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The Game Archaeologist: The silent world of Tibia
If I were to tell you that there's a Western MMO out there that's as old as Ultima Online and yet still has a half-million players, would you believe me? Heck, I wouldn't believe me even if I came back from the future of having written this article to talk to the past version of me who had yet to start it! But that's Tibia for you: a weird underdog of an MMO that's cruised underneath most players' radars for over a decade and a half. From its origins as a student project, Tibia jumped in the unexplored waters of the early MMO era and dog paddled for all its worth. This 17-year-old title remains one of the very few active MMOs from the '90s and one of only a handful that stubbornly stuck to a 2-D graphics format even as 3-D swept the gaming genre. And trust me, those aren't even the most interesting facts about it!
Tibia summer update features new world quests, tutorial
Quick, name a few of the world's oldest MMORPGs! Now, name a couple that are still running. Chances are most of you chimed in with Ultima Online, EverQuest, or maybe even Meridian 59. You're correct of course, but there's another title that released in 1997 that's still going today. That title is Tibia, and the 2-D fantasy game from CipSoft GmbH has just announced a world-changing summer update. World quests are "highly complex missions which can only be accomplished if dozens or even hundreds of Tibia players cooperate," according to a new press release. The new quests add another level to Tibia's conflict-driven dynamic that sees players and guilds war with one another for years at a time, as the battlefield will now extend further into the open world and likely result in competition for quest objectives. Tibia is also offering a new quest line for newbs. The comprehensive tutorial series leads new players through various gameplay tasks and offers a concise yet thorough introduction to one of the genre's longest-running titles.
Mobile MMO TibiaME hits 10,000 subscribers
This isn't one of those "Wow, this game has only been out for X days and already has Y subscribers!" posts. TibiaME (the ME means Micro Edition) is certainly not a new title. In fact, the mobile MMO was released all the way back in 2003. What makes its latest milestone of 10,000 premium subscribers more notable is the rate at which the game's playerbase has been growing in recent times. 2008 saw the number of subscribers double, and 2009 has been extremely strong so far too. Off the top of our heads, we would say the rising popularity of smartphones would be a contributing factor, but apparently a collaboration with a large Indonesian mobile phone network has been a huge help as well.TibiaME bills itself as "the first massive multiplayer online role-playing game for mobile phones". After this latest news, Andreas Weikl (marketing manager from the game's German developer CipSoft) thinks it might be time to add another achievement to the list: "Altogether, TibiaME now has an active player base of around 40,000 players. As far as we know, TibiaME is therefore not only the first but by now as well the biggest mobile MMORPG in the world."
