Yeah, but it would nice if there could be an Epic RPG with a storyline which was dependant upon the actions the character has taken. For example, if the party constantly goes out hunting the local monster pests, when the Army of Darkness comes through the species will be less available. Or if the party stops a minor rebellion against the local feudal lord but doesn''t capture/incapacitate the ringleader, the NPC may later start a full-scale peasant revolt against the High King. That doesn''t make games like FF7 or Baldur''s Gate any less enjoyable, but it would be nice to have the player''s actions influence the world like you would see in tabletop.

Wake up, do some work, go to sleep.
Fit eating and dating somewhere inbetween.

I must claim Baulder''s gate is a most wonderful game. It had all the elements of a good RPG!!

Afastrunner
AKA Camelboy

A good one was Exile II (though you may never have heard of it). It was a cool RPG that ran on the native Windows engine (it used GDI. No DirectX!). Although it was low on the technolgoy part, it was really cool because of the gameplay. You could customize your own characters, and the story was pretty good. Beats a lot of those worthless RPGs they come out with these days.

We are forgetting one other Classic RPG. Dragon Warrior. It came out for the NES system, yup the 8bit one. I spent hours playing that thing. Technological marvel no, though at the time it was a good feat, but it kept me glued to the set almost as much as EverCrack seems to be doing to me.

Kressilac

ps Is it possible for one online RPG to directly assume mind control over the project leader of a competing online RPG in order to stall the production of it and corner the market? I think Sony has a conspiracy going on here. *chuckle*

Check it out... Everyone is focused on Graphics Graphics and More Graphics. I agree with Andre Lamothe when he says the next big things should be AI.

Companies should be putting a lot of research into this, imagine a game with no choices, every NPC has the ability to think (in a confined sense of course) and to structure speach. Not to mention that, the player is able to type in words and an interpreter will form an appropriate action. Not to mention the fact that they should be researching dynamic gaming, the first person to do this will be a game revolutionary. What I mean by ''dynamic gaming'' is the fact that there is no storyline at all (you may think I am crazy), but you put a player, NPCs, and Monsters and a whole bunch of stuff (weapons, items, spells) into the world. You then have a few critical locations on the map. But basically monsters evolve and fight just as the player does, and based on that theory, a dominant leader will emerge and he should be able to perform dimplomacy and raise an army. What makes this so exciting, is that they can pillage towns and reak havoc which gives the player his mission. Another cool thing is, perhaps several tribes will emerge and will have war with each other. This makes for very exciting gaming, you never know what will happen and it presents a REAL challenge for the Player because none of it is planned out. Obviously there should be a way to win the game, but there are many ways to do this (cleanse the world of monsters, find a special crystal, etc.) If AI can be brought to that level, gaming will redefined forever, games will become incredibly interesting because it is no longer a game, it is an artificial reality, it is no longer confined. Perhaps a monster could hear rumours of that special crystal and begin searching for it just like you are, and if he gets it, it will make him incredibly hard to beat. But with AI at that level, everything the player has access to, the AI has access to.

Just imagine a game like that!