C
CanIhaveYourStuf
Guest
No, not really. That's against the rules lol
But I was thinking about the old days of RPG's.
Yes, just RPG's...NOT with the "MMO" prefix. Because I'm a little fed up with the user interface of a certain MMORPG I've been slugging through the trial version of (to which I must say that perhaps ten million people could indeed be wrong).
So one of the things that folks did early on was something called Play By Mail (PBM). For those of you too young to know what a postage stamp is (and us real old farts will remember when you had to do this to them
), "mail" was this analog message delivery system where you would um...how you say "write"...ok, use your primitive analog word processor (usually a quill dipped in ink before the new Fountain Pen 1.0 came out) to create a message by hand and send it to your analog printer (again, hand-operated) to have your message go directly to paper, and then contract a series of government employees to actually hand-deliver a physical copy (indeed, the ONLY copy) of your message to someone else. Don't laugh, because this is what the cavemen had to endure before Al Gore invented the internet.
Anyhow, PBM involved playing Dungeons and Dragons (an analog rip-off of World of Warcraft) via this antiquated message delivery system, whereby a "Dungeon Master" would take on the role of the software company, and a variety of players around the world would take on the roles of users. Every couple of weeks (remember, they had to ride horses to deliver their messages, as Bike Messenger v1 was still in beta) the Dungeon Master would receive lists of the players actions, tabulate everything and make decisions on the outcomes of their actions, and then send mail back to them detailing what was going on and what their next choices could be. This was brilliant, as it was the first time, even before MMORPG's could even be conceptualized, that gamers didn't need to be present with one another to play a game.
So, I got to thinking: While TSO is going to be shut down, no ifs, ands, or butts...they can't take away your OFFLINE disks (you know, for The Sims 2.0 or whatver). You could, in theory, collaborate with your friends in a variety of ways. You could create a neighborhood, then email the data file to a friend, who plays around with it a bit and then forwards it on to the next person. You could have everyone playing the same sim, different sims in the same house, or managing different houses in the same neighborhood. Is using cheat codes ok, or not? Can you make up new sims? How long do you play for before forwarding it on? It's all up to you, not a game company, for a change.
OK, so it's not EXACTLY The Sims ONLINE...but perhaps it's similar enough in concept that it will act as a coping mechanism and help some of y'all through these tough times...
But I was thinking about the old days of RPG's.
Yes, just RPG's...NOT with the "MMO" prefix. Because I'm a little fed up with the user interface of a certain MMORPG I've been slugging through the trial version of (to which I must say that perhaps ten million people could indeed be wrong).
So one of the things that folks did early on was something called Play By Mail (PBM). For those of you too young to know what a postage stamp is (and us real old farts will remember when you had to do this to them
), "mail" was this analog message delivery system where you would um...how you say "write"...ok, use your primitive analog word processor (usually a quill dipped in ink before the new Fountain Pen 1.0 came out) to create a message by hand and send it to your analog printer (again, hand-operated) to have your message go directly to paper, and then contract a series of government employees to actually hand-deliver a physical copy (indeed, the ONLY copy) of your message to someone else. Don't laugh, because this is what the cavemen had to endure before Al Gore invented the internet.Anyhow, PBM involved playing Dungeons and Dragons (an analog rip-off of World of Warcraft) via this antiquated message delivery system, whereby a "Dungeon Master" would take on the role of the software company, and a variety of players around the world would take on the roles of users. Every couple of weeks (remember, they had to ride horses to deliver their messages, as Bike Messenger v1 was still in beta) the Dungeon Master would receive lists of the players actions, tabulate everything and make decisions on the outcomes of their actions, and then send mail back to them detailing what was going on and what their next choices could be. This was brilliant, as it was the first time, even before MMORPG's could even be conceptualized, that gamers didn't need to be present with one another to play a game.
So, I got to thinking: While TSO is going to be shut down, no ifs, ands, or butts...they can't take away your OFFLINE disks (you know, for The Sims 2.0 or whatver). You could, in theory, collaborate with your friends in a variety of ways. You could create a neighborhood, then email the data file to a friend, who plays around with it a bit and then forwards it on to the next person. You could have everyone playing the same sim, different sims in the same house, or managing different houses in the same neighborhood. Is using cheat codes ok, or not? Can you make up new sims? How long do you play for before forwarding it on? It's all up to you, not a game company, for a change.
OK, so it's not EXACTLY The Sims ONLINE...but perhaps it's similar enough in concept that it will act as a coping mechanism and help some of y'all through these tough times...
