[toivo]

There were some really brutal tactics in this game. If someone with a higher level was ighting with a tough opponent, you could wait for them to be low hp, kill them and take their stuff. Apparently the friendlist system in that game worked in a manner where you didn't have to accept the friend invitation to see if someone was online and their location in the world. This was useful for stalking. When you saw people you had beef with come online at the same time, you knew you were in trouble. Especially with a system where if you died, you could lose levels. My friend told me that he had sometime angered a Swedish clan they started to stalk him. His solution was to make fake account that pretended to be a member of this Swedish clan, and he then used it to bait an even bigger clan to attack this Swedish clan by pissing them off.

[greiskul]

Yes, you could add anyone to your list of people you wanted to your friends list to see if they were online. And if they were online, there was a spell that told you the cardinal direction they were from you, plus a fuzzy distance (they are very far to the north). So people used to hunt each other when they got to disagreements, and at higher levels, it was common for entire groups of people to get into wars with each other. The lack of instancing of any kind, made it so to advance you would need to go hunt monsters in an always shared environment, and with monster respawn rate sometimes being too low to support multiple people hunting at the same spot, and monsters not spawning in view of a player, made disagreements on who got to hunt where be bound to happen.

[carom]

I played this game a lot and loved it. It was brutal and I lost a lot of interest as it became more player friendly. Some more things to note -

You could not pass through other players so in a single person hall way you could be blocked. You could click and drag them to push but this could be counteracted by placing certain objects behind yourself (parcels for example) or another player.

You had to chat with NPCs to sell things. Hi. Sell plate armor. Yes. Yes. Things could only be sold one at a time.

Spells had to be typed out in the chat box. I do not remember if there were always hot keys, but if there were early on they did not auto cast.

Sorcerers and druids (healers) did something called mana sitting to grind up their magic level. Usually they would be making runes (stored up spell) that could be used in battle. These did not stack so you would sell backpacks full of them. Runes did not have hot keys for a long time so mages were pro at clicking them then clicking enemies or party members.

Knights (tanks) could train their melee skill by attacking monsters with a weak weapon. Basically just sitting around and chatting.

Rope, to go up holes, had to be used on a specific spot on the ground. You could pile items on this spot and block its use. This was used to trap people to be killed by players or monsters.

Luring was a big thing. You had to take these tedious walks between cities. Higher level players would lure monsters from further areas to the main path. You could bring both giant spiders and dragon lords to this path. I died a lot this way but it made travel very exciting. You could yell so it was often seen GS AR DWARF BRIDGE as you approached one of the larger barriers to monsters on the path.

The death penalty was very harsh as well. You lost like 10% (iirc) of your experience which amounted to your last level gained. Additionally, you had a 100% chance to drop your back pack slot, and a 10% chance to drop each piece of gear (helmet, weapon, shield, armor, legs, boots, ring, arrow slot). This hurt. Tears were shed.

Paladins (distance fighters) had to pick their ammo up off the ground. So they would throw a spear then have to pick it up.

To sell things you would advertise by yelling in the city you were in. The screen was always full of offers as you approached the depot in the city.

There was a game called fast hands where you tried to move items onto a mutually accessible square and off before the other person could grab it. Many people used scripts to cheat at this.

Tibia was absolutely brutal. Guilds operated very much as gangs. Tons of pl, br, and mx players. I loved it though. It was a very big part of my childhood. I loved it because it was brutally difficult and lost interest as some of these flaws were fixed. The other game I played was early America's Army, which also had a very different pace to most fps, it was another really fun game and kinda died when they switched engines and may the play loop more traditional and faster (added respawns).

[shrovis]

It's amazing to see Tibia on HN and hear these stories and refresh my memory. I almost lost touch with that part of my childhood.

I loved how brutal Tibia was. One day I was just hanging out in front of the bank (which was also the main market place), looking what others had to sell. A very high player with incredible walking speed arrived from the East. He was blocked by a a few players (it's always busy in Thais as it's the main centre). Within a split second he blast a magic spell at the person in front of him, who died instantly. Chaos ensued, and the high level player continued on his way to the West (it looked like he was in a hurry). Then everyone flocked to the dead person and started throwing around its body and gear. (If someone accesses the dead body, but someone else moves it, the dialog window that shows the body's content is closed). When someone would die, this ritual would continue until the body was far away from multiple people as long as it took for someone to finish looting the body.

I was standing one square away from the dead person, and really felt grateful it wasn't me. Poor guy lost his gear and had to level up again just because someone needed to get through...

It's just one of many many experiences I had, many of which rushed adrenaline through my veins.

[freeflight]

> The death penalty was very harsh as well. You lost like 10% (iirc) of your experience which amounted to your last level gained. Additionally, you had a 100% chance to drop your back pack slot, and a 10% chance to drop each piece of gear (helmet, weapon, shield, armor, legs, boots, ring, arrow slot). This hurt. Tears were shed.

And that's the "forgiving" version, really early on players would even drop their equipment on death.