Tibia (computer game)
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| Developer(s) | CipSoft |
| Publisher(s) | CipSoft |
| Platform(s) | Adobe Flash, Windows and Linux |
| Release | January 1997 |
| Genre(s) | MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Tibia is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by CipSoft. It is one of the oldest MMORPGs and was considered most noteworthy in its early years; however, with the development of MMORPGs, its popularity has grown much slower than other MMORPGs. It was first released in January 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.
In the early years of the game, CipSoft held player statistics — including the amount of registered players — but these were removed for performance reasons when the game grew. Because of this, the amount of players cannot be accurately estimated, however, the player count totaled over 64,000 online on November 28, 2007. Comparatively, as of December 1, 2010, the number of players online never totaled over 50,000.
There are currently 77 game servers, 38 in London, and 39 in the United States. Each server can actively hold 1,000 players; which is now only seen as being nearly reached on the "Optional PvP" worlds, such as "Unitera", "Pacera", "Calmera", "Astera", among others. CipSoft reported there are currently about 1.3 million registered accounts. According to polls conducted by CipSoft, their customers come from a wide range of countries. The top three countries within the poll are Brazil making up 26.56% of the players, Poland with 24.38%, and Sweden with 8.65%, representing their share of the aforementioned 1.4 million registered accounts.
During the early 2000s, many players from smaller towns in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, as well as across Europe, played this game because bandwidth requirements were lower than many other games, whilst still having reliable servers and many admins patrolling. Since then, as faster and larger internet connections have become far more widespread, the game has not attracted newer players, though a large amount of the playerbase has been playing Tibia for some time. Over the last few years, the game has been updated to counter that by reducing penalties for death and making quests and gameplay generally easier, bringing the game more in-line with standard MMORPGs. Unfortunately, this has had limited success bringing in newer players and has driven a lot of the older players away from the game.
The gameplay of Tibia involves advancing levels while training to improve skill levels, hunting monsters using weapons and magical spells, gathering treasures, doing quests and exploring the Tibia world. Players interact with each other in character so they can have conversations, trades, and group battles and partake in guilds for more role-playing opportunities. On most of the game servers, the regular Open PvP type, players are also allowed to attack and kill each other, although there is a system in place to keep hostile actions under moderate control. Optional PvP servers have very limited player versus player combat, while servers under the type "Hardcore" are constantly in war between different guilds or teams since 'playerkilling' is permitted freely with no skull system or killing restrictions. The latter servers are mostly populated by experienced players looking to measure their "PvP skills" without restrictions.
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Wikipedia