Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

MUDs in 2012? Are there any good ones left?

MiscreantGamer

Barely Literate
Joined
Sep 20, 2013
Messages
1
I'm a once-regular player of DiscworldMUD who recently returned after a hiatus. If there are any other MUDs worth playing in this day and age that aren't P2P or P2W, I'm sure I don't know where they are.
DiscworldMUD may not be perfect, but it's the best MUD I think I've ever played, and it gets updated and developed more frequently than even the MUDs that actually cost money.

If anybody here is interested in checking out DiscworldMUD, just send a mudmail to Funderburk, my main character on the MUD, and I'll help get you started (or you could message me here). I'm new to the forum and I'm assuming that posting links to specific MUDs is frowned upon, but if you simply google DiscworldMUD, the official site (which has all the necessary connection information) should be the top search result - and conveniently, the very helpful wiki should be the third search result!

Something I noticed about Aardwolf and a lot of other 'popular' MUDs is that they tend to be derivative stock MUDs with some very generic AD&D staple spells and abilities with some commonly seen deviances (mana, stamina) and very few, if any, innovations. They are easily identified by the presence of spells like 'magic missile', sometimes rendered as 'magicmissle'.
 

set

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2013
Messages
940
A majority of MUDs still running these days are what I'd like to call 'text WOWs'. They consist of you running around, doing various static tasks given to you by NPCs in exchange for gold and experience. You kill rats, rats, rats, mercenaries, more rats, then maybe a dragon or a skeleton. You get to wear pointy hats, chainy chainmail, or leather bikinis. You can be an elf, a blue elf, a red elf, a green elf, and maybe an ogre or something, but that's if you're lucky. Some of them are P2W, but nevermind that, even if the game weren't P2W I don't know how you could play it. Maybe if you're the type who enjoys writing scripts for grinding textmonsters, they're good games, but these 'text WOWs' don't offer what I think someone desperate enough to play MUDs is looking for.

I play MUDs because I want the MMORPG experience... with features modern MMORPGs should already have at this point:
Guild Housing
Personal housing
A myriad of clothing options
A myriad of roleplaying options (you can be human, elf, dwarf, sure, but more exotic options should exist and be encouraged)
A myriad of roleplaying opportunities (you know, actual roleplaying, not just the number combat stuff)
A persistent world that has been developed in conjunction with the users of the MUD; you can leave a mark on the world with your actions
A persistent world with consistent 'lore'
Tense, exciting combat or action that matters; few safety nets, just low 'safety' in general - your items can be stole, lost or broken, your enemies can kill you if you aren't aware and careful
Death matters
The game isn't just a grind (all RPGs are grinds, but they shouldn't just be grinds)
The game has alternative paths of advancement (combat isn't necessary up to a point)
Genuine secrets

One of the only MUDs I've played to hit most of these marks is... well, HellMOO. It's a shame it's run by a bunch of apathetic asswipes who barely bother to play or develop the game anymore, but it's got a lot of great game mechanics. You can advance your character solely through crafting and exploration is really rewarded... well, it was when I played it aeons ago, it's all been spoiled by a wiki by now. It's a shame the staff there actively discourages roleplaying (you basically have to hide and carefully feel out people before trying to roleplay with them). It's also a shame the game was wildly imbalanced when I played it (rip empaths and chuds). But... I still think it has so many elements to it that are great that are totally missing from modern RPGs and all mainstream MMORPGs.

Playing Hellmoo, for the longest time, was like walking down a dark corridor, never knowing what to expect next. A horrible diseased mutant that will give you AIDS and a fungal infction after leaving you with a slither of life and no batteries left in your flash light? Or maybe a trove of junk you can haul home to make into an airplane that's worth more experience when built and worth more money when sold than grinding a bunch of text zombies for hours on end. RPGs are best when they combine the elements of exploration, item management, character advancement, and 'roleplay', yet most modern RPGs can barely get a single aspect of these right anymore.

I've tried playing a lot of muds, hoping to find games with a similar kind of design ethos, but few hit all the marks. It doesn't help so many of them are very samey... thanks to all of them jumping on the D&D or Middle-Earth bandwagon.

I don't evny people developnig muds though. It's rather hard for one to catch on? Most of the ones I try barely have more than a dozen players on them at any one moment. Writing a mud must also be much harder than writing some other kind 'indie title'. Hell, I'd consider Dwarf Fortress to be an easier endeavor than running a MUD.

MUDs don't catch on because they aren't mainstream, they require patience (you have to read), by the nature of it being an MMO it needs an active community to retain active players, they cost money to maintain, and it takes expertise to write them. You just can't download XNA and start building a MUD, you actually need to know quite a bit to build one from scratch. And most of the engines I've played around with are so old, that if you aren't writing one from scratch, you have to navigate poorly document esoteric buggy source code. And after a point, most people use them for sexual experimentation sandboxes. It's unrewarding and tough work to get right.
 
Last edited:

Blaine

Cis-Het Oppressor
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2012
Messages
1,874,662
Location
Roanoke, VA
Grab the Codex by the pussy
What's weird about MUDs is that people, to this day, design and release new ones that just fail. It's virtually impossible to launch a new game, but if you read the MudConnector forums, it seems like new ones come out on a bi-weekly basis. Like you said, the population just isn't there anymore. By far the most popular ones are the pay to play ones, and I guess that's because they have the budget to advertise.

It's also because people who've been playing 5, 10, even 20+ years and have hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of dollars (I personally know a few who've spent $10,000+) and even more hours of playtime feel invested.
 

goatvomit

Eau de Rapax
Patron
Joined
Aug 27, 2008
Messages
646
Location
boonies, Finland
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I started with batmud around 98 and then switched over to hardcore version in which the progress was faster but also the death was permanent. No other game has left such an abysmal feeling after your character died. These days I admit my time limitations and don't want to touch any mud again. Half of the fun was tweaking tinyfugue client anyways. I'd give bat a go if you were desperate.
 
Unwanted

aktillum

Unwanted
Advertising plant
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Messages
8
Where's all the MUD players? You know.. those text-based MMORPGs. I still play them :obviously:
 

Yolan

Novice
Joined
Mar 20, 2014
Messages
5
Made an account just to reply to this thread.

I played a lot really on just one MUD, WoTMUD. Popped in today for the first time in a few years, and there is still a reasonably active pop (goes up to maybe 50 at once during peak times I guess, maybe more... of course it used to be a peak of 200 plus six or seven years earlier). Mostly its a PK mud. The world of the books is not necessarily realized that well, but its pure canon none the less, and the basic mechanics are solid I think.

Also... right, some Trek MUSH I can't remember the name of. The really long running, famous one. I gave it a go a few times, and I mention it because what impressed me was how seriously people RPed, and the fact that this RP was connected to underlying hard coded game mechanics (you actually had to learn how to fly a star ship, fuel, power allocations, etc) as well as rules of conduct etc. expected of your rank and what not. Those kinds of hard restraints kept things serious and pretty fun. I think its still going anyhow.
 

Whiran

Magister
Joined
Feb 3, 2014
Messages
641
If you want to try a MUD that is roleplaying intensive in that roleplaying is a -requirement- and out of character chat is frowned upon check out:

http://armageddon.org/

The game features permanent death. One character at a time. A skill based system. And enforced roleplaying.

It is definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

There is an application to make a character. You need to describe your character in the third person - the character and not what they are wearing or projecting of emotions (ie, the man is tall as opposed to the man is wearing dark clothing and looks really scary.) and put together a rough background.

They are extremely strict and within the game itself it shows - the game ooozes atmosphere and immersion.

You have been warned though. It really isn't for everyone unless you really like roleplaying.
 

SlavemasterT

Arcane
Joined
Nov 23, 2005
Messages
2,670
Location
not Eurofagistan
Gemstone III and especially DragonRealms are really what introduced me to the RPG genre. So many wasted hours of my youth :salute:

At least I developed excellent typing skills from it all.
 

set

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2013
Messages
940
http://armageddon.org/ has a very steep learning curve, even I didn't have the patience for it. Was fun trying it out though.

I would say... just keep trying out stuff until something sticks. There are a lot of MUDS still in existence. Try them all, there's bound to be one that strikes a nerve; a lot of them have been around so long they have pretty deep mechanics and lived-in worlds. The ones with graffiti or terrain-manipulation are the best, the world is like its own story, with so many players having gone through the world.

One of my favorite MUD memories was uncovering a hidden base that was owned by an old guild that had played the game in '05. Everyone had forgotten about them, and a few people had picked the place clean long ago, but there was still stuff inside, a few valuable items left from the guild, as well as a whole bunch of neat journals. The MUD I was playing allowed players to snap pictures and write down stuff in journals, pictures/journals from the guild were left in there, as nobody had considered them valuable enough to steal. Was definitely fun reading those things. There were pictures of guid members doing stuff and it indicated the kind of relationships they had.
 

Old Hans

Arcane
Joined
Oct 10, 2011
Messages
1,446
Gemstone III and especially DragonRealms are really what introduced me to the RPG genre. So many wasted hours of my youth :salute:

At least I developed excellent typing skills from it all.

I agree! I always enjoyed Gemstone, since it felt like the Rolemaster RPG. Although I liked the skill system for DragonRealms, but didn't care much for the combat system.
 

set

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2013
Messages
940
None that I know of. Probably all MUDs are about roleplaying as a single character.
 

set

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2013
Messages
940
Right. There are some MUDs that let you control and command entities - the last big MUD I played supported the hiring of AI guards and the construction of defense bots. You could program the bots, train/teach bots and mercs skills (and they'd eat their own XP which they'd gain as you killed things), etc. but the amount of resources you'd have to invest in each one... and the fact you could never resurrect them on death... it meant only the truly rich/powerful (and paranoid) could care to use them. They were also not really 'tactical' but strategical elements. Most MUDs have pretty fast-paced (or at least real-time) combat without any pause so they aren't really suited to 'tactics' beyond having a basic strategy once you get into battle.
 

set

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2013
Messages
940
You think it's funny, but have fun trying to run a mud when 1/10th (at least this much) of your playerbase is playing as underage girls with dicks... Even if you go to great lengths to purge them from your gameworld, they'll just find ways to do it in secret. At least games like WoW prevent players from defining their characters as genderconfused oversexed prepub- oh wait.

Well, carry on then.
 
Unwanted

aktillum

Unwanted
Advertising plant
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Messages
8
I've been playing Achaea since '01, mostly for the RP community but also the PvP. It's got a nice HTML5 web client if you don't use a desktop MUD client, and the community is pretty great. There's something for everyone whether you want to be a crafter, tea-time roleplayer, PK griefer or whatever.
 
Self-Ejected

ZodoZ

Self-Ejected
Patron
Joined
Nov 6, 2013
Messages
798
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Armageddon?
What kind of sick fuqs lurk in these games? I will never know.
Sounds more like a prison rape simulator to me.
http://armageddon.org/help/view/Rape
Partial text:
"In situations where a power imbalance between two characters exists and said imbalance is used as leverage for an adult situation, consent must be sought at the earliest possible juncture. Refusal by the 'weaker' party requires the instigator to adjust their intent or desire to avoid a sexual situation."
 

Quatlo

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2013
Messages
941
"Most half-elves are the result of rape"
Elf rape simulator? Oh come on, you can't be more stereotypical.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom