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« on: June 09, 2019, 04:50:25 pm »
Good morning/afternoon/evening/night whatever is your time. I once again have came to a problem with finding a good unique MUD/MOO to play on. As such, I ask the Bay 12 Forums community again for any good MUD reccomendations. Again because my last thread died off and it was posted a long time ago.
Of course, I won't be seeking any random MUD, because some opportunists will try to reccomend me their MUDs (as a form of advertisement), hereby I have set up a few criterias which I will use to determine if a given MUD lies in my sphere of interest. Without further ado:
1: A MUD should have unique mechanics and gameplay.
This means that the mud should be engaging and offer someting unique mechanically and gameplay-wise. No stock mechanics, no stock areas and most importantly: No stock classes. I am fine if there is a guild/clan system that works like the class system except joinable in-game. Unique classes, say wightknight instead of the anti-paladin or Paragonian Knight instead of the stock warrior also work, as well as multi-classing. Even stock classes made in a non-stock style are also acceptable. A class-less system is also fine, provided there is some sort of a archetype which I can look into when I tailor my own unique "class". I've grown tired of the sea of MUDs offering the same generic "warrior rogue mage cleric" style, with the occasional "druid, necromancer, ranger, monk" classes thrown in.
Examples of unique-mechaniced MUDs include: Lost Souls (limb based health system, energies instead of mana, super-original guilds) Dune (Unique guilds with very unique mechanics, one of them got a rework) 3-Kingdoms/3-Scapes (Unique guilds, mechanics and even advancement systems and mana types (or guildpoints, as they're called))
2: A MUD should not offer an ability to purchase advantages with real-life money.
A topic of tension and controversy for the past year, microtransactions don't just plague only the big AAA games, they also affect the much older and smaller MUDs. These MUDs provide you with an ability to purchase perks or privileges that free players cannot obtain. This course of action is justified by "donations" and "rewarding donors", but this justification is so commonplace that it's no longer effective. Pepole should primarly donate because they like the game and they want to support their development, not because they can gain an advantage by doing so.
Monthly/quarterly/half-yearly/yearly subscription purchase also counts for "purchasing advantage" because if there is a free-to-play system and there is a subscription system, then the subscribers get advantages that the free players do not.
Examples of muds with the ability to purchase advantages include: Lost Souls (you can purchase guild slots, wild talents (psionics, as it is called there) and even exclusive races (such as shoggothim and pure dragons)) 3-Kingdoms/3-Scapes (you can buy special VAF perks, such as an additional guild slot. 1 guildslot = 200 VAF. 1 VAF = 1$ = ~4 ZŁ) Avalon (1989) (a recent addition, Avalon has turned from a sponsorship/optional subscription system to credited/"optional" subscription system. Being a credited (free) player means your progress is, from what I've read from the website, almost fully based upon crown purchase and crown conversion. And crowns are purchaseable with real money. Subscriptions give you lessons and free crowns, so yeah, do make up your own conclusion.)
3: A MUD should have a friendly and tolerant staffbase and playerbase.
The title is self-explanatiory, but I will describe it here. Even the best muds on the world can be spoiled and ruined if the elite, high level players see new players as undesirables and cannot understand their initial newbie stupidity being a part of the newbie learning process. Or otherwise act in a negative way towards those new and diffrent. No MUD can be called a good one as long as elitism runs rampant there. This includes the staff - it is also no good if the staff running the game are isolated from the community, reacting at any intrusion with arrogance and anger, in rare cases even issuing staff punishments for the audacity to disrupt their work in an effort to learn the game or address a problem unfixable otherwise. I myself have been the victim of communal elitism and staffer isolationism (mostly in the year 2015) and such experiences have made me much more distant towards a fellow person and more humble as well, and I worked hard on changing my own personality to avoid such incidents in the future, short and far.
For security reasons, I will not list out muds with suspected elitist problems, although if you, like me, are a veteran MUD drifter, who jumps from mud to mud you may actually know which muds I'm talking about.
4: A MUD should not forbid players from sharing walkthroughs to areas, quests and tasks.
That means that "qinfo", walkthroughs and other info should be freely accesible and shareable with others, to help them progress or catch up with their friends. It also means a MUD is open to those pepole who, for some reason cannot do quests due to mental conditions (myself being a part of this group). A mud who forbids or limits sharing "qinfo" or similar information, be it through internal or external communication is not open to those "special" pepole who simply cannot mentally do the task of completing even the simplest quests. I get it - this is a part of gameplay and makes up for the experience one enjoys while playing the game, I also get it that it also serves as a tool to keep the player engaged, but this is infuriating for some pepole and an a progress throttle for some diffrent pepole, in rare cases even a progress obstacle that cannot be overcome.
Examples of such muds include: 3-Scapes, Nanavent and Midnight Sun II.
5: A MUD should not tie progress and accesibility to roleplay, or enforce it in any way.
MUDs, being games that are text based, have a very strong roleplay potential that cannot be reproduced in 3D or even 2D games. This potential is sometimes used by games to advance the plot, make intrigue and generally create an unique atmosphere that is rememberable and enjoyable by all in the game. The downside to roleplay is that it is very slow paced, and if a mud ties progress to roleplay, then the already slow progress is slowed even more to unbearable levels. Some MUD's also enforce roleplay as well, which means that you have to act, or else. If a mud has it's progress or accesibility to guilds, clans and such tied to roleplay (usually that of a enforced kind), then you can't join that guild until, for example:
You start fufilling mechanical requirements, such as say... 17 wisdom for priests.
You have a written history. It can be a short one or a big one, but it must be logical and manually approved, which takes time.
You need to be already established in the in game roleplayscape, which means roleplay for a long time, usually a few months.
You need to roleplay joining a guild, that is establishing contact with recruiters, writing an interview letter, having an interview with the recruiter or the head of the guild. This process, especially the initial establishing contact phase, takes a very long time - usually a year, but there are rumours that this takes even longer, and even then, you may be rejected, which means roleplaying and mechanical adjustments and later repeating the sequence I described above, still with no guarantee..
Advancement within a approved guild takes less time, but it is still comparatively long.
Me, as a person with a low degree of patience, and a low tolerance of failure of any kind usually find it frustuating when you have to roleplay for over a year before you join your favourite guild and infuriating when you find out that your application was rejected just because you screwed up your history because you didn't knew the game lore. Therefore I usually avoid those games, as I want to play and have fun, and I'm not having fun when I find my progress throttled by roleplay.
Just to make it clear - I have nothing against roleplay in itself, it can be fun and it can also be enjoyable, so long as it is optional and so long as it is not tied to progress and does not impair or reduce accesibility to guilds, quests, locations etc.
Examples of such muds include: all RPI muds (such as Armageddon), all MUXes, all MUSHes, some MOOs, The Inquisition: Legacy, Threshold RPG, DragonRealms, Gemstone IV, Geas, Dark & Shattered Lands and New Worlds Ateraan.
All suggestions which are not blatant ads will be considered and judged based upon the 5 criteria I described, in detail, above. I understand this is a very long wall of text (it took 2 hours to write this), but I wanted to describe each criteria in detail as to not to cause ambiguity and confusion amongst the publicity. I hope to hear some answers soon. I wish you all a good day.
