'The Shadow of Yserbius', originally published by Sierra On-Line, was the first of three graphical
MUDIn online gaming, a MUD , pronounced /mʌd/, is a multi-user real-time virtual world described entirely in text. It combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters,...
s for the online community. Opening to rave reviews, The Shadow of Yserbius, according to industry critics, set the standard by which all future MUDS would be judged. The game was followed by two sequels entitled The Fates of Twinion (1993) and
The Ruins of CawdorThe Ruins of Cawdor was the last of three graphical MUDs for the online community The Sierra Network, which would later become The ImagiNation Network...
(1995). Until recently, only
The Shadow of Yserbius and
Fates of Twinion were playable in offline mode.
The Shadow of Yserbius, along with its successors, remained online until 1996, when America Online purchased the rights from then-owner
AT&TAT&T Inc. is the largest provider of local, long distance telephone services in the United States, and also serves digital subscriber line Internet access. AT&T is the second largest provider of wireless service in the United States, with over 77 million wireless customers, and more than 150...
for an undisclosed price (rumored to be $40 million).
'The Shadow of Yserbius', originally published by Sierra On-Line, was the first of three graphical
MUDIn online gaming, a MUD , pronounced /mʌd/, is a multi-user real-time virtual world described entirely in text. It combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters,...
s for the online community. Opening to rave reviews, The Shadow of Yserbius, according to industry critics, set the standard by which all future MUDS would be judged. The game was followed by two sequels entitled The Fates of Twinion (1993) and
The Ruins of CawdorThe Ruins of Cawdor was the last of three graphical MUDs for the online community The Sierra Network, which would later become The ImagiNation Network...
(1995). Until recently, only
The Shadow of Yserbius and
Fates of Twinion were playable in offline mode.
The Shadow of Yserbius, along with its successors, remained online until 1996, when America Online purchased the rights from then-owner
AT&TAT&T Inc. is the largest provider of local, long distance telephone services in the United States, and also serves digital subscriber line Internet access. AT&T is the second largest provider of wireless service in the United States, with over 77 million wireless customers, and more than 150...
for an undisclosed price (rumored to be $40 million). AOL soon pulled the plug on The Shadow of Yserbius, which was a competitor to its existing online RPG
Neverwinter NightsNeverwinter Nights was the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to display graphics, and ran from 1991 to 1997 on AOL. Neverwinter Nights was followed by a series of progressively more successful graphical MMORPGs, including Ultima Online , Everquest and World of Warcraft...
.
In late 2007, the ImagiNation Revival Project succeeded in resurrecting the long-dormant ImagiNation Network by using the original client software coupled with the freely-available DOS Emulator - dosbox. The Shadow of Yserbius is now once again available for online play with all features, graphics, sounds, and such fully intact and functional. Macros are fully supported and compatibility with old character and map files is enabled for TSN/INN versions 2.4 and higher.
Game play
The goal of the game was to kill an evil elemental creature called En-li-Kil. There were a number of "rooms", where up to 30 (later 60) people could meet and adventure together in groups of up to four. Combat was turn-based.
The available professions were
BarbarianBarbarian is a term for an uncivilized person, often used pejoratively, either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
,
KnightA knight was a "gentleman soldier" or member of the warrior class of the Middle Ages in Europe. In other Indo-European languages, cognates of cavalier or rider are more prevalent suggesting a connection to the knight's mode of transport...
,
RangerA ranger is a type of warrior appearing in fantasy fiction and role-playing games.Rangers are usually associated with the wisdom of nature. Rangers tend to be wise, cunning, and perceptive in addition to being skilled woodsmen. Many are skilled in stealth, wilderness survival, and tracking...
, Thief,
ClericThe Cleric, Priest, or Bishop is a character class in Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games. The cleric is a healer, usually a priest and a holy warrior, originally modeled on or inspired by the Military Orders...
, and
WizardThe Wizard is a magical character class in many role-playing games and computer role-playing games. Wizards are spellcasters who wield powerful magic spells, but are often physically weak as a trade-off. They are primarily based on wizards from assorted fantasy literature...
. Player races included
HumanHumans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...
,
OrcOrc is a word used to refer to various races of tough and warlike humanoid creatures in various fantasy settings. Orcs are often portrayed as misshapen humanoids who are brutal, warmongering, and sadistic. Conversely, some settings and writers describe them as a proud warrior race with a strong...
,
ElfAn elf is a creature of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of minor nature and fertility gods, who are often pictured as youthful-seeming men and women of great beauty living in forests and underground places and caves, or in wells and springs...
,
TrollA troll is a member of a race of fearsome creatures from Norse mythology.Originally more or less the Nordic equivalents of giants, although often smaller in size, the different depictions have come to range from the fiendish giants – similar to the ogres of England – to a devious, more human-like...
, Dwarf,
GnomeA gnome is a fictional humanoid creature characterized by its extremely small size and subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus...
,
HalflingHalfling is another name for J. R. R. Tolkien's Hobbit and is a fictional race sometimes found in fantasy novels and games. In many settings, they are similar to humans except about half the size...
, and
GremlinGremlin is an English folkloric creature, commonly depicted as mischievous and mechanically oriented, with a specific interest in aircraft. Although their origin is found in myths among airmen, claiming that the gremlins were responsible for sabotaging aircraft, John W. Hazen states that "some...
.
Another popular pastime was player vs player sparring. This later became corrupted by cheating, as well as version compatibility issues, which later versions tried to address with little success. The most popular of these cheating programs was a macro called
VitaminF.
Many players were members of
guildIn computer and video gaming, a clan or guild is a group of players that play online games together and may play against other clans via matches or challenges, also known as scrims and wars...
s, ranging from the SoF (Soldiers Of Fortune), KoY (Kingdom Of Yserbius), EMPIRE and DEADZ, to guilds such as TheMercs, KoC (Knight of Chivalry), ,KAAOS (Killing As An Organized Sport),and the FTT (Friendship,Truth, and Trust Guild). While some guilds were based on role playing at times, some of the guilds were dedicated to helping others with interest in the Quests and building strong characters. A handful of the guilds started in Yserbius during the early 1990s, such as SoF, TheCelts, KAAOS, DEADZ, TheMercs, New Outriders (http://www.newoutriders.com ), and the FTT, still exist to this day.
Source of information for gameplay.
Detailed walkthrough available at http://www.yserbius.org/forum
Source of information for Gameplay Original Manual in PDF form http://www.yserbius.org/download/Yserbius_Manual_Original.pdf
The Tavern
The tavern was the social hub for the game. Players who spent a lot of time in the tavern were known as "tavern rats". Many games and challenges took place there, as well as a significant amount of roleplaying.
Also Where JesseBarbarian once hit a woman for singing a song he didn't like.
Remakes
Doubtless due to the popularity of The Shadow of Yserbius, the perceived simplicity of its engine, and the fact that most of the graphics are easily reproduced, there have been several attempts to remake the game.
The Ruins of CawdorThe Ruins of Cawdor was the last of three graphical MUDs for the online community The Sierra Network, which would later become The ImagiNation Network...
(second sequel to Yserbius) has been patched to be playable offline.
Current Projects
In May 2007 the
INN Revival was able to get their server emulator to the point where a playable version of Yserbius is online that is open to the public during certain time windows. Unlike the early remake versions, this successful attempt uses limited reverse engineering of the client software to build a working server for all of
ImagiNation NetworkThe ImagiNation Network , aka The Sierra Network , was the first online multiplayer gaming system. Developed by Sierra On-Line in 1989, and first available to the public in 1991, the ImagiNation Network was a unique online gaming network that gave subscribers from all over the United States of...
including Yserbius and SierraLand. With the emulation software - dosbox - it is possible to use the original INN client software and connect to the INN Revival server over a regular Internet connection, instead of requiring the use of a modem as the previous versions did. Once connected, many of the original features have been brought back on-line, including MedievaLand (the play area featuring The Shadow of Yserbius.) Once online and in MedievaLand, you can connect to Yserbius and join others in Sword Swamp (currently the only available Tavern). Preliminary testing indicates that almost all of the functionality of Yserbius Online has been retained under this setup. It is also backwards-compatible with popular macros such as VitaminF (a character modification program) and pre-existing player and map files from the original ImagiNation Network releases. Work on bringing back Fates of Twinion and Ruins of Cawdor is in progress and should achieve similar results to Yserbius in terms of playability, since the two other games are based on the same gameplay engine and similar file structures.
Note: Since the current client in use is based on the 2.4 INN client, two popular Yserbius bugs/features are no longer available: characters can no longer "force" equipment into use that excludes their Guild, such as a Ranger being able to force into use the War Hammer of Doom; and, players below a certain level cannot be teleported past the Labyrinth Gate, as was possible in earlier versions such as 2.0 and 2.1.
Another test version of The Shadow of Yserbius was created a year earlier in mid-2006 that allows users to enter the Tavern and chat with others. This version was built in Java and can be found at
Yserbius.Org.
Abandoned Projects
The first remake attempt was Gandalf's 'Yserbius project', which was in development in 1998. Gandalf, a major force in the Yserbius community, disappeared in early 1999. With his going, all information regarding his project was lost.
In mid 1999, Xenther and EtoneDarkKnight worked together on developing 'Project Asunder', a spiritual successor to Yserbius. Numerous screen shots were shown, with actual gameplay implied. However, EtoneDarkKnight fell out of communication with the public late that year, and Project Asunder was closed shortly thereafter.
In early 2000, Mithrandel announced development of 'Yet Another Yserbius' (YAY). While Mithrandel claimed to have finished development of the Tavern and extended beta test invitations to a small group of testers, no public beta test was ever released. Mithrandel later went on to develop FauxINN, a recreation of The ImagiNation Network.
Sources
- Source http://www.sierragamers.com/ owned by Creator Ken Williams
- Source http://www.yserbius.org Archives
- Source http://www.vintage-sierra.com/index.php
External links