely to do so because of in-game advantages (%male=14.6, %female=5.3).
The most interesting part of the article resides in the comments of the players that has performed gender-binding in MMORPGs.

Personally, for some of the races, the female graphic just "looks better" than the male graphic, and that is why I chose the female gender. The male graphics for some races just looks generic, and bland. [m, 22]
I really did not like the way female characters were drawn. They make me somewhat uncomfortable and could not imagine myself as that character. [f, ?]

Mainly just because I like the appearance of the character [f, 22]

I don't pine to be treated better or different by other players, I just like to see a woman kick some butt [m, 25]

She was my second character. I created a female because the thought of a ass kicking female sounded fun. I played her until 27 and lost interest in the class. She was a wood-elf ranger. [m, 35]

Um probably had something to do with lara croft i figured i would rater watch a pretty girl run around on the screen than a sweaty guy. [m, 22]

Personally, you recieve a LOT more stuff when you start out as a female. Take my Barb Shammy for example. A guy comes up to me and says " Hmmm Looks like you are looking for some new stuff " So he takes me and buys all Large Leather or better, and all my spells. Theres no contest that female characters get a lot more help. I help them too, though not as much because it is somtimes obvious that they are guys =/ [m, 14]

Roleplaying, mostly. I wanted to try something different. After making my first male character, the two characters I have made since him have also been male. [f, 22]

I find a roleplaying experience to be much more enjoyable when you are roleplaying someone that isn't very much like yourself--having a character of the opposite just happens to be one of many ways to create a character that is vastly different than yourself. [m, 14]

I thought the blond barbarian quite the hunk. And since it was obvious that none of my girls would get hooked up with one, I decided to play him myself. [f, 39]

I created a male character strictly for the purpose of getting completely away from everything. It is the last place anyone would think to look for me. There are also times when I just don't feel like putting up with some dork who's found out that I'm female in real life following me around hitting on me. [f, 33]


When asked whether they found their characters of the opposite gender were being treated differently, both male and female players talked about the in-game advantages that came with being a female character:

Yes! I'm a level 12 High Elf, and I have a staff of the observers, and an FBR... neither of which I bought! Guys gave them to me. [m, 16]
Yes. Female characters are given more unsolicited help at low levels. [m, 24]

Yup. The stereotypes apply. Boy characters didn't stop to help me the way they stop to help my female characters, and they didn't just walk up and start a conversation. [f, 37]

Yes. I felt that I was taken a little more seriously. When I play my male characters, other male members of the party will listen to me better, take me more seriously. In my male form I could give orders and have them listened to, where as a female, my characters aren't always taken quite as seriously. Also, where my female characters were gifted many things when they were young and naked by random players, I didn't see it happening with my males, which I didn't mind at all. I've enjoyed the higher level of "respect" for my abilities that seems to come with playing in a male body. [f, 22]

I was in a group I had worked with for a while. I was playing my male paladin and trying to be the group tank. I was pulling the mobs too ( in a rather dangerous zone). After a while, a conversation about our home lives started and I made a comment about my husband. Immediately the guys in the group asked me if I was really female in RL. When I confirmed it they started sending out another male character to pull the mobs. I found the whole group suddenly expecting me to do less melee. I'm not sure if they became protective of me or if they just assumed that a female would be less capable in the role of a tank. [f, 29]

When I'm playing a male character, I get a lot of "bro's" and more of a sense of cameraderie from the other male players, but that's about it. [f, 30]

When asked whether they had learned anything about the opposite gender, many male players talked about what they learned from being constantly harassed by male characters:

I never realized how irritating it can be to have to put up with unwanted advances. [m, 38]

I'm amazed how throughtless some people can be, how amazingly inept men are at flirting and starting a conversation with a female, and how it really does take more effort to be taken seriousely as a female versus a male. [m, 24]

No, I know most males think with their gonads, and act accordingly. They live up to my low expectations. [m, 25]


When asked whether they thought they had learned anything about themselves from their virtual gender-bending experiences, several respondents talked about an increased awareness of their own masculinity or femininity, or how it let them see society differently:

I have learned how to flirt, how to be sexual with peole in RL, and most importantly, I now value being a woman, for the first time in my life. Always before I have focused on the lack of respect, the expectation of lower quality work from women, and felt that being a woman i was automatically disrespected. In eq, i can plainly see that i am respected just for being a woman, and can now see how in rl, that happens too. That both viewpoints occur. Somehow, I am able to look at this mess of contradictions and value myself more. That I am a lot more sexual than I have thought of myself in the last few years. That being a woman can be a lot of fun. [f, 40]
As I got to see how the rest of Norrath treats males and females, I came to realize that, try as I might, I don't treat men and women equally in RL myself. [m, 25]

Who said you could not learn anything in a computer game? We are certainly living another stage in computer gaming... no?

Source: "The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of EverQuest" (version 2.5) by Nicholas Yee, 2001.

An excellent and valuable thread Elu - a great idea ressurecting these old articles