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Tibia (computer game)

Tibia is one of the oldest and most successful massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), first released in 1997. It is a free game which is open to the public, though players have the option to pay a fee in order to upgrade to a premium account, granting special in-game benefits, including additional areas to explore, access to vocation promotions, and extra spells.

There are about 700,000 players, mostly from from The Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, The United States, Poland and Sweden, distributed amongst some 74 servers located in Germany and The United States.

Game play involves advancing levels while training to improve skill levels, hunting monsters using weapons and magical spells, gathering treasure, doing quests and exploring the Tibia world. Players interact with each other in character for conversation, trade and group battles and partake in guilds for more role-playing opportunities. On most of the game's servers, players are also allowed to attack and kill each other, although there is a system in place to keep hostile actions under control called the skull system. Some servers do not allow such player versus player combat at all, while others encourage it by rewarding experience for kills.

Vocations

Vocations are the name Tibia gives to character classes in the game. Like most games, Tibia allows players to specialize, but only once they have reached level 8 or above. When they reach level 8, they go to the Island Of Destiny. There the players get a lot of information about each vocation.

In the game, there are 4 vocations, each with advantages and disadvantages. Premium players can purchase a promotion for their characters vocation once they have reached level 20 or above and they must pay a one-time fee of 20,000 gold pieces in-game once it is bought it will last as long as the player has premium. When premium is re-extended the player also regains his promotion. The Promotion gives the character various in-game advantages.

Paladins

The Paladin is the most well-rounded vocation in the game, neither gaining much nor sacrificing much in any area. They are noted for their mastery in the art of distance fighting as evidenced by their ability to gain the distance skill faster than any other vocation. Their distance skill increases twice as fast as melee for knights, but gain shielding at the same rate. The paladin is also noted for having a well rounded selection of spells including the devastating "Divine Caldera"(exevo mas san).

The promoted Paladins attain the title of "Royal Paladin" their mana and health regenerate at a much faster rate.

Sorcerers

Sorcerers are masters in the arcane arts of chaos and destruction. While they lack in every way when it comes to physical combat, they have many damaging instant spells that other classes lack, eventually giving them the strongest attacking power in the game at the expense of longevity. Sorcerers are particularly noted for their arsenal of destructive spells thereby wielding the most powerful attack and Rune magic in the game eg. "Rage of the Skies"(exevo gran mas vis), "Hell's Core"(exevo gran mas flam), "The Sudden Death"(adori gran mort).

The promoted Sorcerers attain the title of "Master Sorcerer" their mana regenerates at a much faster rate.

Druids

Druids are popular for their unique healing skills. They are the only vocation able to heal other players with an instant spell eg. "Heal Friend" (exura sio "name"), "Mass Healing"(exura gran mas res). Recent updates have increased their ability with attack spells and runes which make them more useful as part of a group. Druids are noted for their control of the ice and earth magics.

A promoted Druid is known as an "Elder Druid" their mana regenerates at a much faster rate.

Knights

The Knight is most proficient when it comes to melee skills. Their selection of spells is limited and their magic level progresses slower than paladins. They are aren't very effective when dealing with magic and runes. Knights gain more health per level than other vocations and are effective at close-quarters combat with their unparalleled melee damage and shielding.

Typically, knights are designated as the blocker in group hunts for the above reasons. Their unique ability to use the "Challenge"(exeta res) spell to draw aggression toward themselves from nearby monsters further makes this even more evident yet they still possess some attack spells eg. "Fierce Beserk"(exori gran), "Groundshaker"(exori mas), "Whirlwind Throw"(exori hur).

When promoted, they become "Elite Knights" their health regenerates at a much faster rate.

All character classes have support spells and only Druids and Sorcerers can summon. There is no level cap in the game.

Development

Major updates are released every 6 months by CipSoft. Before game updates, test servers are run to find and repair bugs and glitches within the update. These servers are first available for testing to players that hold official positions such as Tutors, Senior Tutors and Gamemasters. The test server is then usually opened to the general Tibian public. Because no permanent change to a player's character occurs on the test server, it is also an opportunity for players to explore, attack and fight in wars, without their main character on a normal server being affected.

Monsters

New monsters are added every update, recently there are especially a lot of boss monsters added.

Areas

New villages and even continents are added constantly allowing players new places to explore. Such places often include monsters unique to that area and new quests to be completed.

Vocation Balancing

Each of the four vocations are intended to be equally appealing. To try and accomplish this, the vocations are balanced fairly often, adding features and taking away others in order to remove any bias toward one vocation.

Bug Fixes

Bugs are also repaired in many of the updates in order to not only fix problems in the client, but to also make it more difficult for cheating programs to be used.

Magic

There are two types of magic:

Instant magic - Are magical syntaxes that once casted will consume some mana in order to produce the desired effect.
Rune magic - Magic that is cast while having a rune in your hand.

Spells can be bought from the guild leader of each vocation (Knight, Paladin, Druid, and Sorcerer) which are located in most of the towns.

The power of spells relate directly to the characters level and magic level, more so the latter. The damage of some spells, such as a knight's Berzerk spell, also take into account the skill level of the character.

Magic wands (for Sorcerers) and rods (for Druids) are especially made for mages. With these weapons, they can use their magic points (Mana points) to attack creatures. These wands and rods need a certain level of experience for mages to handle them, as example, at level 8 you get your first free wand/rod, then at levels 13, 19, 22, 26 and 33 you gain the ability to use sequentially stronger ones.

Support and rules

The Tibian support system is based on a hierarchy of ranks, from lowest to highest: Tutor, Senior Tutor, Gamemaster, and finally Customer Support. Retired gamemasters and long-term tutors may also - with prior invitation by CIPsoft - choose to adopt the title of Senator.

Cheating

Sharing accounts, selling accounts and using any and all non-official programs such as "Bots" for playing Tibia is considered cheating and will result in harsh bans and instant account deletions for a second offense within 6 months. If your account has been banished or scheduled for deletion, the only recourse is to either create a new character, or if you feel the punishment was not correctly warranted, contact Customer Support directly.

The most frequent form of cheating today is in the form of using "Cave-Bots", which hunt for players without any input, and sharing accounts with one or more other people, allowing for much faster and constant experience and skill gain. Cipsoft has performed various polls on the official website, suggesting future implementations to lessen cheating, but so far, few public announcements and updates have been made on the issue. Screenshots and/or videos, called "TibiaCams", once were used as incentive to investigate cases of severe or otherwise game-altering cheating, though this practice has been unofficially stopped. The reason for this is that the screenshots or videos can be manipulated to show false information.

Tutors

The role of tutor encompasses a number of duties, including: Answering Questions from the in-game Help Channel and on the Help forum; checking the tutor forum and in-game channels regularly; reporting bugs and bad names.

Following 3 months of active tutorship without a bad/false name/bug report, a tutor is automatically promoted to the position of senior tutor. In addition to the tasks of a tutor, this title brings with it a number of further duties: moderation of the public forums and ability to report inappropriate statements from the public in-game channels.

Eligibility for the tutor position is determined by the outcome of an online multiple-choice test on the official website. All subject matter for this test is game-related and can be found in the guide section of the official website. However this test is only available to players whose accounts fulfill certain conditions. Tutor Guide. Retrieved on 2008-07-03..

References to popular culture

Tibia has been noted to include several References to J. R. R. Tolkien's three-part novel The Lord of the Rings and its legendarium, suggesting that Tibia's creators were heavily influenced by these works:

Similarly to The Lord of the Rings, Tibia uses the theme of Norse mythology, including races of Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs. It also references names from Norse mythology, such as Durin, that Tolkien refers to.
Several monsters in Tibia are closely related to those in The Lord of the Rings such as giant spiders or orcs.
A non-player character quotes from The Fellowship of the Ring (the first part of The Lord of the Rings).
In Tibia, the underground dwarven city of Kazordoon has a similar name to the dwarven city of Khazad-dûm in The Lord of the Rings.
In the city of Thais, you can find Frodo's pub and Sam's shop. Both of them are named after main characters in Tolkien's book.
There are also many references to the Dragonlance book series. Some of these include Kinslayer, the hero of Edron.

Other references can be found throughout the game:

Somewhere within the dwarven caves, there is a sleeping beauty locked in a room with seven dwarves, a witch and an apple that cannot be grabbed. This is in relation to the fairy tale Snow White (Schneewitchen in German)
In King Tibianus' court, his guards are named Harsky and Stutch. These are similar to Starsky and Hutch.
In the Jakundaf Desert, there is a complex cave system that contains a book that refers to the "Holy Hand Grenade" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The game also contains several references to human anatomy, starting with the title Tibia (the shin bone) itself. Fibula, Sternum and Femur (Femor Hills in the game) are all places in the game as well as bones in the human body. The city of Thais used to be named Tibia (in the earlier days) and the Tibian world was built around it with other bones-of-the-leg-names for locations. When other cities and surrounding areas were created however, Cipsoft renamed Tibia, Thais as to avoid confusion. Thais may also refer to the thighs of legs.
In a bar in one of the games cities, the player can read a sign which informs the player that "Crossbows n' Tulips" will be playing soon in the bar. This is a parody of Guns N' Roses.
Some of the gravestones in Tibia mention penguins and windows, referring to the Linux penguin, Tux, and the Microsoft Windows operating system.
In a tomb, there is a floor that resembles the layout of Pacman.
Numerous NPC's in the game talk about "Excalibug" being the ultimate weapon, similar to Excalibur in King Arthur stories.
There's a place called "Hard Rock Tavern", a reference to Hard Rock Cafe.
In the city of Liberty Bay, there is a small sewer and a locked room with 4 tortoises and a rat, along with weapons such as a katana and throwing stars, in reference to the 90's TV show and movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
In a swamp near the city of venore, you can find a book with the text "Wyrd sisters by Terry P.", an obvious reference to the book, Wyrd Sisters

External links

References

Executive Officers:Stephan Börzsönyi, Guido Lübke, Ulrich Schlott and Stephan Vogler © 1996-2008 CipSoft GmbH.
Online game Tibia is operated by CipSoft Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, Germany.
TibiaNews© TibiaNews team, 2008.
Tibia spell library
Tibia Wiki Spell list
Tibia Wiki