When I first made this website I had only intended to go as far as Version 7 as we were only a couple of years into the new version so it didn't feel like it needed recording. It is hard to gauge the passage of time and difficult to know what is historic and what is mundane as it is being written. Much of the events of the time felt like insignificant moments, punctuated by normality and routine. It is only with the passage of time that you see how singular each moment was now that only the haziness of memory remains. Change comes whether you are aware of it, and despite the game's early erratic and slow updates, we were now updating regularly and that meant change would come like clockwork. The change to Version 7 would be unlike anything before it.
CIP as a newly founded game company began work on a completely new client for Tibia which was announced on February 26th, 2002. They would later announce a release date for the summer which was a significant improvement in timeline over the last client remake which took about a year. This new client would bring Tibia into the modern age with many new quality of life features, completely changing the game. Some of the most important features promised were soft scrolling and animated sprites, full color support and light effects, and windowed and full screen options which would greatly enhance the graphical features of the game. Players were also promised a new auto map which could be used to see distant places, as well as new tools for communication like specific channels and wrapping text. The old system of two containers, which if you used an item stopped your character from moving and prevented you from attacking would be replayed with a new system and a further two new inventory slots were to be added.
One of the largest changes with the new client was the complete overhaul of the graphics system which would now allow for male and female sprites. The old system of recognizing players by what they wore would be reset, forcing everyone to start off with a visual clean slate. It was with this change that I believe the reputation system began to wane and fall out of favor as players no longer recognized old well known players by sight alone, many of whom had worn the same outfits for years.
This impressive client began public testing on July 22nd, 2002, and was further enhanced with the much desired safe trade system and VIP list which would replace 3rd party tools like the Merc Tool. Players who logged in to the test server would only be able to try out Rook and Thais with surrounding areas, and to discourage shenanigans, players depots were deleted from the server copy to allow for players to play seriously during the test. I recall there being a great deal of excitement as these new features and look really propelled the game away from its past to feel like a modern game.
It is also at this time that players would see Mantus' famous Tibia splash screen that remains my favorite loading screen even two decades later.
It is around this time that several new versions of Tibia came out though I don't recall anything specific being changed other than some bug fixes and technical adjustments. Tibia was jumping as fast as the rest of the world was during these years, but despite this rapid speed, players would now be left behind. The early versions of the game had been designed to be as computer friendly as possible, requiring little technology to run and maintaining a low hard drive space profile which made it ideal for old computers. With the new client this would no longer be the focus and CIP recognized that some would be unable to support the game after the launch of the new client.
To compensate, they offered a special version of the old client which would be accessible until April 30th, 2003. This client would allow players a chance to use up their premium if they couldn't modernize their computer by that time. Many features were not available for the special client like the safe trade and channels, and the graphics would only render male and female chars as an ugly sprite. Despite this the client received plenty of use by players until support officially ended, though I can't recall when that occurred.
With the test completed and the next major update just days away, a final patch was released on August 23rd, 2002 which was designed to test the new auto update feature. This version, 6.98, also included some bug fixes and would serve as your final client version if you would not be able to run the new client.
After I played the test server I recognized that this was a turning point for Tibia. The game I loved had been an eclectic tapestry of player created graphics and content but with the creating of this new and modern client, it felt that we were now becoming a normal commercial product. As the day of the update came I packed up my Thais house to prevent accidental loss, and waved goodbye to the client one final time.
The Alpha stage for Tibia had been the infancy of the game, filled with seemingly directionless and silly content which could only be described as wonderment of the new platform. When Tibia moved into Beta, the game began to grow, developing true shape and form, and gaining the tools necessary for it to become a commercial product. The next steps would take Tibia away from its teenager years, moving it towards the maturity of a polished game.
Another change was underway during this time as CIP, who had formed a professional gaming company called CIPSoft, would now take advantage of a new growing market; the smart phone. They began their work on a new project called Tibia Micro Edition (TibiaME) which was a small version of Tibia enabled for Java phones. This was marketed as the world's first mobile RPG which is wild considering how early they were in the app trend. CIP was riding the wave of change and everything pointed to limitless success for the new gaming company.
If the early internet had been a time filled with wonder and free spirited exploration, the internet in the early 2000s was the personification of a teenager. Those who had dismissed the internet as a fad in those early years could only be thunderstruck by how much our society had changed to incorporate it into our daily lives. The speed of technological change from one year to the next underscored how futuristic the world felt for me. Technology was miniaturizing and processing accelerating at an increasingly faster pace, graphics were becoming increasingly life like, and though the dot-com bubble had burst in March 2000, the explosive growth of the internet continued to echo even as 50% of internet companies failed.
Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist who lost 90% of his net worth in the bubble
summed up the event perfectly. "A friend of mine has a great line. He says "Nothing important has ever been built without irrational exuberance." Meaning that you need some of this mania to cause investors to open up their pocketbooks and finance the building of the railroads or the automobile or aerospace industry or whatever. And in this case, much of the capital invested was lost, but also much of it was invested in a very high throughput backbone for the Internet, and lots of software that works, and databases and server structure. All that stuff has allowed what we have today, which has changed all our lives... that's what all this speculative mania built."
The strong backbone left behind allowed the internet to continue at a much more reasonable pace of change. Maturity had come to the internet and the next few years would see it transition into a vast commercial enterprise. Early adopters like myself no longer felt the internet was our private space and many of the early personal websites were replaced by more professional looking sites targeting a new generation of web surfer.
A new chapter of my life would begin as I entered adulthood at this time. Like the internet and Tibia I was going through my own metamorphosis. Many of our changes result in leaving our past behind us, but in some rare cases our past resurfaces. Tibia is a game that echoes through our lives, returning for brief moments after we have forgotten it for good. Powerful memory draws us back with nostalgic longing and this is a game with many deep memories for me. If I had to choose my favorite version in Tibia I would say Beta 6 was the best time to play, offering so much in such a short period of time.
Nothing lasts forever, and with the new client ready, there were nowhere left to go but forward. Tibia left the Beta phase behind forever on August 28th, 2002, and hasn't looked back.
When I decided to carry on this project I really underestimated how much time it would take and how much there was to discover. Despite the changes I learned a considerable amount of Tibia's past that had largely been a mystery to many. The journey has been a fun one, but it is time to put down the pen and move on to new projects. I would like to continue exploring Version 7 at some point and will be adding some missing sections of the past that I have not touched on yet.
My goal had been to finish the project before the conclusion of Tibia's 25th anniversary year and in the immortal words of GLaDOS:
"And we're out of beta.
We're releasing on time."
Our journey through time ends here, but there is still so much more to be said, and new history is being created each and every day. I hope you have enjoyed this project and perhaps we might see each other again?
