Summary ATITD is a massively multiplayer online manufacturing simulation. Players travel through a virtual world loosely based on Egypt, manufacture goods, trade, build buildings, and compete (or cooperate) to pass tests.

the good

"levels" aren't restrictive

ATITD is rare in that players of different "levels" can meaningfully cooperate to accomplish goals. In your regular hack & slash MMORPG if your friend goes on vacation for 2 weeks, you will have levelled up too much, and it will take some work to get the two of you back into sync.

In ATITD a relative noob with little more than free university skills can usually cooperate with a veteran who has purchased every single skill from every school, and both players can benefit from the cooperation.

the bad

almost everything is a menu

This makes it fairly simple to code, but it just seems lame. The few things that deviate from the menu (Set's Ladder, various conflict games) often end up being clunkier than the menus. Maybe the menus are a good paradigm.

travel

The most complained-about aspect of the game is travel. Waypoints are a kludge that has partially addressed the problem. Some players maintain that making travel easy would adversely affect the game. Players who have accumulated insane amounts of waypoint time (enough that they just teleport around within their own camp) say otherwise.

There are a few justifications for the difficulties of travel

it conveys the sense that egypt is large
it gives a sense of accomplishment when you visit a distant area that few have travelled to before.
it allows you to serendipitously encounter other players as you travel
it provides an advantage to players with a certain disposition who can then specialize in "travel". (in practice, these specialists are of no use to egypt as a whole).

Still, I find it annoying that travel consists of "click on the horizon every 40 seconds".

the fundamental element of play is ``waiting''

The game is very demanding of your time. A large number of tasks consist of

select a menu option
wait n seconds (where n ranges from 10 to 3600 seconds)
repeat

With the really long tasks, you can set an alarm on your cellphone and wander off to do laundry, or watch TV. With the really short tasks, you can stay relatively engaged. With the intermediate ones, it is more of a 1980s-era "waiting for the computer" purgatory.

Some of these waiting-based tasks are forgiving. If you don't come back in time to do another weave on the loom, your character has wasted a little time that it could have been manufacturing. No big deal. Some are not forgiving. If you miss the window to add a late malt to a beer kettle, the batch is ruined, and you have wasted 20 minutes to an hour.

certain game activities can not be paused

Charcoal and cement (and grinding to a lesser extent) are the big ones here. If you can not guarantee that you will be in front of the computer for 15 or 60 minutes, you can not begin these tasks. If you do, and are subsequently interrupted, you end up wasting time and resources (which are basically time crystalized into an object).

Contrast with Diablo 2 where you can use a town portal to retreat to a safe place (town) while you take care of some real-life issue, and later return to resume your battle.

game events ask you to schedule real life around them

One of the big attractions of MMO games is that they bring together a lot of people, but often that pressures you to coordinate timing of events.

Festivals are the biggest example. The more people you can get to do the festival at the same time, the more points everyone gets. The individuals who are unable to rearrange their real life to accomodate this aspect of the game are at a disadvantage.

Another example is mushroom hunting. Participation in the Test of Darkest Night requires that you log into the game for a 1-hour window that happens about 3 times per day. The hassle is compounded by the fact that some mushrooms have a localized habitat and thus you are forced to deal with the inconveniences of travel.

Other examples include grape growing, beetles, fishing, and (to a much smaller extent) livestock.

This means that certain aspects of the game are degraded for the "casual player". Casual players will never be able to compete with hardcore players, that's how you tell the difference between casual and hardcore. It just seems a little wrong, though, that certain aspects of the game are unavailable or degraded in quality if you have a job/social-life.