Shintolin

"Humanity has wandered the world of Shintolin for millenia, hunting and gathering to survive. But some grow tired of the nomadic life, and are beginning to settle down. Forests make way for farmland, villages grow into towns and cities, and civilisations seek wealth, power, and glory."

Shintolin is a free browser-based MMORPG set in a Stone Age-ish world.

The game's original developer essentially abandoned the game recently, and made it open source. It is mostly abandoned, but those who remain refuse to move on. Two of the players stepped up and continued updating it.

This game provides examples of:
 * After the End: There were some implications about this. Coins deep in the floodplains, for example.
 * An Axe to Grind: Hand axes and stone axes.
 * Breakable Weapons: Yes, yes indeed. Even ivory weapons.
 * Class and Level System: A level 5 wanderer, level 7 warrior, level 3 healer and level 2 crafter? Sure, why not. Or any other combination that adds up to 17.
 * Death Is a Slap On The Wrist: You don't die - you're dazed.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: It was, of course, possible to kill the developer's character.
 * Fantasy Pantheon: Iis, the creator, the guy who made the maps and the two current devs are actual characters. Then there was Sazibi, Bokrug, the Nexal Elder Gods...
 * Flanderization: Miejoe=Pie. Nothing more.
 * Ghost Town: Many settlements, nowadays. When a settlement gets attacked everyone clears out.
 * God Emperor: The Nexals were led by a God-Empress.
 * Heal Thyself
 * Hidden Agenda Villain: The Nexal Empire. What do they want? Do they really want that or is it just in-character or are they lying and/or just making stuff up? Who and what are actually part of it?
 * Hit Points
 * Improvised Weapon: Rocks, sticks, staves.
 * Invulnerable Knuckles
 * Level Grind: The cap keeps it mostly not too bad. During the game's prime, there were special huts/longhouses designated for combat - People trained on each others.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast So there's this guy called Betrayal, and this other one called Berserkas... (The names, incidentally, are the smallest reason to run away.)
 * Orphaned Series: The developer essentially said meh and left. Of course, the leaving part was really way before the meh part. It then was adopted by two players learning programming.
 * Patchwork Map: Mostly averted. However, there are some places which don't quite make sense -- a river that splits in two and flows into a marsh next to mountain range -- and places where the mapmaker just gave up and shoved a bunch of forest, hill and meadow together. The islands play this quite straight.
 * Perpetually Static: Averted completely.
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The various in-character backgrounds people came up with: wow. Crafters and demons and vikings and wanderers and a leper and soldiers and... some realistic, some from whatever game the player had come from, and some just odd.
 * Random Number God: Averted. Maybe. Mostly.
 * Rape Pillage and Burn: Not so much the former, but the latter two are ridiculously popular.
 * Scavenger World: The only way to get items in the game is to find them, make them or steal/buy them from other people who made/found them.
 * Talking Is a Free Action: Almost: it takes 0.2 AP to speak, out of 100. Also you almost never log on at the same time as another person, which means you have ample time to make your hilarious quips.
 * The Horde: Nexus War was closed down. The players searched for somewhere else to hang out, and Shintolin was one of those places. The initially peaceful "Nexal Refuges", soon became the gigantic Nexal Empire, with a bit of Church Militant mixed in. When they realized Shintolin was heading down hill, they started the Totem Tour, completely annihilating several settlements.
 * Thriving Ghost Town And how. 10 people is big, 20 is almost unheard of and definitely is at present.
 * Troll: Oh boy. There were zerging problems that caused much uproar. Oddly enough, they were all called Tyranid-appropriate number. Then, there were groups such as The Marauders.. During the game's early decline, the Nexal Refugees became this.
 * Warrior Monk: There was, for a while, a settlement like this.
 * Worthless Yellow Rocks: In the flood plains, coins can rarely be found. They serve no purpose at all.
 * You Cannot Kill an Idea: A slogan much favoured by anyone whose settlement has recently been destroyed.
 * You Fail Pharmacology Forever: Thyme sprigs and honeycombs are healing items. Poultices and teas made from thyme and willow bark are used for reviving people.