Rubies of Eventide is now a free online game

[jim]

"Rubies of Eventide" at eventide.net is a shareware game offered by Cyber Warrior Inc.

I haven't tried it yet (downloading now heh) but it looks like it may have potential. Some of the screen shots look interesting.

Apparently it was cancelled during beta but some of the folks have brought it out as a shareware game. I hope they can make it succeed as shareware. Might set an example for the industry.

From their FAQ:
Gorgeous 3D graphics based on the Jupiter Engine
Highly customizable characters
7 races
Over 100 professions
Over 50 skills
8 magic schools with over 175 spells
Dyable clothing and armor
Deep skill-based character advancement system
Complex crafting system (over 5000 item variations, and growing)
Unique turn-based strategy combat
Detailed reputation tracking system
Griefer resiliant closed combat system
Player versus player
crafting and gathering skills

www.eventide.net/

More info is at www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/overview/gameID/158
(if it lets you go to the page-cookie requirement) otherwise just go to www.mmorpg.com and look under their "latest news updates" in the lower left of the page.

screenshots-
www.gamescreenshots.com/smallthumbs.asp?category=PC&game_id=957

[jim]

Oops I guess it wasn't cancelled in beta. It actually has quite a long history. I'm not sure of the accuracy of the below quote but it sounds good heh.

Rubies of Eventide: the third time's a charm

Rubies of Eventide is the newest addition to the MMORPG family. In spite the fact you have probably never heard of this project, the development took full nine years. And it is well worth it.

Current design of Rubies of Eventide MMORPG is third incarnation of computer “sword and sorcery” game by company called Cyber Warrior. The oldest form of Rubies was online project in text regime – MUD (multi-user dungeon). This kind of ancient online RPG used sophisticated game mechanisms, but the adventures were represented only by ASCII characters. So the experience was dependant mostly on player’s imagination. Second face of Rubies, a graphical one this time, was given to Rubies by proprietary engine Cancun capable of limited 3D graphics presentation. The big break took place two years ago when the development team decided to license the Jupiter Engine by Lith-Tech. This third incarnation matured after two years of development to stage when it was made public.

Basic principles of Rubies eventide were presented in our first impressions written from the experience gained in public beta stage. Rubies are very different compared to most online game on the market today. The biggest difference is number of classes available and system of characters development. Most RPG offers their players only few classes like mage, archer, warrior and healer. These are based on limitations on skills which can the given character class master. Rubies is using another system with awesome number of 104 classes. Every class is defined by starting skills and system of bonuses, which define how easy or hard it is for given character to learn and develop certain skills.

The race player chooses for a character has some influence on character’s development as well. It’s pretty clear that ogres will be better warriors in full plate or that a dwarf will be the best choice for a smith. Hovering Leshy charged with magical energy wont be the wisest choice for physical tasks in this game. The humans are as usual an average race with no visible advantages or disadvantages. The Gnomes are born for using magic or silent work with knives while Orcs can be serious warriors and crossbowmen. And last, but not least, the Elves – race you cant imagine without bows and bit of magic.

After a character is created, it spawns in the Adventurers Guild where player is given chance to master the game basics doing three quests, one for every type of combat, melee, ranged and magical one. Every task is rewarded by some magical jewelry with bonuses to character’s stats. Secondary effect of the Adventurers Guild quests is bringing the player painlessly to lvl two of their development.

Same map where Adventurers Guild is located offers mining town of Kaj Blood, a Keep and three dungeons, almost all the map is supposed for low level characters. Players cn fine few quests there to gain some so dearly needed money and experience. Doing quests and killing monsters is way to gain two types of experience reward. One is XP points, these are used to calculate players actual level. Based on XP gained players receive development points which are used to increase characters skills. This hybrid system combines two common approaches to character development in RPG – leveling when with every new level you gain better skills or abilities and macroing where skills are continuously increased actually by using them. Leveling is bothering because you have to wait quite long for skills increase while macroing opens space for cheating. System used in RoE allows you to increase your skills continuously without much space for cheaters who spend all day performing simple set of actions aimed to increase given skill. You probably remember hot it works in UO or Everquest.

There’s an exception in the development system for crafting and gathering skills – these use the macro-like style. This is another wise decision in game with the “choose wisely” motto. Right now, gaining DP is mostly matter of combat and having tailors fighting Dire Kobolds or Trolls with scissors is somewhat silly idea. Instead of that crafting requires time, dedication and lots of materials or money. The crafting itself reminds me of Las Vegas casinos. With start of item making you see chance to craft it in percents. The success depends on your skill and materials used. After first crafting attempt you will get an item in unfinished state with quality ranging from 75-124, or finished item with 125 quality. With bad luck you can receive only message that crafting attempt failed, but its part of the fun. With item made you can decide what to do, if you are happy withj the item quality, you can finish it. If you want to get better quality item, you can try crafting again – with more risk this time. And i can tell you, the thrill with crafting item worth 100 000 imperials with 80 % chance for success is beyond description.

But not only crafting is easy to learn and fun. Leveling characters is well balanced and is not bothering. The requirements for hirer levels are not as steep as in some other games. If you find the right monsters to fight, you can keep with approximately the same number of mobs killed. First few levels you can just wander around the Kaj Blood map. Higher levels can find enough challenge in other four maps averaging one town and dungeon per zone. At the time you will read this review another new zone will most probably be placed in game. It will bring new town for all rogue and evil characters in game with all the facilities for training and self improving.

Current level cap is 50, after reaching the lvl 51 bottom character changes from common adventurer into immortal with special powers. These are bonded to ancient artifacts called rubies of eventide – precious stones with souls of ancient sorcerers in them. These artifacts gave the game its name.

Rubies of Eventide is live for three months and like any other MMOPRG it is still evolving. In this case it means that not only the map is unfinished. There are many things waiting for implementation like race specific languages based on cryptographic principles or enchanter and rogue skills among other. Can’t say its bad, it only gives players reason to look forward to patch which emerges every month or even more frequently. Each update brings nice new stuff into the game like new maps or skills or new items with cool graphics which is always good way to please a gamer. In the following patch which should be ready as you read is supposed to bring in gathering skills and combat maneuvers which will add more fun in combat.

Another good news is proactive approach of the dev team regards the official game message board. The player’s opinions and ideas are taken very seriously. Players did already get protective gear for mages and somewhat weak summoned pets were made bit stronger. Not to mention how good it feels when your idea makes it into the game. On the other hand the forum is occupied mostly by Americans and some of them don’t like people criticizing “their favorite game“ much.

Not only game features make online game. Very important part of gameplay is the interaction with other player’s characters. Good group with some knowledge of game mechanisms are up to much more than any imaginable single character is. And my own experience proves that the payers are well aware of that fact. Thanks to it there’s no problem with finding a group even when you can’t speak English very well. Even if you can’t speak English you can have fun playing Rubies of Eventide as there is Czech guild in the game dating back to the beta stage.

At last we have the technical aspects of the game here and i need to say, it’s not all that bad. I can’t tell it looks better than AC2, far from it, but considering the capabilities of the Jupiter Engine, the devs did great job. Nice is the networking code which allows playing even on dial-up. What makes Rubies exquisite is the music, which is far from the old and tiring celtic cliché – you can find some samples on the cover DVD and judge them yourself. Among the MP3 files you will find there full installation of game client and documents translated to Czech as I am not to put it all into the review.

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[Marna]

dloaded, with all the patches.. installed... nothing happens.. cant configure to server.. is this game even live?

[Marc Trueshaft]

I almost tried it out about a year ago.
Then I started reading their message boards at the time.
It actually was live for a while,and pay to play.
What they don't tell you,sure they have a ton of skills and professions listed,but not all of them actually work.
Not all of the systems they crow about on the blurb were finished.
I guess they figured they'd fix things as they went along,but people very quickly started leaving.
Every time I visited the message board,there was another bunch of "farewell" posts,and a ton of posts wondering where the hell the devs were.
It was kind of morbidly fascinating watching it all happen,ike a train wreck in slomo.Then one day,I logged in to see what was up,and they had a post saying the server was shut down.The message boards were apparently wiped soon after that.
I guess somebody decided to try and resurrect it,like the folks who brought back Meridian 59 awhilke back.
Crazy.

[jim]

Marna-they are in the middle of a server move. You can check the server status on thier message board pages when they get back up.