Hi Everyone,
I played Gemstone on and off in a similar cycle to Shadow for maybe 12 years now. I'm going through the GM selection process at the moment so I've been reading up on everything HJ for the last 24 hours. I've checked this board a bit at the suggestion of my friend Shadow and realize quite a few of you have no previous exposure to Simu.
For those of you that don't know, a brief and incomplete history of gemstone off the top of my head:
Their first game was Gemstone 2, circa 1989. How can this be? Not sure, I think Gemstone 1 was either a hobby MUD or a proof-of-concept that never became a full game. I believe Gemstone 2 ran on only on GEnie, an odd little service where people paid about $12.00/hr to get on the internet (shudder).
Gemstone 3 kicked in within a couple years and ran on AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy/GEnie. High levels were still pretty scare as most were playing at least $2.95/hr per access. Somehow, in those relatively early days of the comsumer internet, they still managed 700-800 at peak times when I joined in 1994.
Simu made a killing off that business model (they received checks from the internet/content providers based on hours played), but not too long after AOL went to an unlimited-use pricing plan, Simu took its show to the internet at large at a per-month pricing plan. At that point its user base blew up, and would hit 2400 at peak times. I'm pretty sure I saw 3000 during particularly exciting events.
Text-based games remained relevant compared to the first graphical RPGs like Ultima Online, because, as I understand it, the graphical games of the time were damn ugly and damn kludgy. By comparison, Gemstone could provide mellifluous descriptions of landscape and coding speed that was not available to products with graphics involved.
Gemstone has maintained most of its loyal fanbase but has had a very hard time recuriting new players in light of the increasing quality of graphical MMORPGs. As such their customer numbers have dwindled very gradually to the ~700-800 it once again sees during peak hours.
From the AOL-to-internet switch onward, gemstone struggled with growing pains, trying to stretch out a world model that initially only supported about 20 levels in a balanced manner into one that would remain fun and balanced over 100+ levels. This led to a lot of player discontent over time as professions that were previously broken were throttled significantly, and professions that were once barely playable past level 20 received huge power boosts, which of course the players of weakened professions thought went too far.
It all culminated in an initiative called Growing Pains (2002?), where Simu overtly communicated "this may hurt a bit, but it's good for the game." However, that project, and the introduction of gemstone IV in I guess 2004 (?) gave the game a future.
Unfortunately, without graphics, it may prove too difficult to attract enough new blood to keep revenue up to maintain the stable of GMs necessary to keep the world evolving. Already there's almost too much world to travel, as some towns seem a bit underpopulated, leaving a dream experience for soloers in but a rather lonely one for those that enjoy the social interaction of the game- and those that want to stick with the crowd can't really spend time throughout the entire world.
Well that's my little contribution. I do hope I end up coding for them (I'm only through the first step of the screening process) but regardless I'm sure it will be a very enjoyable game. Simu is very much a "for gamers, by gamers" shop, and that seems like a pretty good formula. See you folks around.
I played Gemstone on and off in a similar cycle to Shadow for maybe 12 years now. I'm going through the GM selection process at the moment so I've been reading up on everything HJ for the last 24 hours. I've checked this board a bit at the suggestion of my friend Shadow and realize quite a few of you have no previous exposure to Simu.
For those of you that don't know, a brief and incomplete history of gemstone off the top of my head:
Their first game was Gemstone 2, circa 1989. How can this be? Not sure, I think Gemstone 1 was either a hobby MUD or a proof-of-concept that never became a full game. I believe Gemstone 2 ran on only on GEnie, an odd little service where people paid about $12.00/hr to get on the internet (shudder).
Gemstone 3 kicked in within a couple years and ran on AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy/GEnie. High levels were still pretty scare as most were playing at least $2.95/hr per access. Somehow, in those relatively early days of the comsumer internet, they still managed 700-800 at peak times when I joined in 1994.
Simu made a killing off that business model (they received checks from the internet/content providers based on hours played), but not too long after AOL went to an unlimited-use pricing plan, Simu took its show to the internet at large at a per-month pricing plan. At that point its user base blew up, and would hit 2400 at peak times. I'm pretty sure I saw 3000 during particularly exciting events.
Text-based games remained relevant compared to the first graphical RPGs like Ultima Online, because, as I understand it, the graphical games of the time were damn ugly and damn kludgy. By comparison, Gemstone could provide mellifluous descriptions of landscape and coding speed that was not available to products with graphics involved.
Gemstone has maintained most of its loyal fanbase but has had a very hard time recuriting new players in light of the increasing quality of graphical MMORPGs. As such their customer numbers have dwindled very gradually to the ~700-800 it once again sees during peak hours.
From the AOL-to-internet switch onward, gemstone struggled with growing pains, trying to stretch out a world model that initially only supported about 20 levels in a balanced manner into one that would remain fun and balanced over 100+ levels. This led to a lot of player discontent over time as professions that were previously broken were throttled significantly, and professions that were once barely playable past level 20 received huge power boosts, which of course the players of weakened professions thought went too far.
It all culminated in an initiative called Growing Pains (2002?), where Simu overtly communicated "this may hurt a bit, but it's good for the game." However, that project, and the introduction of gemstone IV in I guess 2004 (?) gave the game a future.
Unfortunately, without graphics, it may prove too difficult to attract enough new blood to keep revenue up to maintain the stable of GMs necessary to keep the world evolving. Already there's almost too much world to travel, as some towns seem a bit underpopulated, leaving a dream experience for soloers in but a rather lonely one for those that enjoy the social interaction of the game- and those that want to stick with the crowd can't really spend time throughout the entire world.
Well that's my little contribution. I do hope I end up coding for them (I'm only through the first step of the screening process) but regardless I'm sure it will be a very enjoyable game. Simu is very much a "for gamers, by gamers" shop, and that seems like a pretty good formula. See you folks around.
