I used to play a game called Tibia which was one of the earliest big MMOs. Tibia's key features are:

*No max level, there are people who have played every day since 1997 and still not hit the max level, so as you can imagine i get pretty dissapointed with modern 3d mmos where you hit the cap in a few days/weeks. I hit the max level in WoW and Guild Wars and basically sat there wondering why they're even called rpgs since its so easy to get to the level cap and be the same as everyone else you might as well just start like that and make it a free roaming fighting/adventure game...

*Severe death penalties; if you die at a reasonable level it is at the least, days, at most several months/years of work lost. Your body is lootable by other players. You may lose items that you will never ever get again worth everything you saved up since starting. This really makes everyone on the server know eachother and brings out real personalities rather than typical l33t mmo trolls.

*Open pvp; other than several small banks and depots and respawn temples, the entire map, probably 99.999999% is open to PVP combat, any level may attack any level, any number of players anyone, this makes wars infinitely more fun and deep than on run of the mill 3d mmos where combat is made "fair" automatically in arenas.

*you can not walk through other players, teleport, heal for free, etc casual gamer oriented features

*2d-ish graphics, though i dont have preference between 2d and 3d, it seems most of the "hardcore" pvp games left are low budget and 2d. Even something like darkfall or shadowbane thats marketted as hardcore to 3d gamers is pretty much built around watered down pvp with very little consequence.

Does anyone know of any similar games to this? the key things i want are 1. severe death penalties 2. open pvp but the other things mentioned would be nice as well

"why not just keep playing tibia?"

Well, basically the company has updated it into a children's game. the graphics are turning anime-like and barely anyone speaks english on it anymore, its also losing its edge in order to appeal to a more casual/young audience (quests that 5 people out of 100,000 knew how to solve have been totally simplified, vocations are nearly identicle to balance everyone now..) and Im wondering if there are any games any of you know about that are still like the features i mentioned.

Thanks.

sounds like Darkfall could fit your gameplay. www.darkfallonline.com

- Skill based

- Open PvP

- Full loot

What more need to be said ? ^^+

And please, spare me these "IT'S WAPORVARE!" posts.

Sounds like Tibia is suffering from the same type of whiners that killed SWGs.  Unlocking Jedi was a mystery, then it got so watered down and easy to figure out they finally just made a grind to unlock, and then they just made it so everyone gets to play Jedi from the start....

I feel your pain.  I know of no other game that has no level cap or when you die you lose 2-3 months of experience points.  It sounds like it was a  fun game

Tralla, the OP wants a game he can play before the retirement home calls saying there is room now.  Don't go pointing people to a game that to this point is nothing but a dream.  The OP wants to play now, not in 2015.

I wish you luck on finding that feeling again, but I'm afraid I've never heard of a game like that before today. 

maybe wow is easy to lvl because is not the point of the game? and in fact they're making it 2x easier to lvl in the next patch!

The only thing i can see that you will like is EvE. Its everything you want, but you'll have to get over the combat system. Other then that, wait for that Spellborn game or Darkfall (If it ever gets a release date)

I used to play tibia for years (1999-2005) but I quitted because they are slowly removing all the fun off it.

PVP used to be open as you say, but then they introduced measures to prevent player killing. Well, it was frustrating to be in a cave hunting then a pk comes and kills you. But in the end it was part of the fun and the magic of tibia. I remember a high level (level 80 was very high back then when there were bubble, pepelu and a few more past 100) called Dark Dragon that went mad and started a killing frenzy, so in the end dozens of guilds were after him each time he logged in. It was fun, but nowadays he would have been autobanned within the first hour :(

Death penalty. In tibia you reaaaally feared dieing. In the early times, you dropped all your equipment (UO style) AND lost 10% of all skills including experience. This lead to a special flavour in exploration of caves and such things, because it was dangerous, it was a REAL adventure since a death in the game caused REAL pain in real life, you really felt bad when you died, it was the work of a lot of days and weeks down the drown. This also lead to ROLE PLAYING (not the kind of forced roleplaying with nice vocabulary and all that) "you killed my friend, you are going to pay for it" this started guild wars and such things. Even real mercenaries appeared in tibia, they killed people for gold, and if someone thought this was unfair, he was free to try to stop them, however they became very strong, they were once the most feared of all guilds. Later the world wars started, wars that lasted a few years.

Level cap. It was special when bubble reached level 100 for the first time, not so special when she reached level 200... Not having a level and skill cap is great because you can be advancing forever, but the problem was when they speeded up the proccess of leveling. They removed the magic of having big skills and levels, and they imbalanced the game. The speed at which people can hunt goes up and up and the amount of experience required for each level goes up but not as fast as it would be sensible to mantain balance.

Tibia had a bunch of other interesting features...

One of them, and this one bugs me because it's incredible how newer generations of mmogs have almost removed this, is how players presence makes a difference. No one can pass through your character, your character is in a tile and no one can be in that tile at the same time, so they have to ask you to move or push you (but this is impolite). This leads to social relations, be it a fight or a "thank you". And this leads to different combat tactics, at least it used to until they changed it as well.

Another one, you can arrange items in the floor, so people create weird things, for example as you can pile up crates, people make "toy" buildings with them, or football stadiums, since there's a football (soccer) item and people play matches and competitions. OR they used to...

So they had a unique game system and they watered it down. And us who had the opportunity to try it, haven't found anything like that. I'm still searching, that's why I entered this forums today, but it seems there isn't anything like that.

Only games that have certain elements of this (however the importance of player's presence in a certain spot is next to zero in most games) are ultima online, runescape, and eve online. And they didnt catch me :(

SORRY FOR THE BAD ENGLISH!!!!

RYL2?

eve-online.

If you want it now, EVE. If you're willing to wait, Darkfall.

Those are only games that break the Evercrap model.

Well runescape sounds sort of like that is has 2D graphics the death penalty is that you lose all but 3 item on you or in your invintory and for PvP you just walk into the wilderness and anyone in the wilderness can attack anyone in the wilderness, but the bad thing is you can teleport but only to 3 or 4 places and they cost items and there is a max level of 126 but it should take you a while maybe 3,4,5,6 months to reach it and you can walk through other players, but you can't heal for free and i would say runescape is a pretty bad game with nobody can avoid lag and i used to play, but it sounds like a good game for you.

Im not the crafter type. I want to hang around in a city and chat, and do stupid things and games inside the game, and see different places, and know things about the game. If I need to fight someone, I'll fight him, but not for the sake of fighting. Eve is just not for me, although it's a step in the good direction.