Eternal Lands

Eternal Lands (EL) is a free OpenGL-based multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) initially created by Radu Privantu in 2002/2003. Its outstanding difference to other role-playing games is that there are no castes, that is, your character is not tied to a certain profession or certain racial attributes. Every character can basically do everything the others can do. Background, attributes and profession can be developed during gameplay and changed or amended anytime.

The Game
Eternal Lands is a role-playing game. That is, you have to create and develop a character in a virtual environment. The setting is a medieval fantasy world, with both historic elements such as medieval architecture and weaponry as well as fictional elements such as other humanoid races, gods and magic.

Creating a character
Before you play, you have to choose the name and the appearance of your character. That's all you specify, everything else -- your skills, abilities and alignments -- you will be able to develop in the game. These are the six races you can currently choose from:


 * Dwarves stay to themselves the majority of the time. They don't travel too much, prefering the warmth and comfort of their own home to the outside world. Dwarves are excellent craftsmen. They buid the most sturdy and elaborate structures, the most accurately carved statues, and exquisite jewelry. They carve wood, chip stone, and shape metal until it is almost perfect. Because of this they generally have their homes in or around caves, building mines that they share together.


 * Humans feel the need to create a shelter by cutting down trees, and anything else that stands in their way, and to constantly create, build, and improve things. They hunt animals for food, as well as eating the vegetation of the land. The humans take whatever they could and use it to their advantage. Although they also show compassion, kindness, and generosity when the times are right. They have many abilities and create big cities and towns.


 * Elves revere life, and are very careful not to waste things. They hunt animals in low moderation, always giving thanks to their god when they kill, and before they eat. They build their homes in the forests, in a style all their own. The Elves are very friendly to the most of the other races, but have a deep hatred for everything they consider to be evil (such as the goblins, orcs, ogres, etc.), and don't fully trust the dwarves or the Orchan(whom they consider barbaric). The Elves are very knowledgable, and harbor a great repository of historical books in libraries which they open to all, for they live lives of up to five times that of a human.


 * Gnomes are another small dwarfish race, but unlike dwarves they are outgoing social travelers. They are also pretty good craftsmen, and tailors of clothing. Another skill of their's is map making, although you can never trust a Gnome's map to be 100% accurate all the time. And not to forget their unsatiable curiosity for trying to find a new invention for one of life's many difficulties. They are probably the most helpful, generous, and unbiased of all the races.


 * Draegoni are what look to be a cross between a human and a dragon, yet much more human than dragon like. Legend says that they are children of the mythical dragon god, Iringold. They are highly magical beings that dwell in the colder regions on the extreme ends of the world. It is said that their inherent magical abilities come from the dragon blood that is mixed in their veins, and in their few scales that sparkle on their bodies.


 * Orchans were named so because they look like a cross between a human, and an orc. Whether or not they were bred that way is a commonly disputed topic, no one knows for sure. There are legends and myths going in each direction. They are a people that believe in judging someone on their strength, heroism, and bravery. They hold many contests of strength, and also elect their leaders by the competitions. Many of them are fights to the death, which the other races see them as being barbaric. They are also very honorable however, always keeping their word when they took an oath, even if it means their life is at stake.

The latter three races yet are "pay-to-play" races, in order to play a character of one of these races you have to donate a small amount to the game.

Activities
Once you are in the game, there are many different things you can do:


 * Explore. Currently, there are about 30 different "maps" (lands) you can explore. Ships and teleportals can lead you to new, interesting but also dangerous places. There are areas where monsters may attack you, players can fight other players, where you can get hurt by heat or by cold. Countless hidden places can be found, giving you small advantages each.


 * Improve your skills. You can advance in each of nine different skills: attack, defense, harvesting/mining, alchemy, crafting (jewelry), manufacturing (blacksmithing), summoning monsters, potion brewing and magic. You can advance as many skills as you like, you can work together with other players and you can trade. All experience you gain in any skill will sum up to "pick points", that you can use to improve your physical, mental and spiritual attributes.


 * Go on quests. Many non-playing characters give you smaller or larger tasks or send you on quests. They will deepen your knowledge about the world your character wanders, and if you do well, a nice reward at the end.


 * Worship gods. There are nine deities you can worship in EL. You will have to succeed in various quests, and will be given blessing in return, increasing your skill level and/or your experience gain.


 * Socialise. There are always several hundreds of players online, and numerous places to meet, chat and cooperate. Players can found and team up in guilds, more than hundred of them already exist in the game.

Playing
In order to play Eternal Lands, you need a PC with a 3D-accelerated graphics card and an internet connection. Downloading the client and playing is free besides third-party costs such as your internet connection fee. Eternal Lands currently supports the Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and (soon) MacOS X operating systems and the X86, IA64 and PowerPC architectures. The game client is open source, so if you are missing a platform, you are welcome to port EL.


 * http://www.eternal-lands.com/index.php?content=download

History
EL is relatively young, and after three years of development, the game is still not finished. However, it has made considerable progress since the first release in March 2003 and is fully playable. Radu Privantu, the inventor of EL, has summed up the first part of its evolution in an article on devmaster.net:

http://www.devmaster.net/articles/mmorpg-postmortem/part1.php

Spin-Offs

 * Landes Eternelles is a french port of Eternal Lands currently in development. Although it is architecturally identical to Eternal Lands and shares some of the graphics and other gameplay mechanisms, it has a different role play approach with different races, geograophy, storylines, religion and quests. Landes Eternelles is currently in closed-Alpha stage. -- http://www.landes-eternelles.com/


 * Barren Moon is a game that Radu started himself when noticing that EL did not become the game what he originally wanted. Though it is a completely new game, it shares a lot of concepts and approaches with EL. It has no release yet, and due to the lot of work to be done on Eternal Lands, BM is currently stalled.


 * Other Life is a project that attempts to create a more challenging variant of EL. It has been started by Steven Wilcoxon, a former server developer of EL, and is based on the EL server and client code. It has no release yet either and is currently only tested by a couple of handpicked people. -- http://www.other-life.com/