ATITD Catchall

So glad we've finally unlocked marriage - Spoucewarp is really the glue that holds this game together after the first act.

Speaking of which, I gotta find me a spouse. Hey Moon, wanna get hitched? More like a mutually beneficial Chuck and Larry sort of situation.

Lol...

This weekend's events include a contest where, to participate, you and your pals sit around smoking the Hookah, with bonus points for being the most sharing and social.

What other MMO has ever had a competitive event that consisted of just chilling with your fellow players?

Not nearly enough! I'll be back in town finally this weekend and looking forward to getting back to Egypt.

I imagine I'm about 1000 miles behind now, but that's par for the course.

Actually, things have settled to a reasonable pace, so you should be able to catch up pretty quickly.

All this weekend there are a bunch of Fishing tournaments being held, with prizes for top sized fish, most total fish, participation, and more.

Got this email a day or two ago:

GOODBYE TO TALE 8
So we are now coming to the end of Tale 8, finishing on August 30th 2019. What an 18 months it has been, how time flies in the Desert.

HELLO TO TALE 9
LAUNCHING 30TH AUGUST 2019

So, what will be new in Tale 9? Here's a brief run-down of the new and exciting changes:

- 15 Month Tale
- Brand New UI
- New test mechanics and new Skills
- New scenery and homesteads
And a complete new Skill experience (no more levels!)

If you pre-order for the whole Tale 9, you will get immediate access into the Tale 9 Alpha and can see most of the exciting changes!.
If you are not ready to join us in the Alpha, reserve your character name so its not taken on launch day!

I've been logging into the alpha a bit. There are a lot of QoL changes so far, and the focus on decreasing the click-fest and 'need' to macro is obvious.

I think we're still being asked to keep mum on most of the changes, but screen shots of some of the UI changes have been posted in the public discord (and there more UI improvements expected). The person who took over for Tale 8 had to scramble a bit, so while there were quite a few changes in T8, some of them clearly needed more cooking, and not all of the desired changes were able to make it in on the short time schedule. T9 development has had a lot more time, and it shows. It's already obvious to see beneficial changes to systems that were developed around a higher server population than has existed in some time. The beginning stage of the game is looking to be a lot more guided, with a lot of its sharp edges smoothed over or removed all together. Unless you really want to support the developer, I have trouble recommending doing the prepay now; with so much changing, it is hard to be sure most of the changes will actually work out for the better. And I haven't played in the alpha enough to see if there are any useful solutions for the common 'mid-game-doldrums'. But the changes do look pretty promising to me, and I think it would be worth checking out again when T9 goes live.

Any word on what the costs will be? I couldn’t find their fee schedule anywhere on the public webpage

I think the pricing and ability to subscribe might only show up once you are logged in, but since I already prepaid I can't see any of the pricing options. The whole-tale pre-pay is $159.95 (US). It looks like the monthly rate was $11.95 for T8; I've seen no mention of a change in pricing, and given that T9 is expected to last 15 months, that seems about right. There is a six month option as well.

I can't believe this is still around. And I love that it is. Hanging out in Meshwesh, Zau area. Player name Sabni.

Representing Hyksos, from Upper Egypt. Player name Minerva. My husband is a dirty Kush. We'll see if our marriage survives this tale.

Tale 9 ended up being extended a good bit as a side effect of Covid, but finally completed yesterday.

Tale 10 launches this Friday; there is a convenient countdown timer

Much of the discussion around the game now takes place in discord, https://discord.gg/tale

For the first time ever, there is no beta for this tale (there was a brief Alpha around Christmas time). There are a lot of incoming changes, so its an interesting choice. The theme for T10 is 'Temptation', though they've been pretty cagey on what exactly that means. There has been a lot of effort put into reducing the clicky nature of the interface, and reducing the need/desire for macro's in general. Actually rideable chariots are going to be a thing. Monuments will be returning, factions are going away (at least the territorial control aspect of them, 'houses' will still exist, but its not clear exactly what their functionality will be like. More cross-breeding gameplay has been added.

They've revamped the relationship between game accounts and characters; previously your game account was your character login and you had one per subscription. Now you can have multiple characters on the same account (I know, ground-breaking! ;p ); this does mean that even if you previously played you'll need to create a new account on https://www.desert-nomad.com/ (Account creation and character name reservation do not require payment).

My pattern with this game has always been to go nuts in the early game, step back a bit in the mid-game stuff, and to have stopped playing entirely by the time end-game stuff happened, so in-spite of being one of the 'old-timers', I am still a noobie in many ways, and perhaps even more so this time around with the amount of incoming changes. I'm hoping this will be the time I can stick with it until the end.

EDIT: In the end, no marriages were harmed by by T9 cross-factional fiction.