Clan Lord
Macintosh's first MMORPG, still updated since the late 1990s.
Clan Lord is the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game for the Macintosh, developed by Delta Tao Software. It launched in the late 1990s and continues to receive updates every four weeks. In 2001, GAMES Magazine voted it one of the top ten Mac games of all time.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Delta Tao Software
- Released
- 18 October 1998
- Genre
- MMORPG
- Modes
- Multiplayer
- Platforms
- Mac OS
- Mac OS X
- Microsoft Windows
Facts from the source article.
Setting
Exiled by the mad Emperor Mobius for supposed crimes, players arrive on the Lok'Groton Islands as one of seven races: Human, Dwarf, Sylvan, Halfling, Thoom, Ghorak Zo, or The People. They choose a class—Fighter, Healer, or Mystic—with Fighters able to specialize as Ranger, Champion, or Blood-Mage. Survival means facing island wildlife, warlike Orgas, Darshak pirates, the undead Undine, and a cabal of ancient sorcerers.
Game mechanics
Combat in Clan Lord depends primarily on character skill choices rather than equipped items; items serve cosmetic purposes or grant additional abilities, such as a chain for dragging fallen exiles. The game lacks a traditional level system with multiple skill improvements per level; instead, skills are trained one at a time in small increments called ranks, and exiles may accumulate thousands of ranks. Communication appears as speech bubbles near an exile's sprite, with options for talking, yelling, thought bubbles, whispering, and performing actions; a sunstone enables direct messaging to other exiles. Three status bars track health, balance, and spirit. Health decreases from damage and is restored through healing; when empty, the exile falls and cannot move or fight until healed or until giving up and returning to town through Purgatory, losing experience. Balance is consumed when attacking enemies, and spirit is used by Healers for healing and by Mystics and sub-classed Fighters for abilities; balance and spirit recharge continuously. The fighting system uses a simple bump-to-attack method in third-person view: the player moves or clicks the mouse to direct the exile, and running into an enemy causes the exile to swing an equipped weapon. All classes can perform this basic attack, but Fighters have many more and more powerful training options than Healers and Mystics. This system trades complexity for control, with strategy emerging from precise movement control. Choosing a Fighter sub-class adds skills usable during battle.
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