Rivalwatch: Realms of Torment

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So I was browsing through the new mmorpgs coming out and this one kinda caught my eye...not just because the graphics are good, but because it had one thing that was really interesting to me...Bloodlines...

From the FAQ (http://www.realmsoftorment.net/faq.html) How do blood-lines and permanent death situations work?
Realms of Torment places heavy emphases on clan and community as a way to live and play in the game. Many aspects of Realms of Torment reflect real life, from the effects of terrain on traveling to the degradation of weapons. We are attempting to give players one of the best arenas for role playing ever.
The blood-line system is your way to live through your descendents upon old age and eventual PermaDeath. In order to have a bloodline, you need to create an NPC child. Children come from:

*Your character marries another character and produces an NPC child (or several children). Presently, children produced this way receive the benefit of learning the same skills of his/her parent at a faster rate. (Gender outcome can be influenced.)
*Adopt an NPC child from your clan or village.
*Parenting an NPC child of a friend.
*Through divine intervention you might receive an NPC child. (Gender outcome can be influenced.)

The blood-line child is your prime's replacement in the case of PermaDeath. It is the character that you will play when your prime dies. There is consideration being given to allowing parents to play along side their child (the child being an NPC type).

To me that is something that has never been attempted in an mmorpg. I really like the idea of living through your "children" upon death or even permadeath. I think the way of obtaining children is pretty cool too...they have even commented on being able to marry NPCs and bare children on thier forums.

Overall, I think its inventive and really quite cool. Maybe Mythica can adopt something like this...where if you die, you inhabit one of your mortals and avenge your death that way...

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LOL speaking of the devil they just released a Dev Chat here. (http://www.mmoghell.com/articles/interviews/realms_of_torment_interview_1.html).

They had this to say about bloodlines...and I think this is really cool!
MMO Gamers Hell: After reading the info about blood lines and permanent death, the first thing that popped into my mind was: Do I have to die? If I do not want to die permanently, do I have to? Or is it an option given to the hard core of role players?

Dan Antonescu: We were indeed chasing after realism in RoT, it was obvious to us that one of the main realism spoliers in a MMO was the never ending lives of player characters (not that it was the only reason which lead us to implement bloodlines.) One of the main factors which lead us to make this type of game design was observing that the vast majority of mmo players do not play with only a single character for very long. What we did with the bloodlines was allow a way to link all these characters and properly add them into the epic life of RoT's world. We will also allow some of the best/famous/infamous characters in-game to have a longer life span, and even make some of them immortal (in terms of perma death). Adding permanent death situations to a game (IF done correctly) will only restore the lack of balance and the lack of risk vs reward in the MMO games, It will also help in greater player satisfaction.

I guess you can also say we were tired of playing all these clones in the genre and felt the need to actually attempt something more innovative. If you are looking for a truly different type of gameplay experience than you will find it in our title.

So they are making like epic family names...so you have another character with the same last name that lives in your place when your main character goes perma...So all of you permadeath fans this is the game for you...and its HEAVY PvP!!!!! Kingdoms and all. Looks like a better SB to me. And who knows, you make yourself a legend and you will be immortal (obviously that means you will die, but cant go perma).

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A more basic layout of how bloodlines work...

A unique blood-line system exists to create many role playing possibilities, and adds to the expansion of the permanent death situations feature of the game allowing for truly epic gameplay situations. Players no longer are forced to stay with one character through out the game. Here they can have an entire blood-line or lineage, where the founding character of a line is born into the world carrying the name that all characters born there after of that line will wear. With this feature comes the ability to marry, have children, and in the case of permanent death, the player continues living in the game world through his or her child as a playable character and receives the benefits that come with that characters existing blood-line.