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Who Dat
Dec 13, 2007

:neckbeard: :woop: :downsbravo: :slick:
It must've been at least 10 years ago that I first dipped my creative conscience into MUD (multi-user dungeon) goodness. For those that don't know exactly what that is, you basically text-roleplay on a DOS screen with other similarly-sexually aligned (FAGS) that roleplay right back. For free. No 15 dollars a loving month for graphic deliciousness and 5-days a week raiding in WoW.

In fact, just read the Wiki. There's one for everything now! :eng101:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

Whilst I'm not proud of the fact that I do/did this, I'm wondering how many of you actually did as well.

And if you did and/or still do. Post one that you're currently playing or played in the past that you enjoy/enjoyed. I'm looking for a new one, as the one I used to pour hours a day into is now totally and irrevocably defunct as of 5 years ago. It was called The Eternal Struggle. I doubt anyone here played that one as the playerbase was a whopping 15 people including the developers. It was a close, tight-knit community. Fun, but small.

Anyway, post your MUDding experience, past or present.

Who Dat fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Dec 7, 2009

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Elephunk
Dec 6, 2007



Played the poo poo out of an awesome PK Mud in it's heyday - Act of War.

actofwar.com has always been the website, today's iteration has no pbase however. :(

In it's prime it was a PK mud with three different kingdoms, who each had a pbase of 12-20 players I would estimate.

Insane competition, raiding of the other team's cities, foll loot pvp, items and combat that weren't too hard to get into...

Sourpuss
Mar 18, 2007

Chomb Chomb Chomb
I was crazy for a MUD called Avalon: The First Age.

Where I was a Ranger named Wych. I learnt most of the daily quests and leveled my Ranger skill to the max level (Where I could turn into a bear), but I soon figured out that the only reason people ever needed rangers was to Spit reagents on other players so they could learn skills faster.

Still it was a fun time, and I treated it more like a chat than a serious game.

Another one I tried was Armageddon MUD, which was 100% roleplay at all times.
Learning a new mud and all the controls was difficult enough, but even worse when everyone is roleplaying a stuck up elf who dosent want to help you.

tadashi
Feb 20, 2006

I'm pretty sure SWG stole all of its Star Wars ideas from a Star Wars MUD that I played about 10 years ago. Instead of unlocking a Jedi, though, it was just decided when you created your character whether or not they were force sensitive. My memory of all of the similarities between that MUD and SWG are pretty hazy at this point, but I remember talking to a lot of people about how similar they were in pre-CU SWG.

The game was ripe for trolling. When the president of your clan/guild died you could claim his spot by typing /president. Also, you could loot other players. My friend got pretty pissed when a moderator made him give a lightsaber back to a Jedi (my friend was not a Jedi).

Autarch Kade
May 6, 2008
I played one called GalaxyWeb: Stellar Epoch. It was a space themed one with ships that were modular, similar to EVE's tech 3 cruisers. It was a very advanced MUD, or MOO I guess. However it was also very corrupt, the most powerful player character was also a dev, and it was he that caused the server to eventually shut down.

tadashi
Feb 20, 2006

How many people quit playing HellMOO because there is no way you could possibly explain it to anyone you know and not feel completely ashamed of yourself? This was/is also a good reason to play HellMOO.

Smokey
Feb 8, 2008
empty

Somebody fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Feb 19, 2014

TotalBiscuit
Sep 17, 2007
MUME motherfucker. Sundeath for my Level 18 troll because I was playing too late and forgot that troll's don't like sun. Good 6 months work down the drain on that one. Or how about running around as a Black Numenorean, desperately trying to scavenge up enough gear to beat up small goats and such to level up. Oh yeah, have fun running around at night with no torch not being able to see a loving thing. Want to learn spells? Sorry, you picked the hardcore race, your trainer is randomly wandering somewhere in the world and you have absolutely no loving idea where. Enjoy that.

Amazing game.

m3talh3ad
Jan 28, 2005
I played the everliving poo poo out of MajorMUD through middleschool and highschool. Back when I had to leave AOL logged in on my primary phone line while I was at school, scripting using MegaMUD. Those were the days maaaan.

Runaktla
Feb 21, 2007

by Hand Knit
Played Armageddon and Carrionfields religiously for many years and wasted many a could-have-been-productive-with-my-life moments over them. Carrionfields used to have 100 so players at its peak, now I guess its about 40 (I still read the forums even though I don't play). Armageddon's steadily risen and is about 80 at peak I think (from forums).

https://www.zalanthas.org (armageddon)

https://www.carrionfields.org (carrionfields, duh).

El Sprongo
Jul 30, 2008
Wasted way too much time on a MUD called Shattered Kingdoms. Worked my way up to the top of a prankster guild (second in command), was engineering a grand comeback for the organization, went on a huge recruiting drive and was starting to organize pranks. That's when all members were booted from the guild by one of the people running the whole MUD because we "weren't doing anything." He handed the organization to one of his IRL buddies and said we could reapply for membership.

I reread that and realize it sounds bitter. I'm leaving it like that.

tadashi
Feb 20, 2006

Runaktla posted:

Played Armageddon and Carrionfields religiously for many years and wasted many a could-have-been-productive-with-my-life moments over them. Carrionfields used to have 100 so players at its peak, now I guess its about 40 (I still read the forums even though I don't play). Armageddon's steadily risen and is about 80 at peak I think (from forums).

https://www.zalanthas.org (armageddon)

https://www.carrionfields.org (carrionfields, duh).

Oh, the days when you knew 75% of the people playing the same game as you. Not just on the same server, but in the entire game.

ExplodingChef
May 25, 2005

Deathscorts are the true American heroes.
It makes me feel incredibly old to think of this, but I've been playing a mud called Thunderdome (http://www.tdome.net) for drat near 17 years now on and off. Caused me to waste more time than I had back in high school and college. It's still chugging along -- went from 100ish wholists to a peak of around 30 currently.

Who Dat
Dec 13, 2007

:neckbeard: :woop: :downsbravo: :slick:

ExplodingChef posted:

It makes me feel incredibly old to think of this, but I've been playing a mud called Thunderdome (http://www.tdome.net) for drat near 17 years now on and off. Caused me to waste more time than I had back in high school and college. It's still chugging along -- went from 100ish wholists to a peak of around 30 currently.

I was hoping my old MUD would make it, but alas it didn't. Then I could say the same in 10 more years. I still keep up with some of the people that played that MUD, but they've since stopped playing too.

Ah well, back to scratch it seems.

Big Bowie Bonanza
Dec 30, 2007

please tell me where i can date this cute boy

Autarch Kade posted:

I played one called GalaxyWeb: Stellar Epoch. It was a space themed one with ships that were modular, similar to EVE's tech 3 cruisers. It was a very advanced MUD, or MOO I guess. However it was also very corrupt, the most powerful player character was also a dev, and it was he that caused the server to eventually shut down.

I only got to play this game for about a week, then had RL take me away from it. I loved the system and one of the devs is a goon. Space Conquest has gone back up, but I don't like SC. Still pining for GalaxyWeb, myself.

Space Conquest thread:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3094724

As far as what I'm actually playing right now, a fantasy roleplay MUD that I played for years went down a couple years ago. The owners put it up for Christmas this year due to popular demand, and there's plans of keeping it around. It's called Cities of M'dhoria, and it doesn't have a website right now because of its (possibly) limited status. It's at mdhoria.net port 6996 if anyone wants to take a look though, gets around 20-25 people at peak times.

I also used to play Legend of the Jedi quite a bit, but when it was handed over to the new owners (Orion and Anna) I didn't think I could stick around. An ex-girlfriend of mine still plays there and she's constantly being given handouts so I'm pretty sure it's still not worth hanging out on.

ambushsabre
Sep 1, 2009

It's...it's not shutting down!
I really wish there were some popular ones still out there. The only one that has a pretty large player base is Aardwolf, and I really dislike it for a lot of reasons (the way they mix fantasy with sci-fi and the modern era sickens and confuses me).

Your Lottery
Apr 27, 2009

Runaktla posted:

Played Armageddon and Carrionfields religiously for many years and wasted many a could-have-been-productive-with-my-life moments over them. Carrionfields used to have 100 so players at its peak, now I guess its about 40 (I still read the forums even though I don't play). Armageddon's steadily risen and is about 80 at peak I think (from forums).

https://www.zalanthas.org (armageddon)

https://www.carrionfields.org (carrionfields, duh).

I loved carrion fields, even though I sucked at pvp, and the interview process for joining a cabal or getting clerical powers could be ridiculous. My very first character saw a rogue step out of the shadows, thought the guy was in the Shadow cabal, asked to join, and was invited. One of my last characters had a 3 hour interview to join Entropy, and had Pico remove his doppleganger ability within an hour of getting in. :lame:

There is another MUD I really liked that was ahead of its time. I'm struggling to remember it's name. It was a small MUD, but all the zones were custom and spec_proc heavy. It migrated from a class system to a skill based system. It had very low inflation compared to other MUDs. It never had a large player base though. Damned if I can remember the name.

e: it was Worlds of Carnage (wocmud.org), and it looks like it is still running, but is back to a class system.

Your Lottery fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Dec 9, 2009

ambushsabre
Sep 1, 2009

It's...it's not shutting down!

Your Lottery posted:

I loved carrion fields, even though I sucked at pvp, and the interview process for joining a cabal or getting clerical powers could be ridiculous. My very first character saw a rogue step out of the shadows, thought the guy was in the Shadow cabal, asked to join, and was invited. One of my last characters had a 3 hour interview to join Entropy, and had Pico remove his doppleganger ability within an hour of getting in. :lame:

There is another MUD I really liked that was ahead of its time. I'm struggling to remember it's name. It was a small MUD, but all the zones were custom and spec_proc heavy. It migrated from a class system to a skill based system. It had very low inflation compared to other MUDs. It never had a large player base though. Damned if I can remember the name.

e: it was Worlds of Carnage (wocmud.org), and it looks like it is still running, but is back to a class system.

Looks like a pretty large players base to me: http://wocmud.org/info/whoList.php?PHPSESSID=55e08af383e2156b748119dd0e84f746

Your Lottery
Apr 27, 2009

ambushsabre posted:

Looks like a pretty large players base to me: http://wocmud.org/info/whoList.php?PHPSESSID=55e08af383e2156b748119dd0e84f746

Wow, that's insane. The last time I tried playing it, probably ~5 years ago, there might have been 3 people on at a time. Back in what I thought was it's heyday, 20-25 was normal.

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.
First MUD was Artic MUD back in 1998 when Cale(?) ran it, before Aristox. Pwipes would have the server capped at 200 players for upwards of 4-5 days, there were around 500 on for the first Pwipe after they moved to a better server. Full loot PVP, deathtraps even in newbie zones (Solace Tree and Palanthas Catacombs :argh:), high end gear had limits on how much could be in game, with the best items being limited to 1, and hard as gently caress to get usually. If you had Huma's Shield or a Dragon Orb, people knew. Now, like most MUDs, it's a shadow of its former self.

TotalBiscuit posted:

MUME motherfucker. Sundeath for my Level 18 troll because I was playing too late and forgot that troll's don't like sun.

Amazing game.

MUME is/was awesome. I've gotten close to sunning a few times but trolls are absurdly fast to level if you get a couple of them together.

Zaugurz were the true hardcore race. You had one place with friendly mobs, which was in the loving mountains, right next to NOC (always busy and the home of enemies) and Rivendell (always busy as gently caress). I think the FoY was nearby as well, so if you got lucky you could whack people that were near-death from de-aging.


Materia Magica is the only other MUD I'd played for a long period of time. It's still fairly popular but I could never get into it heavily. It's one of those MUDs where you need to quest heavily to not be totally worthless if/when you reach high levels. Multi-classes were cool but the process of getting there was a bitch when collecting tourmalines. It's got a ton of content to it and something like a 2000x2000 world map. Were it not for the whole "do hundreds/thousands of quests because without the extra practices you are a worthless sack of poo poo" aspect, I'd probably still play it often.

Xile77
Sep 18, 2003
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/customtitles/title-xile77.jpg" /><br />I love my fellow semen
I used to play a MUD called Darkness Falls back in the old AOL days.
You played as various monsters. I didn't like it because I couldn't type worth poo poo back then and always died when I tried to fight anything. I don't know if it was before graphical interfaces, or that I was playing on a PowerMac and that kind of stuff wasn't available. I've heard that it was an awesome mud as muds go though.

Here is a link to the Darkness Falls Wiki.

Mordiceius
Nov 10, 2007

If you think calling me names is gonna get a rise out me, think again. I like my life as an idiot!

ambushsabre posted:

I really wish there were some popular ones still out there. The only one that has a pretty large player base is Aardwolf, and I really dislike it for a lot of reasons (the way they mix fantasy with sci-fi and the modern era sickens and confuses me).

Oh god, I used to play Aardwolf.

The three main MUDs I ever played though were CoreMUD, Realms of the Dragon, and Achaea: Dreams of Divine Lands.

CoreMUD is set on a mining colony 650 years in the future. Fully player run economy. Players can mine ore for money and then work at shops where they could refine ore, make weapons and armor, or sell drinks. There were some great handcrafted quests lines that went into the game's story. There were also GM run events like laser tag or alien attacks. When I played it around 1999, there were about 30 or so players on peak times. Nowadays, the place is a ghost town with maybe 1-2 players on at any given time. Makes me sad.

Realms of the Dragon was quite fun. They had a 7 death system. 7 deaths and your character was permadead. You could buy death allowance from the priest class, but only up to a maximum of 21 deaths. The game had so many classes but they all felt really unique. Three classes could steal from other players: pirates, privateers, and shadowthieves. Really fun game. At it's peak it used to have 100-200 players on at any given time. Last time I check about a year ago, they had about 40-50 players on.

Achaea was awesome for the combat system, the classes, and the city governments. There were multiple major cities that all had player run governments and would often be attacked by other player cities. The world events were pretty neat too. All the IMMs played as the gods of the world. When Gaea quit the game, they played out that her god died and the forests all went into mourning and would lash out at anyone who entered until a new Gaea was found. The only thing I didn't like at the time was that you could spend cash on their website for these skill tokens in game that helped you powerup your character real fast. I didn't like the idea of having to compete against people with infinite incomes.

fnordcircle
Jul 7, 2004

PTUI
I Immed on Armageddon.org for about 18 months, was an avid player.

Lot of good memories, lots of bad memories. Lots of silly drama and lots of legit crazy poo poo. Like the Imm who talked a player into peeing on them at a player/imm gathering.

Mostly a very professional staff, one or two douchebags and one massive cheating dickhead imm who abused his position.

TotalBiscuit
Sep 17, 2007

Evil Fluffy posted:

MUME is/was awesome. I've gotten close to sunning a few times but trolls are absurdly fast to level if you get a couple of them together.

Zaugurz were the true hardcore race. You had one place with friendly mobs, which was in the loving mountains, right next to NOC (always busy and the home of enemies) and Rivendell (always busy as gently caress). I think the FoY was nearby as well, so if you got lucky you could whack people that were near-death from de-aging.


Yeah I am tempted to get back into it again, it was an awesome experience. I quit before all this Zaugurz nonsense though, just 3 evil races back then.

Punk Blood
Jan 8, 2008

The luck is gone, the brain is shot, but the liquor we still got.
I played Iconoclast for years. It takes place in a cyberpunk setting. It was recognized as one of the higher quality MUDs out there according to an interview on MUD Connector. Despite that, it's player base never went much higher than about 30 people on at one time. That was still plenty, though, as the world itself wasn't particularly huge. One person wrote all the item and room descriptions and the emphasis was on quality rather than quantity and it shows.

The player base was pretty tight knit, and almost evenly divided between hack and slashers vs. role players, with a fair portion of players participating in both. I was pretty horrible at it at the time. I played mainly because all my friends did and the game was mostly a chat room for me.

The game is still around but it lost all but a handful of players due to the admins almost simultaneously abandoning it due to jobs and poo poo right in the middle of a massive overhaul. It left the game's combat system completely gutted for a couple of years and the player base depleted pretty rapidly after that.

Within the last couple of years the coder, Jestyr, began work on a 2.0 version that seemed pretty cool and would potentially revive the MUD, but it seemed to quietly fizzle out. :(

The only other MUD of note in my life was AvP MUD. This one, to my knowledge is still going strong. I tried to figure it out a few times but I just kept getting decimated.

It's a competitive PK MUD based on, you guessed it, Aliens Vs. Predator. It's been around for a while. The guy who codes it, FearItself, invented his own scripting language for the game, which is pretty powerful according to a friend of mine who happened to be an admin. It started as CircleMUD but eventually got to the point where the vast majority of the game code was written in the scripting language. The guy eventually wound up with a job at EA as a programmer or something despite being, I believe, completely self taught, which I guess is a pretty good accomplishment, or maybe not, I don't know.

While I never got into the game myself, my friend was addicted to it like crack, and so were a lot of the other players so I guess it wasn't bad.

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.
I played the crap out of Discworld MUD in 1999/2000 when we had 56k internet and I was 12 years old. And played it on and off until I was 16.

I was a Wizard in the Unseen University. I just liked casting the spell that could make random food and eat it/leave it lying around to rot.

I was slightly annoyed when one dude in the Mended Drum tickled my pet swamp dragon and ran. You have to pay several Royals which is like several hunded AM Dollars to buy a life for your character. You only have several and once you are dead you stay dead.

Good times though.

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

TotalBiscuit posted:

Yeah I am tempted to get back into it again, it was an awesome experience. I quit before all this Zaugurz nonsense though, just 3 evil races back then.

drat that's a long time ago then. You quite before Beornings could use the bearform (like a weak troll with different kinds of limits) and a ton of zones.

clamiam
Mar 4, 2008

IF A ROBOT IS BUILT IN THE FORM OF HUMAN BEINGS IT IS HARAAM
I actually just started a character on the Discworld MUD yesterday. I'm hoping it will be more creative than a typical MMO...the fact that it's free helps, too.

Lets Fuck Bro
Apr 14, 2009
I played the poo poo out of Aardwolf MUD when I was in... god.. must have been elementary school. I'm 23 now.

Cy
Jul 24, 2004

by Tiny Fistpump

Mordiceius posted:


Achaea was awesome for the combat system, the classes, and the city governments. There were multiple major cities that all had player run governments and would often be attacked by other player cities. The world events were pretty neat too. All the IMMs played as the gods of the world. When Gaea quit the game, they played out that her god died and the forests all went into mourning and would lash out at anyone who entered until a new Gaea was found. The only thing I didn't like at the time was that you could spend cash on their website for these skill tokens in game that helped you powerup your character real fast. I didn't like the idea of having to compete against people with infinite incomes.

Achaea's really gone downhill, though. There was a period where poo poo was getting WAY better, but then the administration proved, time and time again, they're completely incompetent and disconnected from the game. Combat's gotten dumbed down, world politics suck because all the good politicians got tired of the retarded admins and the current politicians are some of the dumbest people I've ever met, population is way down, etc.

It's a shame, cause the game has so much potential!

Red87
Jun 3, 2008

The UNE will prevail.
I played the hell out of a Warhammer MUD game back in the day that was pretty fancy because it had its own client. I don't remember the name. Also played one called Legends of Cosrin, and that was my first real time in an MMO so speak.

Just checked, and it still exists, or at least the webpage: http://www.legendsofcosrin.com/

I tried logging into it recently and I couldn't get onto the server, so I'm not sure if its still up and running.

Mordiceius
Nov 10, 2007

If you think calling me names is gonna get a rise out me, think again. I like my life as an idiot!

Cy posted:

Achaea's really gone downhill, though. There was a period where poo poo was getting WAY better, but then the administration proved, time and time again, they're completely incompetent and disconnected from the game. Combat's gotten dumbed down, world politics suck because all the good politicians got tired of the retarded admins and the current politicians are some of the dumbest people I've ever met, population is way down, etc.

It's a shame, cause the game has so much potential!

That is a shame. :-(

Knightsoul
Dec 19, 2008
Right now I'm dreamin about a well developed MUD with World of Darkness settings.
A MUD where there are more than 3 nerds playin at peak times.
A MUD where top notch politics drama like in "Vampire: The Masquerade" coexist with adrenaline action and fun pvp like in HellMOO.
But perhaps I'm just dreamin'....

Dr. Kyle Farnsworth
Apr 23, 2004

Reading through this thread got me playing Gemstone IV again. Haven't played it since it was Gemstone III. So many changes.

Zeepo
Aug 10, 2006
Well, okay then.
I've played Medievia on and off for like 11 years. It has a great equipment running and pk/cpk component. Though it is currently going through some major revamps as a huge new version is on the way. For better or for worse.

Also played Dragonrealms by the Simutronics people for a while.

Setheck
Sep 20, 2002

Look at me, I'm a sexy boy!

Colonel Penguin posted:

Reading through this thread got me playing Gemstone IV again. Haven't played it since it was Gemstone III. So many changes.

haha, i did the same thing. But after playing for a month or so, I realize there just isn't enough people to populate the huge world. These days there is max 300 people on and it seems like everyone is level 50+ it just sucks so hard compared to the good old days with 3000 people and new characters starting every day.

SneakySnake
Feb 5, 2006

by Y Kant Ozma Post

fnordcircle posted:

I Immed on Armageddon.org for about 18 months, was an avid player.

Lot of good memories, lots of bad memories. Lots of silly drama and lots of legit crazy poo poo. Like the Imm who talked a player into peeing on them at a player/imm gathering.

Mostly a very professional staff, one or two douchebags and one massive cheating dickhead imm who abused his position.

I remember this and the fallout of it was hysterical. Wasn't Arm 2.0 announced to come out like three years ago? Then the date was changed to unannounced, but you could read the blog about development. Then the blog stopped being updated.

Peacefully Adrift
Jun 4, 2004

by angerbeet
Gonna go ahead and through in a plug for the Mud client I help develop, Mudlet. It's a little rough around the edges compared to something like MUSHclient or zMUD/CMUD but the main thing it offers is fully integrated LUA scripting capability.. It's very *very* fast, to the tune of about 100 times faster than MUSHClient in all our internal speed tests(and it's even more ridiculous paired against CMUD or zMUD)

In any case, I'm currently in between games, but Iron Realms has a new MUD opening "soon" called Midkemia Online that I'm looking forward to.. http://forums.midkemiaonline.com . Hopefully we'll see some of you folks

Runaktla
Feb 21, 2007

by Hand Knit

fnordcircle posted:

I Immed on Armageddon.org for about 18 months, was an avid player.

Lot of good memories, lots of bad memories. Lots of silly drama and lots of legit crazy poo poo. Like the Imm who talked a player into peeing on them at a player/imm gathering.

Mostly a very professional staff, one or two douchebags and one massive cheating dickhead imm who abused his position.

Was that cheating dickhead Halaster? I liked him, but I heard rumors about his cheating. I also heard something about Sanvean cheating.

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Dr. Kyle Farnsworth
Apr 23, 2004

Setheck posted:

haha, i did the same thing. But after playing for a month or so, I realize there just isn't enough people to populate the huge world. These days there is max 300 people on and it seems like everyone is level 50+ it just sucks so hard compared to the good old days with 3000 people and new characters starting every day.

Yeah, I've seldom made a complaint that a game has too much content but a lot of the areas are pretty deserted if you're truly new. My character is in Icemule and half the time there aren't empaths around to heal or rogues around to open boxes. It's really a shame, because the new player experience is way more friendly nowadays. I mean, I'm playing a new wizard without wanting to gouge my eyes out.

Dr. Kyle Farnsworth fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Dec 17, 2009

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