Ever wanted to run your own 3d mmorpg? There are a variety of emulators out there for everquest, dark ages of camelot, Ultima Online and so on, but at best they’re quasi-legal and most of them are flat out illegal. There are also projects like Crossfire, which is a fun game but 2d only and with a relatively unsophisticated engine – it plays more like gauntlet than a modern computer rpg. I discovered Minions of Mirth this week and am flat out amazed. It’s best described as an everquest clone – the graphics are slightly better than the original everquest and the play mechanics are somewhat similar – but it’s also much much more. First, in terms of mechanics, it has something unique (to my knowledge) in mmorpg’s – a multiparty system that allows you to adventure with a group of your own characters. It’s a bit clunky in practice but it’s novel and allows you to effectively ‘solo’ your way through the game with your adventuring group.

The game also charges no monthly subscription fees and comes with a server bundled with the product, allowing you to run servers for your friends. Right now that’s for mac and pc only, though a linux server version is promised and they hope to produce a linux client version as well.

What’s most interesting though is how entirely mod-able the game is. Want to add in the smurf village from the original diku muds? You can. Think every 1st level mage should start with tiltowait? Know a little python? Add it in. You can modify the games graphics using free and open source software to build 3d models and texture and animate them, you can add in new landmasses (zones, in mmorpg parlance) again using free open source tools, and you can completely change the underlying game logic and add in new features.

This is the game I wish Neverwinter Nights had been. While I had tons of fun with NWN, and even ran a server for a year or so, I quickly tired of its repetitious tile-based game graphics. With Minions of Mirth they’ve got the fundamentals right – fully 3d, fully modable by anyone who’s figured out how to use the toolsets used to modify first person shooters. I have really high hopes for this game – there are tons of free Ultima Online shards out there and my expectation is that over the next year or two we’ll see an equivalent explosion of Minions of Mirth servers.

The full game is scheduled to release on December 15th, but if you buy it now you can get in on the beta for only $25. You don’t even need a net connection to play – if you jones for that MMORPG experience but don’t have a net connection, you can run your own local server and play on that.

I should note that while I’m really enthusiastic, this is early days for this product – it’s somewhat thin on content and the graphics are a mixed bag even by the standards of the previous generation of graphics engines. Both of these will improve over time as folks add in their own custom content, just as it has with NeverWinter Nights, but if you’re considering a purchase bear this in mind.

As soon as they release the linux server I’ll have this running here on metamusing – I’ll let folks know when it’s up and running.