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.