MUDs in 2012? Are there any good ones left?

[Norfleet]

I had a lot of fun with MUDs. There's a lot of variation with them. I don't like RP-rules, however.

Not only is it stifling, but there are, apparently, two kinds of characters that catch a lot of flak: Characters who are NORMAL, and do not, in fact, any kind of tragic backstory, were not raised by wolves, and do not otherwise conform to a hackneyed stereotype, and characters who are not STUPID, read: "Are not Bond villains and do not take their cues from Dick Dastardly and Snidely Whiplash".

I had a bitch of a time getting NORMAL characters through character generation because there wasn't much to say about them, until I wrote an automated backstory generator that would take world demographic information as input and spit out paragraphs of banality for each year of a character's backstory life, which was practically a precursor to Twitter.

The latter type tended to cause mortal butthurt when I would proceed to go for my objectives like someone who wasn't retarded, and, when confronted with those of the "heroic" persuasion, inevitably resulted in their quick deaths because they weren't able to cope with the non-stupid. It didn't help that the game itself set me on a course of opposition to their faction. I was working for side A, which was, by the backstory, hostile to side B, and they would then exacerbate the problem with pigheaded heroics which would put them into a situation where their death became the only logical outcome, such as refusing to retreat from fights where they were losing simply because they had more guys than me, expecting that they would somehow win by virtue of superior numbers, despite the fact that the battle had already become a rout. The outcomes were inevitably as comical as what would happen if you pitted an army led by operatic heroes against Genghis Khan.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Hey Norfleet, how about RP-rules like this one:

Please remember to keep a distinction between IC and OOC. Please refrain from sharing information you have obtained IC with other members of the game so they may have the chance to learn and react themselves. Even though you may know something that your character does not, we ask that you roleplay realistically and roleplay only what your character has learned through the game.

This also means if your character dies, any information they have learned cannot carry over to your next character, nor can any of your characters have had any relationship with your previous characters without staff permission. All IC arrangements must be organized and roleplayed out in game.

Please refrain from sharing character information for 30 days after your character dies. This gives other characters and plots a chance to conclude without interference. After 30 days has passed, you are welcome to post your identity on the forums.

From a (mostly) dead MUD I was looking at (and sort of interested in trying):
http://forum.parallelrpi.com/doku.php?id=rules#characters_roleplay_and_ic_vs_ooc

Ugg. I don't understand how people can think it's playable to follow rules like that. Like rotten eggs.

Doubt it matters anyhow, it's a dead MUD. No one will notice.

 

[Norfleet]

Those rules are actually fairly normal, although they would nowadays be completely unenforceable with a game on the scale of even a small MMO. It's rarely, if ever, the explicitly written rules that cause the problems. Usually, the butthurt begins when people start finding that everyone who ends up on the wrong side of me tends to get killed, because if there's a system involved in anything, and I'm going to play that system, I'm going to get very good at that system, whereas the others are content to write "Fighter Ace" into their character backgrounds and then not actually become any good at it. So, a fight starts, quite naturally, because we're on opposite sides of a war, I shoot them down, they forget to eject because it is inconceivable that they be shot down, and the whining starts...

 

[set]

Those are completely reasonable rules. You should not be allowed to use OOC information ICly. This is how all pnp games work which is what most MUDs are more closely emulating (and are better able to do so because text is involved - you can allow for complex actions via text that graphics cannot show without significant time/money spent on animation).

 

[SerratedBiz]

Those rules originate and are used only by RPI muds, the kind where OOC communication is at least discouraged if not entirely disallowed and in which situations that happen in-character should stay in-character. That means that you don't roll a new character to enact revenge for the death of your IC-unrelated previous character. Breaching this policy can get your character nuked or worse, depending on severity and previous transgressions.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Been playing http://cryosphere.net/.

Is ok. Wanted sci-fi theme. This is one (of maybe 3 at most?) I found which is active and not fantasy/post-apoc oriented. STarts on a space station. Mission (err Quest) oriented. You're part of the british royal navy.

Saw another one called "Core," but the thing died years ago. Looked fun.

Couple others that're sci-fi, but not sure if they "taste good":
http://www.ibgames.com/index.html
http://www.corpexpanse.com/cradle/cradleintro.html
(incoporates some fantasy) http://www.haelrahv.com/

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Has anyoned tried this one:
http://www.alteraeon.com/

Alter Aeon is a fantasy world of adventure and untold possibilities. Do you wish to be a mighty warrior, seeking a dragon to slay? A ghastly necromancer, commanding an undead army? A powerful sorcerer? A wise healer? The choice is yours!

As a text-based game, Alter Aeon harnesses the power of your imagination. The world is full of exciting places, from the mysterious elemental planes, to creepy haunted tombs and the ancient City of Kings. Join other players and team up to accomplish your goals.

The game features:

• A multiclassing system which lets you customize your character's skills and spells
• Over 400 unique areas, with more being added all the time
• A friendly playerbase, willing to help and guide new players
• Brewing, carving, and enchanting to make custom items
• Over 600 quests and storylines to experience!

Play as a combination of:

• A mage, master of elemental magics and offensive spells.
• A cleric, master of healing, protection, and curses.
• A thief, master of shadow and cunning.
• A warrior, master of weaponry and advanced battle tactics.
• A necromancer, master of undead and demonic forces.
• A druid, master of runes and nature.

I'm sticking to sci-fi, but this one looks well looked after. 89 in who's on.

 

[set]

Looks like a rat farmer to me.

 

[Norfleet]

Why do games always have the lamest descriptions attached to them? The list of "features" and whatnot pretty much says nothing about the game. It's all just blah blah blah devoid of any content. Nothing in there sounds the least bit interesting. Is this kind of thing actually meant to appeal to you, and I'm just too jaded to see it, or is it as lame to you as it is to me?

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Why do games always have the lamest descriptions attached to them? The list of "features" and whatnot pretty much says nothing about the game. It's all just blah blah blah devoid of any content. Nothing in there sounds the least bit interesting. Is this kind of thing actually meant to appeal to you, and I'm just too jaded to see it, or is it as lame to you as it is to me?

Well I enjoy MUDs mostly. Ya, the features don't say much, but based on the site and Who's On, I'm impressed. Right now though I'm on a sci-fi only regime. There're a lot of fantasy MUDs out there. I put that one ther because I've enver seen it b4.

And ya I alwyas click on the "features" or "about" to get a feel for the game and the site.

 

[Norfleet]

I've traditionally ignored the official "about" as being generally useless in terms of defining what the game is actually about, and go with the advice of whoever recommended the game to me, or whatever is being said about it on the forums or elsewhere. Generally, I find my reasons for playing something to be the opposite of what others like, so I derive a great deal of informative value out of people complaining about the game, because those are inevitably the things I actually like about it. The way I see it, there's no such thing as a good game, because good does not exist, only differing degrees of bad...and I would rather be playing a bad game than a blandly mediocre game: They have trainwreck appeal that mediocre ones don't...especially when you can be part of causing that trainwreck.

 

[Levenmouth]

Those rules originate and are used only by RPI muds, the kind where OOC communication is at least discouraged if not entirely disallowed and in which situations that happen in-character should stay in-character. That means that you don't roll a new character to enact revenge for the death of your IC-unrelated previous character. Breaching this policy can get your character nuked or worse, depending on severity and previous transgressions.

Pretty standard rules indeed, but I wouldn't disagree with belowmecoldhands that they are rather silly. It is the same story with all of these MUDs: You are new, you get the short end of the stick every time, because the only characters you are allowed to play are the ones at the very bottom of the food chain. You are less new, you get all the cool characters just because people know who you are OOCly. I don't know how many times I have seen someone getting promoted for no good reason be it in Armageddon or SoI/Atonement/Parallel, which I have always found much more immersion breaking than some new character trying to kill someone else. At least you can justify the latter by saying that it is an assassin hired by the friends and family of the dead PC. What is worse, you very often get brownie points for killing your character in some completely ridiculous, metaplot-related manner, because you, as a player, know that the said points can be used to roll a much cooler, unique character that will be the blight of the noobs for months to come. You thus don't use OOC information officially, but you do in practice and everyone knows it.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Levenmouth Short answer, because I'm in a hurry. But my experience is different; it's often characters who think in this metagame manner the ones who are the most immersion breaking. In contrast, people who attempt to flesh out their characters and play them as characters, instead of facades for themselves, are better rewarded. I played one character on SoI which lived for more than 2 OOC years and went from total newbie to clan leader, and of one of the main clans, as both the character and the player grew in experience.

I do realize everyone has their own stories to tell, though I'm pretty sure that becoming part of the problem doesn't make you part of the solution.

 

[Norfleet]

Pretty standard rules indeed, but I wouldn't disagree with belowmecoldhands that they are rather silly. It is the same story with all of these MUDs: You are new, you get the short end of the stick every time, because the only characters you are allowed to play are the ones at the very bottom of the food chain. You are less new, you get all the cool characters just because people know who you are OOCly. I don't know how many times I have seen someone getting promoted for no good reason be it in Armageddon or SoI/Atonement/Parallel, which I have always found much more immersion breaking than some new character trying to kill someone else.

Worse than that, really. If you play like someone who knows he's on the bottom of the food chain and needs to be ruthless and clever if he wants to get anywhere in life, they tend to REALLY hate you as you leave a trail of their dead precious characters who didn't know when to get out of the way. I've blown away so many Grand Admiral Muck-a-Mucks and High Lords simply because I bothered to study the combat rules and they didn't...and they think it's somehow WRONG that a king winds up dead at the hands of a common archer. As if this didn't happen all the time in history...

It is extremely common that such people come to see the game and everything in it as something that should conform to THEIR personal roleplay story, rather than the roleplaying as something that rolls with the game. Their ace pilot can't POSSIBLY be shot down by a newbie lieutenant...even though the only thing they've ever done to become an ace pilot was write "Ace Pilot" in their character bio. They certainly have never shot down 5 other pilots before...so instead of ejecting, they throw a tantrum and die in the cockpit. Godmodders just hate it when their brilliant roleplay vision is coldly interrupted by the harsh reality of the game's actual ruleset.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Norfleet sounds like he spent his time role-playing in MUSHes, a fate I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, something akin to LARPing.

Case in point:

 

[Norfleet]

Hey, I thought it was gonna be like a regular MUD at the time, and by the time I realized I had stumbled into something different, I knew too much about it to just get OUT.

 

[Levenmouth]

If you can defeat player kings and aces, that is actually not all that bad. I don't see characters like Faithful Lady "AWACS" Quoriya from Armageddon dying in anything but a story arc any time soon. It really kills any kind of tension, when everything is a script.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, you can, but the problem is that it generally touches off such a storm of butthurt that the entire thing ends up sunk by retconn. That's where I first learned the word, too. And yeah, it really does. People want to play dynamic, front-line, facing-danger-with-the-troops leaders...but they don't want to ACTUALLY FACE ANY DANGER. And they CERTAINLY won't do anything like actually being qualified for the positions they want to play as. They want to be Space Captains, but couldn't command a starcruiser to save their own lives. They want to be Generals, but can't tell the difference between a phalanx and a mob of peasants with pitchforks. They are so manifestly unsuited to positions that they are handed by what amounts to nepotism that, well, let's just say hilarity ensued when, at some point, One of Us managed to land in a position that they had tried for so long to keep us out of, and, frankly, pretty much the entire Aces Club switched that faction overnight. At that point the tenuous factional balance they had tried to preserve between the sides sort of went out the window since nobody on the other sides could figure out the pointy end of a kill-o-zap, while everyone on our side was capable of singlehandedly obliterating the combined forces of the entire rest of the game solo. Much butthurt was caused. The game erupted into flames and rioting and mayhem. Good times.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I played lots of muds over the years. I can't remember 10% of the names. Really.

Tell me about it, man. It's always something unmemorable, like Rise of the Fallen Dragon or something.

One thing I'll add is I found many, MANY things in MUDs were more advanced or detailed than the normal graphical MMORPGs. I don't know if that's because graphical ones are more mainstream or because MUDs are text-based. BUT I did prefer the grpahical MMORPGs in terms of it seeming more easy to visually digest. Some MUDs didn't even have a mini-map which showed the nearby envrionment.

Both. It's both. Mainstream, obviously, dumbs things down, but the fact that things don't have to be represented graphically and animated certainly lowers the barrier required to create a given system in the first place. Compare "Dwarf Fortress" with all the graphical imitators thereof.

Here's what I think I remember:

Midkemia? Or Midlekliem (lol). I think I played something like that for a little. Seemed fun-ish. Didn't stick to it.
Icesus? Was cool, I think. Can't remember why or when I stopped.
Achaea (spelling). Was cool. Big world. Lots of things. I think I tried Aetolia or Imperian too. There're a couple other MUDs all in the same company or something. RP-rules were annoying. Lots of weird classes. You could buy low and sell high. Good pvp, I was told.
Discworld. Played or a short while. Don't remember much.

I played a lot of other random MUDs. One of htem sticks out in my mind. I don't know of it was Icesus or another one somewhere. It had a mini-map which showed yoru surroundings. Very large world. I got lost in one of hte dungeons with someone else.

I've never subscribed to a MUD. I've never played for more than a month or two on any single one. Even with graphical MMORPGs, the only two I've played consistently AND subbed are EQ and Wurm Online. Sure, I've played lots of UO player-run servers and random MMORPGs, but never really return to anything after rolling with it for several weeks.

I had a lot of fun with MUDs. There's a lot of variation with them. I don't like RP-rules, however. Too stifling. I played htem ;ong enough to start scripting the MUD client I usd. I didn't use an automapper, though.

I think if I played again, what I'd like is to be able to automaticlly record the rooms I'm in and store them in a 2-dimensional grid. What I want is omething that acts like an automapper, but without everything being mapped beforehand. I really like fog of war in different games I've played. I also like to explore a lot. I don't like premapped stuff. I'd like the whole automapper thing with fog of war even more if I could scribble notes onto the rooms - like "merchant" or "quest" or "stairs".

Anyone tried (?): http://godwars2.org/

Ever play that time travel one - I forget its name but it was very popular for a while. You could start in one of 7 times /places, from Arabian nights, medieval, Victorian, through to modern day. Abilities and classes were designed on the basis of the folklore for that period being real - so a wizard might start in ancient Persia or medieval, a gun-using fighter in the modern day or Victorian times, a thief with pickpocket speciality in ancient Persia or Victorian era etc. There were wide ranges of starting areas for each class, but because you needed skill trainers some eras would suit some builds better than others (eg a fighter will find rifle trainers only in the modern and Victorian eras, but could learn swords instead in the earlier ones).

It had a great way of shielding the lower level players from high level PvP. Passing through time gates was only possible after you had completed a time and class specific quest (designed to be tackled at a medium, rather than a low level), so you would spend a long time in your own geographical and time period, until you were able to travel between eras and suddenly have to encounter potentially enemy players with skillsets vastly different to what you were used to by then.

Seems ripe for a modern mmorpg to rip off. You can only differentiate playstyle so much within a MUD. Having players deal with ranged firearms, mages with CC, or stealthy rogues AFTER they've settled into a playstyle could have some neat dynamics.

 

[Norfleet]

I'm not following as to how this would shield you from high-level PKing, since they can still come to you, and probably will, given that the nature of PKing is proactive. You'd need an alternate mechanism to prevent this, like the traditional use of level-based PK ranges.

 

[Whiran]

If you can defeat player kings and aces, that is actually not all that bad. I don't see characters like Faithful Lady "AWACS" Quoriya from Armageddon dying in anything but a story arc any time soon. It really kills any kind of tension, when everything is a script.

Wait.. what? That character is still alive? Hasn't that been like almost five years now?

I haven't logged into Armageddon in a very long time so I'm not sure however she was just starting when I last played.

I hope she isn't a staff member's character. When that happened things went extreme-silly-mode fast.

Still, I have lots of fond memories of Armageddon characters - I will say this for the game it was the most 'pure' roleplaying I've experienced. Too bad that over time certain elements developed a total aversion to killing and death thinking that it was somehow OOC to kill someone your character didn't like.

 

[Levenmouth]

I haven't checked for about a year, but I would be really surprised if that character disappeared for any reason other than plot. I prefer to keep IC as IC as possible and not interact too much on forums or go to any kind of yearly meetings, but considering the abilities that character has I am confident that that player has been there for a very, very long time now. She effectively has access to everyone background information and can monitor all communication. There goes your intrigue. In this case, I am not entirely sure that the distinction between staff and non-staff is very meaningful.

I have to agree about the genuineness of RP in Armageddon though. RPTs aside, it didn't feel very scripted and hunting was always fun. Playing a burglar would be fun too, if it wasn't for the fact that breaking into homes is about the only thing they can do and the somewhat superfluous difficulty of obtaining lockpicks. The most genuine RP MUD I have played though would probably be the one I retrospectively dislike the most and that by a huge margin—Achaea. It is by far the worst pay-to-win game I have ever seen and I would not recommend it to anyone. To give an example, the thing that made me quit it was that my two-year-old character was killed by a two-day-old character, who simply threw a couple of thousands of dollars at the game and purchased a combat script from another player. One thing it did get right though was politics, which were, as far as I could tell, left completely to the players and decided by majority votes. This allowed for a fairly healthy rotation of leaders and, provided you are more or less skilled orator, allowed you to easily dislodge the player[1] by simply writing up a post about how detrimental their leadership is to your organisation. Now, of course, this too suffered quite heavily due to P2W. Some players would just spend ridiculous amounts of money on gifts to other players and thus basically buy votes. Still, it is one of the things that game did well. Needless to say, their staff-led story arcs were complete rubbish.

[1] Without permadeath the player-character distinction is somewhat superfluous.

 

[aryianna]

The text MUD I've played the longest is Avalon: The Legend Lives. It recently celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Avalon continues to add new content to keep its players engaged. It is free to play but there are options to purchase lessons and custom items but nothing that allows anyone to become overpowered over others just because they have the money to spend. Things are implemented to stop player killing of people much less than their size. Avalon has a wide variety of ways to play your character whether it is PVP fighting, legion warfare, rising in your guild or city or even casual gaming collecting commodities. May 2nd, 2015 Avalon will be holding a gem quest. The winner of the sapphire will be bestowed double-speed equilibrium and thrice-crowned constitution on its wielder in addition to becoming the first contender in this ordination round. Do you have what it takes to become a god?? I made my way to the pantheon many years ago

 

[kain611]

I see Gemstone IV went free to play.

 

[Blaine]

The text MUD I've played the longest is Avalon: The Legend Lives. It recently celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Avalon continues to add new content to keep its players engaged. It is free to play but there are options to purchase lessons and custom items but nothing that allows anyone to become overpowered over others just because they have the money to spend. Things are implemented to stop player killing of people much less than their size. Avalon has a wide variety of ways to play your character whether it is PVP fighting, legion warfare, rising in your guild or city or even casual gaming collecting commodities. May 2nd, 2015 Avalon will be holding a gem quest. The winner of the sapphire will be bestowed double-speed equilibrium and thrice-crowned constitution on its wielder in addition to becoming the first contender in this ordination round. Do you have what it takes to become a god?? I made my way to the pantheon many years ago

You know they're getting desperate when they're shilling on RPG Codex. Like I said, the entire genre is on its last legs. There's nowhere close to enough new blood coming in to replace people who finally drift away/die/whose wives force them to quit/get a real job/become homeless purchasing $1,000 artifacts/etc.

This spam is especially odd for me to see because I played Avalon: The Legend Lives for awhile. It has a rather obnoxiously complex and fast-moving system of PvP mechanics wherein you had to memorize 25+ different poison descriptions and status effects and read at 200+ WPM (not uncommon in old-school MUDs, or MUDs in general for that matter). I was able to handle it, but it just wasn't actually fun in practice.

aryianna, say hello to Narissa for me. Just kidding, you're a shill and won't be back.

I see Gemstone IV went free to play.

Hasn't it been for a while? Maybe I'm misremembering. No doubt Simutronics is hurting along with the rest of the pay-to-win MUDs operators.

Speaking of, many people seem to think pay-to-win is somewhat new, a product of the mid-2000s seen in Korean graphical MMOs and so on. That couldn't be any further from the truth. MUDs are far and away the most outrageously pay-to-win games known to mankind.