For a contemporary Tibian, using the term “Tibiaball” just goes without saying. On a sundays afternoon you gather some friends, set up a pitch with two goals and start playing good old Tibiaball. But did you ever wonder what the hell came over CIP when they implemented a modern football? And where did the idea come from?
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| Tibiaball match AFT vs. RR – Teams discussing their tactics © Havey |
Tracing back the very first origins of Tibiaball brings us back to the early days of Tibia or more precisely to the time when Tibians invented pushing. At that time we came very soon up with the idea to use the new discovered technology to push lootbags around, to push players and basically everything that was not nailed down to the ground. Then we started first competitions to measure our pushing skills, like pushing a statue across Thais and finally we came to the idea to set up goals and play soccer. But hey, we did not have any football and how to set up a pitch? Our solutions were very rudimentary and bloody: We used dead fishes and a slain bear and called the game Tibiaball.
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| The “Ball ceremony”: This one was named Benjamin before he was killed and used as ball. © Merdend |
Very soon the first matches between guilds were organized and the whole thing became a sport. We even met once per week for training sessions. The matches had only few things in common with modern soccer as we used a dead bloody bear as ball and the whole pitch was a mess. While playing, it didnt became much better since we didnt set up clear rules and some mages burned the grass to ashes while half of the players were poisoned. But all in all we realized that Tibiaball was alot of fun and we organized the matches on a regular basis. And also more and more visitors joined the matches and stood, colored in their teams football shirts, at the side of the pitch shouting ecouragement to their team. Back then only 50-100 players were online at the same time so it wasn’t really unusual that dungeons and hunting places were quite deserted when a good match took place. After every match it was a confirmed habit to gather in a bar to talk about the match and drink a beer with good friends.
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| Get-together at the bar of the RR guildhouse after a match © Havey |
Tibiaball was spread all over Tibia and became a favourite pastime for many Tibians. Many years later CIP introduced the buyable Football and Tibiaball became more comfortable even though it lost some of its original style. In todays Tibia there are even Tibiaball leagues like the popular TBL organized by the Mercenary-Guild on Antica. But as many of todays things, we cant deny that also Tibiaball had a bloody past in primitive times but I can tell you: We had a real lot of fun 😉
Havey, center forward of one of the first Tibiaball matches 😉
The old TBL Banner, made by Taghor