2013-06-09 09:28:31 (edited by Victorious 2013-06-09 16:06:56)

At first I thought of posting this in the looking for new muds to play but that has become the nonofficial thread for materia magica discussions so I decided to create a new topic.

Well as the title says, I'm looking for a new game or a mud that will be able to keep me hooked for a while. Mud-wise, Alter aeon was the first mud that I played and I enjoyed my time there immensely but I stopped playing due to a combination of factors. Other muds that I've tried for several weeks are aardwolf, miriani and materia magica but none of them just seem to be able to keep me interested for an extended amount of time.

I'm looking for a mud that is at least moderately active (20+ users online), has good areas and room descriptions, a large world, does not have arcaic equipment saving limitations such as requiring rent to store eq (am surprised so many muds still force you to do that), strategic combat, restricted or no pk, non-enforced RP, and no remort system. I didn't realize how hard it was to find such a mud but have been searching for over a fortnight without much success.

Btw, anyone knows what happened to project bob? I tried to connecting to the mud without success and their site brings me to a generic dreamhost landing page.

I'm also looking for a realtime or turn-based strategy (online/offline) or an rpg game. There are not many of those that I know of and it seems that most of the recent new releases have been of the arcade/sidescroller genre. Tactical battle and Sound RTS are awesome examples of strategy games but both have their limitations.

2013-06-09 14:35:35

Hi, miriani can keep you interested if you learn flying and join missions. If you don't partisipate in the chatter channel, then you will hardly have a problem. They will not strand you unless you argued with them or contacted them in a bad way.

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2013-06-09 14:55:00

hey there,
here are some muds that I play:
Aarchon, 7thplane, 4d is nice too.
aarchonmud.com:7000 for aarchon, 7thplane.net:8888 for 7th plane and I can't seem to remember about 4d

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2013-06-09 16:03:27 (edited by Victorious 2013-06-09 16:05:04)

@Burak: I didn't really have a good experience with Miriani, running afoul of their stupid naming policies and also their really pathetic attempt at enforced RP which is just an excuse for people to act out their sexual fantasies. I've heard of the admins cracking down on that sort of thing but its not something that I'll go back to anytime in the next year or 2.

@Dhruv: Aarchon requires remorts for advancement beyond level 90. My experience at Aardwolf taught me more than anything else that I don't mix well with muds that requires remorting, I just can't stand to repeat doing the same things 7 times. Same with 4d.

Last I've heard, 7th plane was mostly a grinding mud with lots of crafting options. Are there areas with good descriptions, quests  and npcs to explore? I do get tired faster than usual of grinding without some form of exploration.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I'm also looking for a mud that doesn't not have arcaic limitations on equipment saving such as rent.

2013-06-09 16:07:50 (edited by Victorious 2013-06-09 16:10:22)

@Bladestorm: Will probably try the Squaresoft mud as it looks interesting and hope that the people are more friendly. What's the Japanese game you mentioned about and can you get a link? Also, does the discworld mud require any discworld knowledge? Have not read that series.

2013-06-10 13:20:28 (edited by Victorious 2013-06-10 14:03:15)

New moon's wholist looks pretty deserted whenever I check, only player that is on is Players Pious (Idle 48). I usually try to avoid nearly deserted muds as the social interaction aspect does make the mudding experience more enjoyable; indeed, without that I would have stopped playing alter aeon many months sooner.

There aren't that many people too on SquareSoft and it has something similar to a rent system till you reach lvl 100, which just strikes me as being pretty arcaic. I do wish that non-adult muds were more popular;the top 2 muds sorted by userload on mudstats.com are adult muds with an average of over 500+ players onlines in the month.

2013-06-12 05:40:17

http://www.mozartmud.com/index.html
Mozart Mud may be what you are looking for. I found it like a mixture of alter and Meteria Magica. I didn't get too much into it though. I do wish ConQuest was still up though, that mud was perfect but for the lack of updates IMO... *hint to random people who know python, muds in python rool!*

2013-06-12 16:02:44

Tried MozartMud but couldn't find the inn for renting sad

2013-06-12 17:08:50

Heh, python has nothing to do with having a game like Conquest.  Having a game like conquest has to do with having a good idea and using it.  I keep contemplating starting one like it, but always don't because of time constraints and lack of motivation.  I'd actually maybe use DGD instead, despite the learning curve.
As for muds you might like:
Dark Legacy, project Bob, and Conquest are dead.  These would have been my top three recommendations.
if you are willing to put up with lower playerbase and extreme game complexity, a few of us are enjoying Lost Souls these days.  It is a love it or hate it mud in my opinion, however.
Any of the IRE games, if you like RP.  They're kind of pay to play but not--you can play for free, but most of the top people got to the top by paying tons of money, and doing it without tons of money is difficult.
Your playerbase restriction eliminates half of them.
7th plane is good.  Not much in the way of exploration, but you can do all sorts of crazy stuff.
Icesus is good, but it has some blind accessibility issues.  Since I'm the only blind player who has ever played it at all, and since they basically implemented an entire outworld survey system just because I pointed it out to them, I suspect that if more blind people were playing they'd be inclined to add stuff for us.  I haven't played them in a while, but they've got interesting guilds and such and a large playerbase.
Batmud is playable, if you jump through a few hoops, but i'm not going to go into what those hoops are unless there's interest.  They deserve their own post, or perhaps a mushclient plugin.  Batmud is, in and of itself, not open to implementing stuff for us, however--each wizard works on their own projects, and if you can find one interested in doing it things might get done, but there's no central steering authority that I know of.  It's definitely playable, and you don't have to worry about said issues for the first 20 levels or so, meaning you can try it out, and none of them makes it impossible to play.

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2013-06-12 19:10:00

How do you sort games by anything on mud stats.com? IDK, tried going to brows and there doesn't seem to be any search button once you've selected what you want.

2013-06-12 20:09:36

Mudstats overhauled the interface, and it is now a pain to use.  In addition, it has managed to make NVDA go all weird, something that very, very few web sites can manage.  Press enter on the column headings, typically, going by everything else I've seen and what it used to be.

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2013-06-12 22:03:27 (edited by Victorious 2013-06-12 22:04:20)

That's weird, it works really well with Jaws 14. The aria grid works exactly like normal web tables do, in so far as table navigation commands at least.

Are the iron realms games enforced RP?

2013-06-12 22:35:12

I think it updates the web page with new data, and has flagged that area with live region, but am not really sure; every so often, however, NVDA starts reading all the data from the top.  Jaws has always been worse about picking up dynamic content changes, at least through 13, which is apparently a boon in this case.  I don't know who maintains it or I'd send off an e-mail about it.

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2013-06-14 08:52:26

The last time I tried dark legacy I only saw one other player online so I think that its just empty,and not offline.

2013-06-14 17:10:33

Dark legacy is weird.  It's empty, and the head developer has publicly abandoned it with an agreement to keep the server up.
Conquest crafting sucked.  Crafting based muds, as a rule, suck.  Dark legacy was crafting-based, and didn't.  It's about the crafting system you use, and making players wait 6 hours for an invisible timer to go down is not a good one.  Crafting-based muds can work, but you need an innovative crafting system.  I've had ideas in this area, but it appears none of the running muds do, judging by what they're implementing these days.
I should also take this time to mention that all the high-end IRE skills, all the ones that get you wanting to play for the mechanics, only work on players.
Icesus is cool, but I just couldn't get into it for some reason.  I'm not able to get into many muds anymore, so take that with a very, very big grain of salt.   I should really try it again.

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2013-06-14 18:34:45

I spent a bit of time yesterday looking at icesus, but I just couldn't get into it.  The main reason is that the mud requires you to quit in a particular place, and does not have a recall command.  Sometimes, I get an urgent phone call, have to do some chores around the house, or real life just happens.  That means I need to leave the game, like, within the next 30 seconds or so, without warning.  Games that do not allow for this are extremely, unbelievably, disrespectful to me as a player.  I am playing your game for fun. It is not my job, full time or otherwise.  I have a life. When life happens, the developers need to allow me to actually tend to the things that impact on my real world survival.  Miriani is the only time I've seen this done right. You shouldn't quit unless you're in your ship and landed. But you can land almost anywhere, and you can usually land within 30 to 60 seconds.  And all you need to do is type 1 or 2 commands.  Requiring me to spend 5 minutes and type over a hundred commands, just to quit, is not OK!  What am I supposed to do, pick up the phone and say, "Sorry perspective employer, I have to call you back in ten minutes because if I quit my text based online game now I'm going to lose everything."

2013-06-15 00:31:12

@bladestorm360: at least some muds just go ahead and tell you that you're not allowed to quit.  That sucks, but what's even worse are the muds that just let you quit, and then drop all your items. 

On another related topic, I kind of dare someone to try this:
http://4liberty.us/bin/races.html

This mud looks to me like it would be so unrelentingly awful that it would go all the way around and become good again.  Based on the front page and race descriptions, this is a...ummm...libertarian Christian mud, where everyone fights against...the evils of capitalism and paper money?  What. 

The Akanites are a race of humans that are unusually tall and are often referred to as
giants.. The Akanites were war-like in nature and conquered lands that benefited them.
The Akanites capital city is called Norringrad.  The Akanites economy is in shambles as
they seem hellbent on using a paper note currency so they can print as much as they think
they need for their society.

And every,. single. other. race. mentions if that race does or does not use paper money, and how this makes them good or evil.  Also, when this mud uses the word race, it doesn't mean a type of creature like a troll, or elf, or whatever.  It means race...as in an actual race of humans.  With a little thought, I'm sure you could figure out what real world race each in-game race represents.  So...now the owners of the game can use game mechanics to encourage racism! Yay!  And I kind of get the uncomfortable feeling that the owner probably does have some views that mainstream people would consider racist.  I can't back that one up though, it's just a hunch.  But I seriously want someone to try this mud.  Is it as terrible as it looks like it might be?  Bonus points for a humorously sarcastic playthrough, if it seems appropriate.

2013-06-15 03:34:36

The reason that I don't play rent/quit in particular places to have your eq saved muds is precisely that, its extremely restrictive. Even if there is a recall command, there are often places that are norecall and if I suddenly need to attend to stuff in real life, I don't want to have to walk out to a recallable place just to have my eq saved especially if its like an endgame area or something. I don't get why something so restrictive is so commonplace in muds.

2013-06-15 03:45:22

It is common because it stops a variety of practices and prevents a variety of newbie problem situations.  It prevents you quitting at a valuable resource and coming back tomorrow to get it; if you've found, say, a vain of unobtanium behind an aggro dragon, you can't just quit out there--you have to go on the adventure of getting it again.  It also prevents you quitting in dangerous places and removes a variety of multiplaying and utility character situations.
Also, games that have had it for a while are balanced for such a system.  Doing something as simple as suddenly removing rent or allowing players to quit wherever will cause...issues.  Specifically which issues depends on the mud.  It isn't something you can just remove.

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2013-06-15 04:46:12

I get your point, but something that forces you to recall or something or a command that allows you to recall from anywhere and quit, or that autorecalls and quits you when you go linkdead would be nice. That's probably not going to happen though for most muds sad

2013-06-15 18:18:00

The whole rent thing has only one side represented here.  The other side of this is that some people like getting equipment again and needing to prepare.  This makes the mud decidedly noncasual, but it doesn't make it worthless; save it for those rainy Saturday afternoons if it's a problem for you.  Believe it or not, it can add richness to gameplay (do note I said can instead of will always).  I'm being the devil's advocate here, a bit.
Also, you're majorly underestimating how much trouble it would be to rebalance a game to this degree.  Most of the situations don't show up until players start abusing them.  Equipment is now easy to get and give away to newbies, and some of these muds--due to these systems--don't have level limits on the most powerful eq.  Some don't have the idea of a level limit at all.  To rebalance the game, you'd have to take it offline for at least a month and the playerbase would probably not recover.
That said, if you are a *new* mud and decide to do this-save yourself the trouble and go do something else instead.

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2013-06-15 18:52:19

@camlorn: The only thing having a rent system does is make the mud impossible for new players.  Most of these muds are just cliques of old players, who know where absolutely everything is, give each other any good eq they have before they quit to avoid rent penalties, group with one another to make getting the equipment and bypassing the challenges they have already memorized no challenge at all, and ensure that systematized discrimination against newbies is built as deeply into the environment and atmosphere as they can manage.  Lost Souls is a really good example of this.  They have one of the most complicated muds in existence, with newbie documentation and help that comprises two...maybe 3...pages.  The simulationist aspect of the mud is glorrified, so that it can be thrown in the face of any new player who complains about the difficulty.  Older players then passively aggressively claim that if you can't handle that level of difficulty, the mud obviously isn't for you, with the unsaid implication that it's because you're just too stupid to play.  But guess where the one place lost souls departs from simulationism is?  Why...keep points, of course!  This has no basis in reality.  The only reason it exists is to ensure that new players don't have enough keep points even to keep the majority of the starting equipment they're given.  This lets everyone pretend that new players start off with helpful equipment, that they will of course lose as soon as they have to quit.  If Lost Souls is meant to be a simulation, there is absolutely no way that this system can be justified.  If lost souls is not meant to be a simulation, there is absolutely no way to justify the complete lack of newbie areas, tutorials, and help files.  The only way to start on Lost Souls is to have a friend who is already a player show you everything, thus inviting you into the clique.  Then you can join in in the newbie discrimination and feel good about yourself, too!  I'm picking on Lost Souls because it's the mud with a rent system that I've played most recently, and thus remember the most about.  But I have never played on any other mud with this kind of system that didn't have exactly the same toxic environment.  Muds that require corpse retreavals after death to get all your equipment back can become equally toxic, but most muds featuring this have systems in place to avoid the problems, usually involving gold or xp sacrifice to have a God or other NPC summon your corpse, so you aren't entirely dependant on your ability to boot-lick high level players.

2013-06-15 19:36:42

yes, sure, kinda.  The lost souls newbie school is an oversight and they keep saying they're going to implement one, but that particular rent system isn't really a problem.  Lost souls plays like a simulation, and a lot of stuff that isn't simulated elsewhere is simulated, but it can still be played casually.  Lost souls has community problems, but they aren't because of keep points.  Also, you apparently haven't seen the five newbie guides on the wiki.  If we're going to do keep points vs. level limits and which is more realistic, well, I don't see level 15 mages walking around, do you?  lost souls lets you quit anywhere with whatever eq you opt to keep, and you can choose to use whatever you can find so long as you're fine with keeping the super-powerful artifact instead of your suit of armor.  Even alter aeon has these cliques, they're just hidden away behind the veneer of clans and the fact that there's more players outside of them.  I have not seen the problem that you are bringing up here,, even as a newbie, on 3 kingdoms, UOSSMUD, or anywhere else for that matter.  I would not suggest implementing a rent-to-quit system, but keep points are as good as level limits and, when I did suggest lost souls on other threads at least, I did make sure to mention that it wasn't for everyone.  Keep points are not the type of rent system under discussion here, anyway: they make as much sense as level limits, and you can quit anywhere on a whim.

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2013-06-15 20:54:02 (edited by fastfinge 2013-06-15 21:14:46)

@camlorn: It's the wiki newbie guides that I was counting as help.  I don't count the in-game book, because not only is it vague enough to be useless, it's more than possible to generate a character that can't read it in the first place.  And keep points are, in my opinion, exactly what we're talking about: systems that disadvantage players for quitting.  This can be by just forcing you to drop eq like lost souls does, charging rent for quitting, not letting you quit accept in particular places, etc.  Quitting is not an in-game action, and thus having any kind of in-game penalty for quitting is absolutely unacceptable.  Even Alter Aeon does this; as I understand it, characters age even when the player is offline.  CoffeeMud is another one hugely guilty of that.  While they aren't rent systems, they still serve to penalize players who have lives, by making the character old and possibly even unplayable do to age if the player has to be away from the game long enough.  When a player quits, he should not lose anything, and absolutely nothing what so ever should happen to his character while he's away.  Anything else is not only unfair, but it can also promote extremely unhealthy behaviour in people with addictive personalities.  My complaint about keep points isn't that they're unrealistic.  It's that they exist in a mud that seems to prefer realism over everything else.  Newbies who complain about the difficulty are told that it's because of realism so shut up, and newbies who complain about keep points are told that muds aren't realistic in the first place so shut up.  While you're being nicer about it, you're doing exactly the same thing that every other lost souls player does: brush off all complaints from newbies by saying that they aren't problems in the first place, or if they are, then lost souls isn't for us...with the implied subtext that it's because of our own stupidity.  If you haven't seen that exact! same behaviour in places like 3kingdoms, I can only assume that it's because you are playing a mud where your friends outside of the mud are already playing, and can help you out until you know everything.  That makes the mud seem much easier to you, and can make it extremely difficult to understand why other people are having problems so serious with the game that we find it unplayable. 

Yes, alter aeon has cliques.  However, you don't need to be invited into any of them just to play the game.  You can read the help, do the quests, and advance perfectly fine without them.  Somewhere like lost souls, unless you are invited into the clique, you can't even generate a decent character, never mind get and keep any decent equipment, or kill even a single creature.  3Kingdoms, Asylum, Cyber Assault, and Discworld to some extent, all share this problem with advancement requiring membership in the exclusive friends with the high level good old boys club. 

@bladestorm360: Well, yes, not playing those games is really our only option.  Unfortunately, mudding is an extremely small hobby.  I know of one person who tried mudding in an unfortunate place (slothmud I think it was), slammed into the clique of older players who hate all newbies who they don't know personally, and decided that all mudders were a bunch of ancient jerks who are bitter about the coming of graphical games and don't want anyone else in the clubhouse.  They never connected to another mud.  I'm absolutely positive that this is a story that happens over, and over, and over again.  So I kind of feel like if we don't start trying to brow-beat some of these exclusive games into opening up and being a bit more newbie friendly, all they're going to do is harm the entire community by driving off potential new mudders.  Also, by ranting in a place like this forum, I am at least slightly hopeful that I can get people to see the flaws in some games and game types, and convince people to stop playing them, and thus stop supporting the developers who do these terrible things.

edit: On an unrelated note, keep points also seem to have had an amusing and quite unrealistic side effect in lost souls.  As I was connecting and fiddling around for research purposes, to make sure I'm not just running my mouth, I went down into the sewers and found...an absolute treasure trove of dropped objects.  I can only assume this is happening because of the large numbers of players who connect, realize they can't even kill a rat, then disconnect and never log back in again.  I LOLed.  Also, the character creation process now calls me an intermediate player...despite the fact that I have only once gotten a character over level 1, and that was only because an oldbie was looking for a mount and I happened to be mountable.

2013-06-15 22:20:33

You're not playing far enough.  The treasure troves of objects are everywhere--after a certain point, picking up loot has no point or meaning to it, and the game doesn't clean them up.  This has nothing to do with keep points.  You can get decently far by gathering, selling, and using the gold for skill training.  You do need knowledge to make a playable character, but the game does give you the option of using a pregenerated one.  I don't know why lost souls is the one on the chopping block here, given that the particular system it uses has no relation to the debate that got started--it does not prevent you quitting when you want.
I feel like you are attacking me personally; I have never said that lost Souls does not have flaws.  From where I am, it looks like you just don't like muds in general, and have nonstandard ideas of what a game should be.  It is not only muds that make characters age while offline, and it is not my job as the game to cater to the fact that you might find it addictive--if you have an addictive personality, then get help with it.  It does not fall to me to deal with it.  It seems to me that you have problems with having to learn games, and it is worth mentioning that I did not have any friends who suggested 3k or lost souls: I found them by accident by looking via mudconnecter and--back in the day--mudmagic.  There were cliques.  I was definitely, 100% not in them.

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