Full Circle Magazine FR

The Mana World (TMW) started back in 2004 with a desert and a handful of monsters, and has since turned into a mature anime-themed massively multiplayer world of several cities and hundreds of monster areas. What makes The Mana World special is the amount of active development and the community around it. For example: frequently, new items are introduced into the game around holidays - last Easter a couple of Egg-shell hats were introduced with a new quest. Events like this last a brief period of time, after which items become rare because they can only be sold character to character. Other more permanent quests and items are introduced from time to time, usually on a 4-8 month cycle, but sometimes faster. As I hinted, The Mana World is a client/server based game, it’s playable only by connecting a client to a server. I wrote about setting up a TMW server back in issue 57, but you don’t need to set up your own server since there are lots of fine servers out there already. With many servers, you can just run the manaplus client (http://manaplus.org/): connect and register for an account. This isn’t true for the main server at server.themanaworld.org however. Because of account spamming, manual registration through the web site is required: http://www.themanaworld.org/registration.php Ubuntu and other distributions often have a version of the mana world client in the repositories. I prefer to always get the client directly from the manaplus site. Versions are also available for Mac OS X, Windows, and an Android beta (I ran it on a Pivos Xios DS media play once and it ran well enough to play via keyboard).

Il y a longtemps, en 2004, The Mana World (TMX) a démarré avec un désert et une poignée de monstres et, depuis, est devenu un monde composé de plusieurs villes et des centaines de régions habitées par des monstres. Le jeu est mature et massivement multijoueur, avec un thème basé sur les dessins animés japonais. Ce que The Mana World a de particulier est son développement actif croissant et la communauté qui l'entoure. Par exemple : de nouveaux objets sont fréquemment introduits dans le jeu pendant les périodes des vacances ; à Pâques de l'année dernière deux chapeaux Egg-shell (en coquille d'œufs) y ont été introduits, ainsi qu'une nouvelle quête. Des événements comme celui-là ne durent qu'un moment, les objets devenant rares parce qu'ils ne peuvent être vendus que de personnage en personnage. D'autres quêtes et objets, plus pérennes, sont introduits de temps en temps, habituellement au cours d'un cycle de 4 à 8 mois, mais parfois plus rapidement.

Comme je l'ai laissé entendre, The Mana World est un jeu basé sur un client/serveur : on ne peut y jouer qu'en connectant un client à un serveur. Dans le numéro 57, j'ai décrit la création d'un serveur TMW, mais vous n'avez pas besoin d'installer votre propre serveur, puisqu'il y en existe déjà beaucoup qui sont très bien. pour ce qui concerne pas mal des serveurs vous pouvez tout simplement exécuter le client manaplus ((http://manaplus.org/) et vous inscrire pour avoir un compte. Toutefois, cela n'est pas vrai pour le serveur principal qui se trouve à server.themanaworld.org. Suite au pollupostage des comptes, il est nécessaire vous inscrire manuellement sur le site web : http://www.themanaworld.org/registration.php

Il y a souvent une version du client du mana world dans les dépôts d'Ubuntu et d'autres distributions. Je préfère toujours obtenir le client directement du site manaplus. Des version sont également disponibles pour Mac OS X, Windows et il y a une Android bêta (que j'ai exécuté une fois sur un Pivos Xios DS Media Play et il fonctionnait assez bien pour jouer via le clavier).

The Mana World team originally developed a client in parallel with the server. However, for several years, many people found the game more enjoyable to play using an alternate client known as “4144’s manaplus client”—which has since become the official client recommended by The Mana World team. Once you’ve registered, connected and logged in, you’ll have to create a character. Creating a character involves giving the character a name, changing the hair color and style, and assigning 24 stat points into Strength, Agility, Vitality, Intelligence, Dexterity or Luck. When starting out, you can assign only up to a maximum of 9 points to each stat. As you ‘level’ throughout the game, you gain more stat points to assign to any stat you desire. A nice balance for a new player is to assign 8 points into Strength, Vitality and Dexterity. This ensures you live for the first few levels. Another unique thing about The Mana World is that professions are not really static. It’s possible to stat up for one profession, learn all the skills with that profession, then change professions and skills later. Typically, many players play a fighter-style character for the first 30 levels or so, and then switch to an archer class, which places a heavy emphasis on Dexterity and Agility (for speed). At higher levels, players will often create hybrid classes such as archer/mage in order to heal themselves (because archers tend to be weak, but kill rapidly) and others.

Au départ, l'équipe de The Mana World a développé un client en parallèle avec le serveur. Cela dit, pendant plusieurs années, beaucoup de gens trouvaient qu'il était plus agréable de jouer au jeu avec un client alternatif connu sous le nom de « 4144's manaplus client » qui, depuis, est devenu le client officiel recommandé par l'équipe de The Mana World.

Une fois inscrit, en ligne et connecté, vous devez créer un personnage. Il faut lui donner un nom, changer la couleur et le style de ses cheveux et attribuer 24 points « stat » entre Strength (force), Agility, Vitality, Intelligence, Dexterity (habilité) ou Luck (chance). Quand vous commencez, vous pouvez attribuer un maximum de 9 points à chacun des stat. Tout au long du jeu, quand vous passez d'un niveau au suivant, vous gagnez plus de points stat que vous pouvez attribuer au stat que vous voulez. Une bonne équilibre pour un nouveau joueur est d'assigner 8 points à Force, Vitalité et Dextérité. Une telle distribution garantira votre survie pendant les tout premiers niveaux. Une autre chose qui est très spécifique à The Mana World est que les professions ne sont pas vraiment statiques. Il est possible de consacrer beaucoup de points à une profession, d'apprendre toutes les compétences nécessaires à cette profession, puis de changer de profession et de compétences plus tard.

When you first start out on the main server, you’ll notice yourself standing almost naked beside Sorfina, a grey-haired woman. The story goes: you’ve been on a boat, and collapsed, and a group of thieves made off with your clothes. This is the start of a loose tutorial you should follow in order to learn some of the game basics: talking to people (NPCs), and items (opening the chest for example). When you talk to Sorfina (right click on her), you’ll be asked to choose your language and she’ll read you the riot act (I mean the server rules). The server rules consist of the standard: no botting (running scripts to do all the work for you), treat others with respect, no begging, speak English in town (other servers may allow other languages in town and other languages are allowed outside of town), and a handful of other rules. In this first quest, Sorfina asks you to simply walk over to the red carpet using the arrow keys on your keyboard (you can use a mouse too, but my experience is the game is so keyboard heavy that it’s best just to use the keyboard for most tasks). Next, Sorfina unlocks the chest behind her and asks you to press N (next) to change focus of who you’re talking to and talk to the chest by pressing T (talk). When you talk to the chest, you’ll see you receive some ragged shorts. Any items you get from other sources (like chests), or from monsters, go into your invisible backpack. You have to equip an item in order to use it. The F3 hotkey opens up your backpack/inventory window where you can equip/unequip/drop items. Take special note of the buttons at the top-right of the screen, the button labelled INV does the same inventory function as the F3 key. Another button you’ll want to explore right away is the SET (F9) SETup button. Click on the setup button, then click on the Input tab near the top of the window which appears: you’ll see several tabs full of keyboard commands (over 100). Don’t be overwhelmed, many are simply quick ways to do useless things like display certain smilies, but a few are quite useful (z to pick up monster item drops, for example).

Once you’ve equipped the Cotton shirt and shorts in your inventory, it’s time to move on. As you go to leave, you’ll be stopped. Press N to focus back on Sorfina again and talk to her once more; she’ll tell you to talk to her granddaughter in the building south-east of the building you’re in. She also mentions something about an Aidan fellow, and rewards for monster hunting. Aidan is someone you should definitely see early in the game. Once you’ve progressed beyond the basic tutorial, and moved into the city of Tulimshar, see Aidan early in order to start to accumulate what are called “monster points.” If you go killing a lot of monsters without talking to Aidan, you will not accumulate monster points and will miss out on items given out by a lady named Ishi (she stands right beside Aidan) that can be quite useful even when you reach level 90+ (chicken legs and the Illia sisters quest). For now, you won’t be able to get to Aidan until you’ve completed the basic quests, so go find Tanisha in the building to the south-east (you’ll pass another NPC named Liana - not all NPCs do something helpful/useful). Talk to Tanisha once you find her, she’ll start you on a quest to kill maggots, and reward you with a knife once you’ve completed it. Before you attack the maggots, don’t forget to press F3 and equip the knife Tanish gives you. Completing this first quest will also gain you a new level (or two). Press the F2 key after to increase your statistics. I usually increase Dex and Strength at this point.

For every 10 points in a statistic, other things are affected. Off to the right of the main statistics you’ll see other statistics such as Attack, Defense, % Accuracy, % Evade, % Critical, and Damage per second, to name a few. Before progressing too far, you may want to check out The Mana World wiki: http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php. The wiki outlines almost all the quests. You might think the wiki is a walk through the quests, and it is in a sort of a way, but it never tells you the precise location of all the quests, and you won’t really know how difficult the monsters/quests are until you actually try them. Some quests involve knowledge of things like color theory, others involve giving up a certain amount of items to make other items, and still other items killing some boss (or killing enough bad guys and gathering their drops). One of the enjoyable aspects of TMW is not everything is about killing (though Candor is a slaughter fest); many quests involve finding an item or items. The Easter quest last year involved running around looking for loot under Easter eggs (difficult to do when there are 100 other people looking at the same time, and the eggs disappear after a certain amount of peeks). Around level 20 you’ll want to see the NPC named Luca to get a handle on “skills.” Most skills won’t be available until you see the appropriate NPC and complete the appropriate quest. Each skill has a quest or quest(s) tied to it. Some skills require a certain amount of statistics or level before you can attempt the skill. Again, visiting the wiki can help with skills.

Eventually you’ll start to accumulate items. As previously mentioned, some items become “unobtainable,” meaning you can get the items only from other players. Other items are rare because they’re obtainable only by high level characters (90+). Some items are totally useless, but still fetch a high price because they’re not available anymore. A number of players have huge collections of items collected over several years. Part of the fun of The Mana World is the social aspect. Many higher level players just sit in town (usually Hurnscald, a town to the west of the starting town of Tulimshar), and chat, or wait for events either created by GMs or spawned by players. Candor is one such event that takes place in a cave on an island. For a fee, an NPC will unleash over 20 waves of monsters, some of which are the toughest in the game. It takes 5 players to start a Candor event, but success is achieved usually with at least 10 or more. At the end of all the waves, survivors receive “boss points” which can be traded in for special items (currently only a beanie cap). Earlier, I mentioned classes and alluded to the fact that players play hybrid classes. The basic classes of players are warriors, archers and mages, though there isn’t really a strict class system—it depends more on how your player is stated and what skills you’ve obtained. Each class has strengths and weaknesses. Mages, for example, can cast wicked lightning, some doing over 1,000 points of damage (with the correct equipment), but they cannot wear metal. Warriors can suit up in very highly-defensive metal, but this makes them very prone to mage’s lightning attacks in PvP (Player versus Player). Archers are blazingly fast, and do huge damage per second at high levels, but also can’t wear the best armor without suffering penalties.

And yes, Player versus Player is a component you will eventually have to come to grips with. Many players prefer cooperative play to PvP, but there are a couple of PvP designated areas. In one of these areas lies the key (not a literal key, but monsters that drop items required) to getting one of the best suits of armor (pants, top, hat). If you don’t like PvP, buddy up with a powerful friend or friends, or join one of the mana world guilds (Google it). I’ve watched this game on and off since 2004, and it’s evolved at a remarkable rate. What makes it really interesting is the fact that content is being developed all the time. Game play is a bit too slow for some people, especially at the beginning, but it does change as you progress. Some players are willing to help new players (provided they don’t beg) with particular quests or obtaining particular items.

If you’re into MMORPGs, and don’t mind 2D graphics, The Mana World is a good game to check out.