Comment by oxide | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oxide | Hacker News Reader

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I used to play an MMO called The Realm Online from ~2003-2007. It had a player-run economy, so I offered millions of the in-game currency for someone's Starcraft CD key, as all I had was a burnt CD. I was itching to play online with a friend of mine.

Eventually I got that key and enjoyed many, many hours of online play with a good friend. I never did get to play the expansion, although I'm well aware it's considered the definitive experience.

Counter-Strike is similarly something else I had to miss out on, I just didn't have a way to purchase games digitally. Steam was around as well as services like Direct2Drive but my Mom didn't have a bank account, so I just accepted that I'd be missing out on these multiplayer experiences as a teenager.

I did manage to keep up my subscription to The Realm for a long time, but that was thanks to the wonderful concept of money in birthday cards. Once WoW launched it basically killed The Realm anyway, I could have spent that money more wisely in retrospect.

Starcraft was a rare multiplayer exception for me, along with Jedi Academy, and UT. It'll always have a place in my heart because of that.

Later in life, I ended up putting over 800 hours into CS:GO and now own over 300 games on Steam, so I lived my multiplayer dreams eventually.

I've shelled out enough for Hearthstone packs by now that I don't feel guilty about trading that now worthless huge chunk of The Realm Online gold for that valuable Starcraft CD key.

OT but how did your mum not have a bank account? Was this common where you're from? I can't imagine it working anywhere i've lived (for one you won't be able to get paid).

As a poor American you will run into many people that don't have a bank account. Lots of things can hurt your credit here and once your credit is wrecked it can be challenging to have even a savings account. There is an entire industry here to serve (many would say take advantage of) people in this situation. Many shops will cash payroll and government checks for you since otherwise you would not be able to. Usually from what I have seen they charge somewhere around a dollar per hundred dollars on the check.

Wow, that's the first time I've heard anyone talk about The Realm in a long time. I played it from its release in 1996 until EverQuest came out in 1999. How did you end up getting into The Realm in 2003, long after its prime?

I never played it myself, but I last I checked the game is still running just fine! (as in, there are official servers to pay subscription and play the game).

Account Creation: http://185.142.236.230/account/ Client Download: https://anonfile.com/33Hcx8bfbc/Client_-_3.172.zip (run sciw.exe in windows xp compatibility mode if it doesn't work or admin mode)

There happens to be a fresh private server with 100+ players during primetime!

Wow, this is a long time dream come true. The last private server was lost long ago to the sands of time.

Thank you so much for this. I never would have heard of it otherwise.

All my old friends are here already as well, this was honestly awesome to find when I got up this morning.

A good friend of mine played the game, I'd often be over at his house playing it with him or simply watching him play.

The novelty was phenomenal to me at the tender age of 12.

Here was a chat room, and a game, all rolled into one. I'd never seen anything like it. I wanted my own account.

It would be a few years until that happened. When I was 15 I started with an annual subscription for 49.99, playing on my mother's computer at first after assuring her it wasn't a virus.

This was before the launch of DAoC, so maybe early 03? The game still had a relatively active population (500-750 players near peak hours, something I would scoff at today and declare dead. relative!)

After the launch of WoW in '04 the regulars became less regular and eventually the population was under 200, then 100, etc. It had 25 players online last time I got nostalgic and installed it to hear the startup tune.

Anyway, I had a great time with The Realm Online. I loved it. I made friends and liked talking to them. So I stuck around and watched it slowly wither away, at least until 2007-8 or so.

It was clear that the "developers" who purchased the rights to the game had no interest in developing the game any further.

I still think The Realm Online would do fine in the F2P space, stuffed full of microtransactions. The turn based combat would be perfect for a touchscreen. Apparently it's coded in a dead language invented by Sierra, so I'm not holding my breath. It'd be nice to see a private server, at least.

Over the years I made many friends, some of whom I still regularly play games with.

I imagine many folks had a similar experience with their first MMORPG, whenever I see people talk about Runescape or WoW, I always think of The Realm and my time with it.

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