MUDs

[Eurus]

For those not aware, an MUD (Multi-User Dungeon, if I remember right) is a class of game sort of like a text-based MMORPG. Hard to describe it more than that, really.

Anyway, I used to dabble in this odd breed of game years ago, and I still get nostalgic for it sometimes. Never really been able to find one that I could enjoy, though. So many of them are either dead/stagnant, or Iron Realms. And I'm rather finicky... I can get bored quickly if navigating is a pain, grinding is dull/excessive, combat is totally opaque (funny how "spend a hundred hours learning to code a system to automate combat for you" is never advertised as a feature until you're already involved...) or the community is obnoxious.

So if the Playground has any suggestions that might be worth a look, or wants to discuss specific games, fire away.

[Starwulf]

I've only ever played one MUD before, but I did enjoy it, despite the fact that it had been around many years by the time I had found it, and I seemed to often find the jerkwads who would randomly attack lower level people for kicks. The name of it was BATmud! It had a ton of different races, and even more that you could reincarnate into once you reached a specific level(or had reincarnated a certain amount of times). It was absolutely monstrous in size, I saw an online map of it once, the sections I had explored(from level 1 to level 40ish) were practically nothing more then a speck on the over-all map. Had a very active community though, and a very active development team who would often institute world-class events. Very involved political systems as well, which was pretty neat.

[Cespenar]

I used to play The Two Towers (t2t) for some time, but later lost interest. Even then, though, I usually wandered around and fished for place/item descriptions (some were written pretty well) instead of playing the game like everyone else.

Apart from that, I remember trying a couple more in the olden days, one called the Thieves Guild, IIRC, and the other was something to do with Dragonlance.

I still have more sympathy for t2t than I have for WoW, though.

[Snowstorm]

Back in the old days of AOL, there was a MUD hosted through them called 'Terris'. It was completely custom-coded, had a simple but effective combat system, and an awesome number of quests that you could do. (There was even a pacifistic class that could only level through questing.)

While it was free to play, it had a daily population of about a thousand people, and had a great community. Then, unfortunately, it moved off of AOL and was made a subscription game. Compounding that, since the authors were British, they charged in pounds which made it rather difficult for a good part of the younger population to pay.

Then there was Dragonrealms, and GemStone, and... lots of others that I experimented with back in the days.

[psilontech]

In my earlier, more formative years back in the days of dial-up and starcraft I played the hell out of an MUD by the title of 'Nodeka'.

This brought on my first foray into the realm of scripting and proved to be a beneficial experience. Area full of things I need to kill for loots or experience? No problem, go to the starting point, initiate the script, walk away and hope I don't get into pvp!:smalltongue:

[Lord Seth]

One I used to go to a lot and still visit occasionally is Aethar, which you can find here (aethar.divineright.org). The playerbase isn't big, but there's still some people who play it.

It's also the place I got my handle ("Lord Seth") from...

[Ceric]

I've only played Discworld MUD, which is especially great if you're into the book series as well. But I haven't played recently due to school so I don't know how the community's been lately.

[tensai_oni]

I am waiting for Lithmeria (http://www.lithmeria.com/) to go live. It is still a long way to go, but they promise... pretty much all the good parts of IRE games without the bad. Combat that does not require ridiculous level of automation just to be a viable fighter, randomly generated quest content, an environment when players who don't pay for perks can contribute and max out skills without excessive grinding...

Oh, and they actually understand game design.

[Starscream]

I've only played Discworld MUD, which is especially great if you're into the book series as well. But I haven't played recently due to school so I don't know how the community's been lately.

I used to play this one all the time. It's been running for 20 years now, and still gets updated. Pretty impressive.

[Ogremindes]

I've only played Discworld MUD, which is especially great if you're into the book series as well. But I haven't played recently due to school so I don't know how the community's been lately.

I've played many MUDs, and Discworld is the one I keep coming back to. One thing to know about disc is the quests are 'adventure game' style rather than ' MMORPG' style for the most part, hidden and puzzley. Also the world is far to big for the (not inconsiderable) amount of content in the game. Discworld has the best parser I've seen in a MUD, and the most complete help and syntax files, too. And a mini-map.