Eternal Lands

Eternal Lands (EL) is a free to play multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) initially created by Radu Privantu in 2002/2003. It was launched on February 14, 2003. Though the OpenGL-based client is open-source, the license specifically forbids connecting to the official game server with a modified client.

Gameplay
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. It is currently made of up two main continents: Seridia and Irilion on planet Draia. Seridia is the first continent, and the place in which new players spawn. It consists of 14 main maps, 7 storages, 2 main PK maps, and the only spot to find the Wraith.

Players begin play by selecting the race, name and appearance of their character. Skills, abilities and alignments are generated automatically. There are six races available; Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, orchans (half-orcs) and Draegoni (dragon-men).



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



In-game activities include exploring the 36 different lands, improving skills, crafting items, questing, worshiping gods, socializing with the other players, and player killing.

On the main Eternal Lands server, there are only a few select areas where players can attack one another, so that players don't have to engage in player versus player combat if they don't want to. However, there is also a pay-to-play PK server which allows for players to fight each other nearly anywhere. It is not very popular due to the fact that it recently came out, but is growing every day.

Requirements
A PC or Mac with a 3D-accelerated graphics card and an internet connection is needed to play Eternal Lands, with the software download being free. Eternal Lands currently supports the Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X operating systems and the X86, X86_64, IA64 and PowerPC architectures. The game client is open source (under a QTPL-style license).

Critical reaction
About.com awarded 4 out of 5 stars, praising the game's graphics (considering that it's a free game) and realistic crafting and food systems, but found it hard to get the audio working.

Spin-offs
There are several games derived from Eternal Lands:

Landes Eternelles is a French port 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, geography, storylines, religion and quests. Landes Eternelles is currently in open Beta stage.

Other-Life is a project that attempts to create a more challenging variant of Eternal Lands. It was started by Steven Wilcoxon (Learner), a server developer of Eternal Lands, and is based on that game's server and client code. It is not released, and is currently only tested by a couple of handpicked people.