Did I read wrong, or does DragonRealms cost either 25 or 50 dollars a month to play? O_O One is a platinum sub and one is premium. I think that's a bit steep for a non-graphical game. I mean, after all.....it's MY imagination that is playing, along with all the other players....wtf?
I was going to try this as my first MUD, but apparently it's a bad choice for me. Anyone know of any MUDs that are either free or less expensive and still GOOD?
It's the Mile High Club..
Ya know, because apparently in life the more expensive something is, the "better" it's community..
Well, to be fair, several of them are boring, 'adult' chat rooms.
Some are just boring chat rooms.
And some are games with boring chat rooms.
I find that in games that combine roleplay and PVP and throw in permadeath - or just simply do not have roleplaying - fellow mudders seem less socially awkward and more fun to talk with. I have no clue why it works in the rp/pvp niche, but it does and I'm grateful for it.
I mean, all MUDs are shit - just like all MMOs are shit, and all cRPGs besides Planescape: Torment are shit. The idea is that I know nothing better than PS:T will be made, so I've lowered my standards and set to playing whatever isn't as shit as the other things.
In this case, right now, it's MUDs.
Only PS:T? Really? I don't mean to offend you but you sound like an old person who doesn't like to try new things. You're probably not a real gamer anyway.
Looks like there are misconceptions about IRE games.
1. All IRE games ARE "pay to win" games. Don't let to fool yourself by "you don't need to pay" whiteknights, they lie in your face. Yes, you can't just create a character and start pwn people if you are new to IRE combat, but that's it. In a month or two you will learn the ropes and your PvP proficiency will be defined solely by amount of real money spent on character. Expect 300-400$ for barely playable character and thousands for one of the best. Or you can start grinding and achieve the same in your sixties.
2. IRE games require grinding of korean scale. While in most muds grinding is part of character development (you level and gain skills), IRE games have grinding mostly to annoy you (you have to buy skills with real money anyway). Basically, if you played korean MMO like Lineage, you will find many similarities.
3. IRE games are all about scripting. And that's actually good. Requirement of scripting is a cool feature and makes a great minigame intertwined with other game mechanics.
4. Player run organizations are made quite poorly in IRE games. They are mostly pointless, as a member of leadership you can write useless help files (nobody reads them anyway), induct and ban people and that's it basically. The game world is completely static and you can't make any difference at all (besides some admin-run events). On the other hand all disadvantages of player run orgs were carefully kept. You have to put up with retarded people and cliques in leadership, you risk with your skills (bought with real money) and so on.
Im sorry you hate Achaea so much, I've been playing for 10+ years and have never felt like I needed to spend thousands, grind on a Korean scale (I hate grindfest MMOs), and the fantastic player-ran cities are part of the fun.
You have to put up with cliques in leadership in the game because you have to put up with cliques in real-life politics, which the game does a fantastic job of emulating with players able to hold elections for new leadership, write constitutions and city laws, start wars and raid other cities. If you don't like the current regime in your city, you either fight from the inside and join one of the political cliques, or you quit the city and grab your sword and join the enemy side.
Achaea isn't a game for people who want to be anti-social (unless you play a Thief), nor is it a game for people who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. You can get from level 5 to level 80 in under a week, older players are always happy to take new players on XP runs.
Oh, but you might have to join a "clique", I forgot that MMORPGs stand for Single-Player Roleplaying Game.
To everyone else interested in MUDs, I recommend giving Achaea a try, the other Iron Realms games are cool but Achaea was the first and has the largest playerbase.
The sub fees you are paying for Gemstone/DragonRealms are of more direct benefit to you the player than in the modern graphical mmo's. You get direct GM interaction in the form of live quests, merchants, festivals, invasions, etc. Not just the development that both games give you.
Both are available at a base sub of $15.
Not to mention that I just don't understand the general outcry over sub fees in the mmo world. Its $15 a month. If you can't afford that then dare I say you shouldn't be spending any money on game boxes, internet access, computer equipment, etc. Personally I think most of this is coming from minors who have a hard time convincing their parents to hand over the credit card for a game. I just don't see how we can expect to have quality continuing development of a title without paying a sub fee.
Oh well, the older I get the less what I want matters in the gaming world anyway.
Ah, the days of MUSHes and MUDs. I never delved too deeply into MUDs personally, as I always preferred the roleplaying aspect rather than technical hack-and-slash. Pokemon Evolutions was one of my old haunts as well. :P
Some of the MUSHes used to combine technical elements with roleplaying ones quite interestingly. Pokemon: A New Beginning had a full fledged combat/XP system. And HorseMUSH (an offshoot of PernMUSH) had an intricate stable/horse-racing system as well.
In all honesty, while many MUDs are still alive and kicking, I do think MMOs did replace them in a way. Many of the MUSHes I played on died once the playerbase started to wane. As the players got older, the time requirements of MUSHes became more taxing. I remember sitting on SimpleMU for hours on end typing out poses when I was young, but I can't imagine doing the same in my current life.
Younger players just didn't join up in the same volume either, perhaps snagged up by the much flashier, more user-friendly MMOs. So once the playerbase dropped, the appeal dropped. And without appeal, there's no GMs. And without GMs, no game events. Etc. etc.
Granted again, this primarily only applies to MU*s. MUDs themselves are still around and kicking. Just, once again, with a smaller playerbase than they might have had in the heyday without graphical competition.
EDIT: Just wanted to mention that ages ago, I did run into a lot of old MUSHers from Evolution RPing in WoW. The /emote function is alive in kicking in all the modern day MMO's as well, it's just a matter of finding likeminded people to RP with.
Good gravy, all the names I've not heard in years from GS3 and DR. Like lots of folks, I started when GS3 first became available on AOL, as a very forgettable healer who died in rats until I got bored. Then a friend from the Game Parlor actually showed me how to play, and Megaera and Joybright became my mainstays (or Joy when DR opened).
In fact, anyone posting here that has been away from GemStone or DragonRealms for more than a year and wants to come back for a peek around, drop me a note and we'll get your account reactivated for a couple weeks or so on the house.
I would be interested - dropped you a note, now I'm waiting for a reply. Amazed that my old account and chars are still available for reactivation!
Having been a player, builder, and admin on ValhallaMud back in the the day, I find that my experience has colored the way I look at MMO's today. Back then if I saw something bugged, or overpowered, or exploited, or if struck with sudden inspiration for something cool, I could dig up the zone file, fix it, broadcast a message that the game was going down for a fix, and do a shutdown reboot. 3 minutes later the game was up and all was well again. Today as an MMO player, if I see something wrong I have to log into a clunky bug reporting system, try to give details about a mechanic that the developers have purposefully obscured, and then hope and pray it gets looked at sometime in the next 6 months..all the while paying a monthly sub. Drives me bat-shit loco sometimes.
One of the biggest things I miss from my MUD days is that people used to actually communicate in complete sentences. None of this spastic texting bullshit. You people realize that you aren't charged by the character for using the chat window, right? You can go ahead and type out complete sentences.
...And get off mah lawn! Damn kids.
"If MMORPG players were around when God said, "Let their be light" they'd have called the light gay, and plunged the universe back into darkness by squatting their nutsacks over it." -Luke McKinney, The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming
"In the end, SWG may have been more potential and promise than fulfilled expectation. But I'd rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity." -Raph Koster
A friend in Gemstone IV pointed me this mentioning someone mentioned me, so figured I'd say howdy to all the MUD players around, and give a thumbs up to Gemstone at the same time.
And a Howdy to Celtar, Typhus and Welan all of whom I of course remember
Add me to the should have kept Sorrow club btw Jim.
Ardwen
16th year in Gemstone and counting.
although I happily play many other games with friends both old and new.
I think that there is no reason for MUDs not to be much more popular than they are.
Successful MMORPGs are inviting in ways that most MUDs are not, even when they could be. MMORPGs tend to do a much better job of getting you right into the action. MUDschool is generally long and very dull. MMORPGs tend to do a much better job of keeping the momentum of your character's advancement moving. MUDs tend to inflict XP debt for dying, often along with dull corpse runs, so you can easily finish a session significantly behind where you were when you started it. Conservative as the MMORPG genre can be, MUDs tend to be bad at individuating themselves. Plenty of official MUD descriptions barely even mention the setting - or mention it in passing.
Above all, MMORPGs do a much better job at allowing you to improve your character's equipment without having to scrutinize a lot of statistics. It is common, for instance, for a MUD character to have to try on every piece of equipment and then study their own statistics to spot the changes.
I've been logging into Aardwolf at least once a day to play. It definitely scratches my fantasy mmo itch, and I've only noticed 1 type (which is very impressive given the amount of text I've read so far).
Update:
- As noted below, I meant to type "typo" instead of "type." So in my one line of text, I manage to make as many typo's as I've seen in Aardwolf since I started. Shame on me, and bravo to them.
I've been logging into Aardwolf at least once a day to play. It definitely scratches my fantasy mmo itch, and I've only noticed 1 type (which is very impressive given the amount of text I've read so far).
It's amusing to see so many different themed areas in the game, then go on MUD forums where people are all butthurt like 'OMG AARDWOLF HAS NO THEME COHESION ITS A MESS THIS GAME SHOULD BE RANK 99999'. There's a few people who think that every single MUD needs to be RP enforced with zero OOC or the game is shit.
It certainly isn't the most creative combat direction, but it fits well into the game and it isn't a buggy mess with typos every single step of the way, like you mentioned.
Lasher fucked up with the whole Diku thing but he's so brave. He sticks his middle finger at copyright and forges on ahead, rewriting the entire codebase. What a boss.
So the nostalgia bug bit hard, and I reactivated my Gemstone IV account (although it has been 10 years and it was Gemstone III back then). So far I'm having a blast (but my typing skills need to improve). Thanks for posting this article and making me have another bill. ;-)
Speaking of articles, will there be another one with the review of the popular MUDs?
Comments
people i remember were driddtz, crimson, kylinarr, risky
It's the Mile High Club..
Ya know, because apparently in life the more expensive something is, the "better" it's community..
Only PS:T? Really? I don't mean to offend you but you sound like an old person who doesn't like to try new things. You're probably not a real gamer anyway.
Looks like there are misconceptions about IRE games.
1. All IRE games ARE "pay to win" games. Don't let to fool yourself by "you don't need to pay" whiteknights, they lie in your face. Yes, you can't just create a character and start pwn people if you are new to IRE combat, but that's it. In a month or two you will learn the ropes and your PvP proficiency will be defined solely by amount of real money spent on character. Expect 300-400$ for barely playable character and thousands for one of the best. Or you can start grinding and achieve the same in your sixties.
2. IRE games require grinding of korean scale. While in most muds grinding is part of character development (you level and gain skills), IRE games have grinding mostly to annoy you (you have to buy skills with real money anyway). Basically, if you played korean MMO like Lineage, you will find many similarities.
3. IRE games are all about scripting. And that's actually good. Requirement of scripting is a cool feature and makes a great minigame intertwined with other game mechanics.
4. Player run organizations are made quite poorly in IRE games. They are mostly pointless, as a member of leadership you can write useless help files (nobody reads them anyway), induct and ban people and that's it basically. The game world is completely static and you can't make any difference at all (besides some admin-run events). On the other hand all disadvantages of player run orgs were carefully kept. You have to put up with retarded people and cliques in leadership, you risk with your skills (bought with real money) and so on.
[mod edit]
Im sorry you hate Achaea so much, I've been playing for 10+ years and have never felt like I needed to spend thousands, grind on a Korean scale (I hate grindfest MMOs), and the fantastic player-ran cities are part of the fun.
You have to put up with cliques in leadership in the game because you have to put up with cliques in real-life politics, which the game does a fantastic job of emulating with players able to hold elections for new leadership, write constitutions and city laws, start wars and raid other cities. If you don't like the current regime in your city, you either fight from the inside and join one of the political cliques, or you quit the city and grab your sword and join the enemy side.
Achaea isn't a game for people who want to be anti-social (unless you play a Thief), nor is it a game for people who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. You can get from level 5 to level 80 in under a week, older players are always happy to take new players on XP runs.
Oh, but you might have to join a "clique", I forgot that MMORPGs stand for Single-Player Roleplaying Game.
To everyone else interested in MUDs, I recommend giving Achaea a try, the other Iron Realms games are cool but Achaea was the first and has the largest playerbase.
The sub fees you are paying for Gemstone/DragonRealms are of more direct benefit to you the player than in the modern graphical mmo's. You get direct GM interaction in the form of live quests, merchants, festivals, invasions, etc. Not just the development that both games give you.
Both are available at a base sub of $15.
Not to mention that I just don't understand the general outcry over sub fees in the mmo world. Its $15 a month. If you can't afford that then dare I say you shouldn't be spending any money on game boxes, internet access, computer equipment, etc. Personally I think most of this is coming from minors who have a hard time convincing their parents to hand over the credit card for a game. I just don't see how we can expect to have quality continuing development of a title without paying a sub fee.
Oh well, the older I get the less what I want matters in the gaming world anyway.
Anyone low level playing Aardwolf? I need some grouping buddies.
Awww shit, you got me bro. I'm not a real gamer.
I'm a fake gamer. I play fake video games in my head.
I think he nailed all of us! Well all but him of course, he is a real gamer.
Ah, the days of MUSHes and MUDs. I never delved too deeply into MUDs personally, as I always preferred the roleplaying aspect rather than technical hack-and-slash. Pokemon Evolutions was one of my old haunts as well. :P
Some of the MUSHes used to combine technical elements with roleplaying ones quite interestingly. Pokemon: A New Beginning had a full fledged combat/XP system. And HorseMUSH (an offshoot of PernMUSH) had an intricate stable/horse-racing system as well.
In all honesty, while many MUDs are still alive and kicking, I do think MMOs did replace them in a way. Many of the MUSHes I played on died once the playerbase started to wane. As the players got older, the time requirements of MUSHes became more taxing. I remember sitting on SimpleMU for hours on end typing out poses when I was young, but I can't imagine doing the same in my current life.
Younger players just didn't join up in the same volume either, perhaps snagged up by the much flashier, more user-friendly MMOs. So once the playerbase dropped, the appeal dropped. And without appeal, there's no GMs. And without GMs, no game events. Etc. etc.
Granted again, this primarily only applies to MU*s. MUDs themselves are still around and kicking. Just, once again, with a smaller playerbase than they might have had in the heyday without graphical competition.
EDIT: Just wanted to mention that ages ago, I did run into a lot of old MUSHers from Evolution RPing in WoW. The /emote function is alive in kicking in all the modern day MMO's as well, it's just a matter of finding likeminded people to RP with.
Good gravy, all the names I've not heard in years from GS3 and DR. Like lots of folks, I started when GS3 first became available on AOL, as a very forgettable healer who died in rats until I got bored. Then a friend from the Game Parlor actually showed me how to play, and Megaera and Joybright became my mainstays (or Joy when DR opened).
Now I want to try Gemstone again!
Hey Joy, I remember you from DR. Pretty sure I knew your character in GSIII as well. Hope all is well.
Mysil
Having been a player, builder, and admin on ValhallaMud back in the the day, I find that my experience has colored the way I look at MMO's today. Back then if I saw something bugged, or overpowered, or exploited, or if struck with sudden inspiration for something cool, I could dig up the zone file, fix it, broadcast a message that the game was going down for a fix, and do a shutdown reboot. 3 minutes later the game was up and all was well again. Today as an MMO player, if I see something wrong I have to log into a clunky bug reporting system, try to give details about a mechanic that the developers have purposefully obscured, and then hope and pray it gets looked at sometime in the next 6 months..all the while paying a monthly sub. Drives me bat-shit loco sometimes.
One of the biggest things I miss from my MUD days is that people used to actually communicate in complete sentences. None of this spastic texting bullshit. You people realize that you aren't charged by the character for using the chat window, right? You can go ahead and type out complete sentences.
...And get off mah lawn! Damn kids.
"If MMORPG players were around when God said, "Let their be light" they'd have called the light gay, and plunged the universe back into darkness by squatting their nutsacks over it."
-Luke McKinney, The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming
"In the end, SWG may have been more potential and promise than fulfilled expectation. But I'd rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
-Raph Koster
A friend in Gemstone IV pointed me this mentioning someone mentioned me, so figured I'd say howdy to all the MUD players around, and give a thumbs up to Gemstone at the same time.
And a Howdy to Celtar, Typhus and Welan all of whom I of course remember
Add me to the should have kept Sorrow club btw Jim.
Ardwen
16th year in Gemstone and counting.
although I happily play many other games with friends both old and new.
I think that there is no reason for MUDs not to be much more popular than they are.
Successful MMORPGs are inviting in ways that most MUDs are not, even when they could be. MMORPGs tend to do a much better job of getting you right into the action. MUDschool is generally long and very dull. MMORPGs tend to do a much better job of keeping the momentum of your character's advancement moving. MUDs tend to inflict XP debt for dying, often along with dull corpse runs, so you can easily finish a session significantly behind where you were when you started it. Conservative as the MMORPG genre can be, MUDs tend to be bad at individuating themselves. Plenty of official MUD descriptions barely even mention the setting - or mention it in passing.
Above all, MMORPGs do a much better job at allowing you to improve your character's equipment without having to scrutinize a lot of statistics. It is common, for instance, for a MUD character to have to try on every piece of equipment and then study their own statistics to spot the changes.
I've been logging into Aardwolf at least once a day to play. It definitely scratches my fantasy mmo itch, and I've only noticed 1 type (which is very impressive given the amount of text I've read so far).
Update:
- As noted below, I meant to type "typo" instead of "type." So in my one line of text, I manage to make as many typo's as I've seen in Aardwolf since I started. Shame on me, and bravo to them.
It's amusing to see so many different themed areas in the game, then go on MUD forums where people are all butthurt like 'OMG AARDWOLF HAS NO THEME COHESION ITS A MESS THIS GAME SHOULD BE RANK 99999'. There's a few people who think that every single MUD needs to be RP enforced with zero OOC or the game is shit.
It certainly isn't the most creative combat direction, but it fits well into the game and it isn't a buggy mess with typos every single step of the way, like you mentioned.
Lasher fucked up with the whole Diku thing but he's so brave. He sticks his middle finger at copyright and forges on ahead, rewriting the entire codebase. What a boss.
So the nostalgia bug bit hard, and I reactivated my Gemstone IV account (although it has been 10 years and it was Gemstone III back then). So far I'm having a blast (but my typing skills need to improve). Thanks for posting this article and making me have another bill. ;-)
Speaking of articles, will there be another one with the review of the popular MUDs?
Thanks!