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Wograld ...

Our Graphics Requirements Are Less Demanding

Wograld is a 2D, Free Software, multiplayer online roleplaying game. Unlike many other game projects out there, we put the desires of users first, rather than some "cool" language that developers would like to use. Users, that is the people who would actually play the game rather than write code for fun, are more important than what some developer would like to learn in order to advance its cause of living to code and coding to live.

Why 2D games? Isn't 2D dead? While 3D AAA title games have gotten too much attention in recent years, the long tale of the development curve has gotten to little attention, the sort of games that we actually want to play. The emphasis on game play rather than users needing to go out to buy the latest graphics card means that the game has more of the sort of in- depth game play that we desire, rather than ugly realistic 3D graphics. Also, being a step above the popular browser and text based games, a 45 degree isometric game such as Wograld reminds of us of a better version of Ultima Online.

Why the Focus on Player Vs Player Combat? Wograld is designed with a balance in mind. The balance between how much players can effect the world. In one direction, you have what are called the care bear games, that mainly focus on the player vs environment aspect of the game. When they do have pvp, it is more of a side thing and has no real consequences for the players. On the other hand, you could make pvp so costly, including things like perma-death, stat loss, town loss. Rather than experience loss however, we know full looting is a better choice. It gives people a reason to fight, and a reason to try to avoid losing, but yet offers a way for characters to easily recover.

Why Skills and not Levels? Levels have become too popular in MMORPG games. However, they tend not to be very casual player friendly. Having to go to the zones appropriate for you level rather than the whole group being in one area strongly encourages guilds to be less role play focused and more focused on gaining levels. The highest leveled characters are too far significantly overpowered compared to newbies.

Sandbox Style Game play One of our main complaints about many rpgs is not enough character customization options, and we don't mean things like merely picking your hair and skin color. You should be able to choose clothing items that look the way you want, and also have the stats you want for combat. You should not have to chose between these two things.

Unique World setting Too often MMORPGS do not have a unique and compelling world setting. It seems like a generic fantasy setting with some random lore thrown in has become the standard. However, through careful selection of our quest writers, Wograld builds upon the basic foundations laid by the four races and the nine stupidities.

Designed for Gamers, not Coders. Far too many games are designed by programmers, who have a certain view of the world. They would really rather be solving some programing problem than playing a game, so they design games that are fun for them, but not necessarily for the rest of us. They don't tend to care so much if the game is fun per say, but rather if it is fun to program. Wograld will never take the concerns of programmers over that of the users.

Free Software The software of the client and the server, as well as the all important world content, including art, writing and music are licensed under the popular GPL3 license, making it easy for GNU/Linux distributions to include it without any doubt as to the legality or ethically of the software. In addition to the free wide distribution benefits enjoyed, the principles themselves confer numerous benefits on the developers and users of Wograld. We are able to spend far less time rewriting the code, and far more time adding the features desired by our community.

Wograld is hosted on SourceForge!

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