Let’s talk about multi user dungeons, the precursor to mmos and some of the earliest online rp experiences.
Currently playing DragonRealms.
MUDs
Let’s talk about multi user dungeons, the precursor to mmos and some of the earliest online rp experiences.
Currently playing DragonRealms.
Kino. I remember my grandfather playing those, God bless his soul. Never played one though, and will never play one. Some things are best left with its mystique.
I played Dark and Shattered Lands back in the day, had a lot of fun. Learned a valuable lesson: don't play MMOs. Kept me away from Ultima Online, Everquest, WoW, etc.
>DragonRealms
I have only played DartMUD but I really enjoyed how many skills there were to level. What client are you using for DragonRealms?
Lich
if they werent all pay to play they would probably be more popular as a whole but how do you monetize it when theres no costumes to sell
The only I know that are pay to play are Dragonrealms and Gemstone IV. You still have really active ones like Aardwolf which are completely free.
Legends of the Jedi just started a new era, basically a season, and it's fairly active for a MUD. Completely free game with no micro-transactions.
Almost none of them are pay to play. There is DragonRealms and Gemstone and that is about it really.
There are also the Iron Realms games, but they are the only other ones that come close but are more pay2win than play. If you want to spend an easy grand to try and be the best at text pvp then I guess they might be enjoyable.
I always forget MUDs exist, get super bored playing of vidya, then I get reminded by the occasional post that MUDs exist and I start playing them for a couple weeks before restarting the cycle. Overall, they are pretty good.
I played HellMOO and I liked it. It needs to be somewhat popular again.
It died. There are a few spin offs but eeeeh.
HellMOO was great before the constant admin drama and multiple reboots tore it the frick apart. I miss it dearly. I don't understand why the dev team couldn't just not be autistic spergs and let a good thing live. Was easily one of the most unique multiplayer games out there. Though I could honestly say all the sexhaver shit needed to go.
>why did the admins behave autistically
did you play the game? it's all edgy content and references from the early 2000s, the creators were all mentally ill terminally online boomers, and so was the playerbase.
It was never going to end well.
I mostly play Sindome, just a shame it's full-- Well, not full, but has a lot of autistic minmax spergs that ruin it for everyone else.
It's gotten better, though.
Samsara was a thing for a month or so, but quickly everyone realised they'd played through the game 5000x already and the occasional content addition once or twice a month doesn't fix that.
It was a great game, though, mechanically. Nothing out there like it.
Wish there were other games, MUDs or otherwise, that just let me in a big city like FC and give me full freedom with powers and interactions. Feels like most MUDs don't really use their maps for anything and it's just backdrops for shitty combat. In HM you could pick locks, astral project, arm wrestle people, WRESTLE people, frick people, play minigames, and there were so many different jobs and stuff. Just felt really alive.
aardwolf is good shit. ill gladly help anyone with game knowledge or mushclient plugin assistance. the game was my first foray into learning how to code and doing something useful with my life, lol
>aardwolf
I'm not a fan myself, it just kind of bores me, but it does have a good mud school and I would totally recomend it for people completely new to muds.
Is there end game group content in Aardwolf? I'm looking to find a new mud. I'm done with Dragonrealms.
Yeah, when you hit max level you can get "powerups" (basically like getting paragon in diablo 3; you gain exp still and you can increase your max level stats over time). The remort system is the big thing in this game, where you start over at level 1 but add on an additional class. You dont get every ability from that class but it serves to supplement your build.
When you remort enough times, you get the option to 'tier', which is basically starting over at your first class again, with a higher exp to level up, but you get a bunch of advantages like being able to use gear and spells at lower levels than usual.
After hitting tier 9 (the max), you can choose to sit at max level or you can "redo". Theres benefits to getting powerups vs redoing, both give opportunities for character growth.
At max level, people like to participate in "epics", which vary depending on what epic is being run, but most are like 15-30 person pve raids. running them is what drops the best in slot equipment for max level.
I've never played dragonrealms, what's it like?
nah not really. there are definitely classes better suited for newcomers, but you can freely respec to change your race/class/subclass once a week, or you can pay a modest amount of quest points (obtained in game from doing basic quests, like "kill this mob") to reset it even sooner. I think beginners get like 3 free respecs as well, so there is opportunity to try new things out.
my advice for newcomers is do the academy, and join the boot clan. the boot clan is basically a guild thats suited to help beginners find their footing. I didnt join at first because I thought i was a decently experienced mudder, and i regretted it because theres a lot of helpful players that are there to help you get set up for success. that being said, i turned out alright, just took me a little longer to figure things out on my own.
I'll keep tabs on the thread and I'll answer any questions when I see em. (post limit)
>I've never played dragonrealms, what's it like?
I love it, but it has its issues. It's very, very, very slow. It uses a skill system in combination with a guild system (class), once you choose a guild you're locked to it but you can learn their spells and do their quests. You go out and do stuff to get xp for that skill then you head back to town and rest to "absorb" the xp and get levels.
It's supposed to incentivize RP but a majority of the playerbase is just afk scripting so you rarely get meaningful interactions.
There is way too much to explain and my post won't do it justice. I love the writing and the depth to it but I hate the monthly sub fees and the botting problems. They charge 15 dollars a month, which is insane for a MUD. The company owns two muds and charges for both separately, it's pretty mad. For that much I could get an Everquest sub and have access to Everquest II as well. I could play FFXI, Wow, FFXIV, etc. As much as I love the game I can't justify the cost.
Forgot to add the game doesn't use numbers for combat. You can't see an enemy's level, stats, etc you have to estimate based on the text and how the combat messages.
You can target specific parts of an enemy's body when you attack. You could hit their weapon hand to try to knock their weapon away or hit a spellcaster's throat to try to silence them. Your body parts take damage individually as well. You can potentially lose limbs.
Magic system is also really in depth. You could put too much mana into a spell, have it backfire, and get nerve damage.
aardanon here, back at the office so I'll be here to chat.
That kind of stuff always intrigued me as a tabletop player. I kind of have a soft spot for "wargamey" style of play, where things like attack swing speeds and aim matter in combat. I think its harder to do in an actual table but makes perfect sense for a MUD to do, so I can definitely see the appeal. Though yeah, $15/month for a MUD is kind of wild even if money is no issue. With those sort of fees I'd have a lot higher expectations on updates/feedback/etc and I hope they are being met for you.
even 600-800 seems crazy high to me. I think during the COVID years we got like roughly 250 active players on at once, give or take on aard. I empathize with all sorts of areas/ideas being just abandoned by lack of community support. Almost like taking a tour through a dead mall or something. That all said, I'd rather have a smaller, dedicated and loving community than a larger, tepid, scripted one.
Yep, started playing Aardwolf yesterday. Pleasantly surprised by the community. It's basically the inverse of BatMUD's.
nice anon! I'm glad you're having a good time.
The community overall is really great I gotta agree. Pretty much anyone and everyone is willing to help out newcomers; all the different groups really come around to help support where they can.
I hope you decide to stick around and enjoy. Personally I started playing a year before COVID hit, and I've stuck around ever since. There are a lot of interesting players from literally all over the world; even for a MUD based out of the states, we have a huge population of players from Europe, South Africa, and Singapore.
I'm living in Taiwan at the moment, wasn't sure if I would stay for more than a year so I only brought a laptop and use mobile hotspot for internet.
I'm checking it out. The wiki is pretty bad, can you gimp yourself by choosing a shitty first class?
I used to play Realms of Kaos. Those were some fun times.
>I used to play Realms of Kaos. Those were some fun times.
My favorite game ever.
I miss when there were all sorts of MUDs for everything. I miss the .hack MUD. I miss the Cowboy Bebop MUD.
Apparently there is a hacking focused MUD on steam, haven't tried it because lol 20 dollars for a MUD. But it looks interesting.
I think anon is talking about the .hack anime series that there had (a couple iirc) muds based on. I actually built an area for one of the .hack muds, but I don't think the mud I played on got off the ground
I remember an Aliens PVP mud, you could play synth, marine or alien, had transports and drop ships.
Also very detailed white wolf pvp muds from the good era before they all became commie homosexuals and seppuku'd their company for their stupid leftist virtue signalling.
I used some power to rot a guys arm off and take his artifact (artifacts flagged you to the whole server)
That one had mages and werewolves too.
>I used some power to rot a guys arm off and take his artifact
Based, getting conned or ganked out of good shit then conning or ganking other people is the peak MUD experience.
I played on a coffeemud server someone from Ganker hosted close to a decade ago. It was my first and only mud but it was probably one of the most fun and unique online experiences I've ever had. I managed to round up some of the lads in college and we would telnet to it and play during class.
Now that I look back on it I feel like I may have been given a rare opportunity to see what gaming with the boys in college in the 80s would have been like.
What MUD has the most insane Race/Class system? I want to engage in some build autism.
Dragonrealms uses a skill system like Elder Scrolls games. It's pay to play though which might turn you off, there's a f2p model but your xp gains are extremely slow after a certain point.
Dragon's Gate had more than one race that couldn't speak Common.
RIP Dragon's Gate.
I'd say Lost Souls as it is crazy complicated and almost 100% build autism. It also has no tutorial, 0% hand holding, few players, and some of the more bizzare races either need you to be a moronic level to turn into or pay to create from level one so that might turn most people off.
I may get the shits and quit playing all the time but it also keep me coming back as there isn't really anything else quite like it.
>few players
Sadly this is a problem with most muds, I think the most populated english mud hits 600-800 at peak with maybe 30% being afk scripters/bots. A ton of great ideas and content but almost no audience. Would love to see a MUD using AI npcs and events, but it would be massively expensive for a developer and nobody is interested in muds anymore.
I don't mind few players so long as the mud isn't one that was designed with a ton of areas that requiring big teams to progress anywhere. If I can solo or duo my way through most of it I am pretty happy normally.
Then again I am also not a dickhead so generally don't have to worry about the entirety of a small population putting me on their shit list, which is a problem plenty of modern MMO players seem to have.
I like having the combination of solo grinding and RP encounters with other players. Legends of the Jedi is RP mandatory and has some great RP, but there aren't many players so most of the time the world is barren and a space themed RP game is really lackluster when you can't meet new people.
DiscworldMUD has all the classes be completely unique and has a bajillion skills, most of which have like one application in a gigantic game. Witches brew potions and have really weird utility magic, trying to play a wizard and learn spells is a game onto itself, priests all have different stuff based on what god they pick...
Really cool game, and probably the biggest mud out there size wise. Pic related is the main city (approximately only 20-30% of the actual rooms are shown there, it's actually much bigger than this, and yes, almost every single room ((except some parts of streets, which understandibly repeat)) is completely unique and has details and things to inspect and interact with) and the game has several cities, wilderness, points of interest. It's very crazy.
Just a shame it's grindy as all frick and development is incredibly inconsistent, but I guess that's the same for all MUDs. Passion projects are always going to be in the 'i'll update the game whenever and however I like' territory.
>DiscworldMUD
Terry Pratchett was a pederast
that's neat
I go back to DR every few years and after a couple weeks I quit because there's nothing to do except endlessly script because there's no real skill cap. You will never catch up to the people who have been playing forever. The game will never be improved in this regard because Simu won't risk pissing off their whales who want their place at the top of the text based hill cemented permanently. Even the change to TDPs so you don't have to train every fricking skill in the game if you want to do endgame stuff was met with much gnashing of teeth and it still isn't live. It's a shame, I loved DR back in the day. Probably my favorite MUD ever. Now it's just a number go up simulator.
Armageddon. That is all.
You´d think chatgpt and the likes would be a perfect fit for mud gameplay, but i suppose they are too unpredictable for a multiplayer game session.
It's massively expensive.
Are there any good sci-fi MUDs?
Plenty. A few with 3d mapped space. The most active I can think of is Legends of the Jedi but most people use autopilot or scripts to fly their ships.
Genuinely love these but haven’t played one since high school. Any of them still active?
Aardwolf is very active, several hundred players at all times. Dragonrealms and Gemstone IV average over 500-600 players a day, but both are pay to play. Aardwolf is completely free though.
I like the concept of MUDs, but I haven't found one I didn't have some kind of grievance with.
>Not enough players
>Players, but they're all in impenetrable Discord cliques
>Players, but you can't play with them without grinding for 6 months straight and buying 200 dollars of pay to win bulllshit.
>The game is impenetrably obtuse and borderline unplayable unless you learn to code
>You have to use scripts for everything or else you can't be competitive
>Players, but everyone is a porn-addict looking for MUDsex.
It's just all so tiresome. I wish there was a MUD that had some polish without the accompanying pay-to-win israeli bullshit.
>Not enough players
It's sad, but it's a hyper-niche genre.
>Players, but they're all in impenetrable Discord cliques
This is every multiplayer game.
>Players, but you can't play with them without grinding for 6 months straight and buying 200 dollars of pay to win bulllshit.
This is every MMO.
>The game is impenetrably obtuse and borderline unplayable unless you learn to code
Examples? I never found this to be true.
>You have to use scripts for everything or else you can't be competitive
MUDs are for roleplaying. Worrying about being competitive is the wrong headspace.
>Players, but everyone is a porn-addict looking for MUDsex.
Nerds are obnoxiously horny, nothing new. MUDs are dead, though, and they should probably just be left in the past. It's like people who want to still play around on BBS, just nostalgiacucks.
>Nerds are obnoxiously horny, nothing new. MUDs are dead, though, and they should probably just be left in the past. It's like people who want to still play around on BBS, just nostalgiacucks.
I didn't play muds growing up, I just think they have really interesting mechanics and a lot of depth that you will never find in a modern mmo.
>Nerds are obnoxiously horny, nothing new. MUDs are dead, though, and they should probably just be left in the past
Movies didn't kill books and MMORPGs didn't kill MUDs either. The text medium is currently going strong with AI Dungeon, NovelAI, etc. At the minimum, MUDs will always be played by the blind folks, since they can't play regular games.
I hate blind people and think they should have to suffer.
, but everyone is a porn-addict looking for MUDsex.
I've never had this issue. Do you play female characters?
He probably played HellMOO and got upset that the erp game had a bunch of erpers.
All of the Iron Realms games have this problem, as well.
I play male characters so that's probably why I never had someone interact with me this way. I do play a female character in FFXIV and as soon as I walk around one of the main cities I get creepy whispers from people such as "what's a little kitten doing walking around these parts"
>gay rapist feels uncomfortable
How awful for you.
That's some odd projection.
Not wanting people to hit on you in non-erp games is the worst insult possible to the degenerate erper
Merentha was the best one. Could spend an entire month just mapping it, knowing the map to begin with. Actually exploring room to room would take years.
Combat is really great with different messages for different weapon types AND how much each hit did as well as weapons having special attack hits, plus abilities.
You use xp to increase stats and skills though skills gain xp from use as well. You can change race if you have a player priest to resurrect your body, so what you start as has no permanent affect on your character and you don't have to worry about it.
Of course this was pre-WoW when it had 100 people online. I doubt it has more than 10 ever now.
I do like the grind of the remort system but I would never play a game with pay2win so I'm not even going to mention the name of the popular one.
My zmud doesn't work and I haven't bothered trying to dig up a copy to install on windows 11. I definitely don't want a different client given the aforementioned month of time mapping.
Just going to point out that MUDs had better in game communication than any MMO. Different lines for every class and level brackets for starters; people that you actually want to talk to for information or groups.
A MUSH is also the only place I've seen that did emotes properly where you could type /playername and it will show that player 'you' and everyone else 'playername'. There was more to it for other situations.
Just basic stuff modern games frick up.
i played so many great MUDs around 2005. you all missed out. i'd guess 90% of what I played is just sitting on a HDD in a basement somewhere at this point.
I don't remember P2W even being a thing, just wandering around and fighting goofy stuff. good times.
Usef to play Polish MUD Arkadia it was in Witcher/Warhammer worlds. I guess witcher series murdered it with cold blood. Used to have fun back then
My friends were in to a few back when Daggerfall came out. Remember them talking about it once at a bowling league while I was still plahyng Daggerfall. Never got in to them, though.