I agree with Defender. I don't find the skill grinding to be as much of an issue, mainly because there's lots to do and to explore while you're waiting for the bonus exp. I don't think the needing people for expansion thing would be as annoying if there were actually, people. The dev wrote the game for and I believe meant for it to have a big playerbase, something which it has never in my memory had.

Well despite my bad experiences I probably ought to give this one another go, if nothing else because the textual maps are some of the most superior I have ever seen, and I will admit the idea of crafting and empire management appeals to me.

is there enough stuff to do solo in terms of managing and creating an empire (assuming I find enough land for one of course).

Anything from beginner level to I'd say around mid range is soloed easily Enough. Getting your skills to max, getting to gear level 150 or so -- maybe even 200 if you're careful and good -- all this is soloable. Anything high end,, however, is mostly designed for grouping. It's being worked on with different difficulty levels for the same adventures, but still, even the easiest modes for especially powerful bosses are impossible to do alone.

I love empire mud 2.0, and have been playing it off and on since before beta. Recently though, I find myself enjoying it less and less, because it's slowly but gradually moving away from the crafting and building focuses, and moving towards basically the reason I rarely play muds anymore -- more grind and find style mechanics. The best example I can give of this are the 50 or so new equipment patterns added to the game. These 50 patterns, pieces of craftable equipment between levels 125 and 225 or so, can drop on any creature in any part of the world of the appropriate level. In practice, this means players spend less time crafting the equipment, and more time walking around mindlessly killing things to get it to load.

I realize this post is colored heavily by my bias and, despite this, I don't mean to put you off playing. It is a wonderful mud, particularly if it's your first time actually building an empire, but, like all things, it has its less appealing characteristics. I'm pretty sure, however, that I've never had as much fun on a mud as I did planning out our empire's massive capital city.

The best thing about empire mud is seeing your empire rise from literally nothing. I hope you can find this sort of enjoyment in your gameplay.

what a sad sight yo.

I wouldn't say that my fork Rise of Empires is pvp focused, but instead is far less pvp restricted than on the original mud. During the 2 or so weeks it's been up no one's initiated any PVP against anyone else, and that's not a problem for me. The stronger empires have nonaggression pacts set up between them while they build up. You're welcome here even if you aren't a big fan of pvp, especially since you get the benefits of a custom soundpack and usability tweaks.

Always good to have more players, although I feel like you should know if in exploration you're more focused on soloing, you're going to have quite the bit of trouble later unless you play a specific skill combo or two.