Author name: MudConnector

This is medieval fantasy mud in the style of so many others. What I found refreshing was the all-original approach that has been taken here. As they say in their website, no wheel of time, King Arthur or soda machines to be found here. They encourage role-play, which is something I was pleased by. There is heavy talk of clans and some very nice code for fighting and magic. All in all, they do their very best to portray something original, and seem to pull it off nicely.

The owners and imms here were very quick to answer my questions, even the really simple ones that would frustrate most people. Now, there is the issue of finding help. It is not a real crowded mud, but the players I interacted with were very quick to ask me if I needed anything or had any questions. This mud also labels themselves as role-play encouraged, and while I did not see much in character interaction by the immortals, the players were quick to get right into form most times. There is restricted player kill and I have heard some talk though received no clarification on ability to have limited multi-charing for role-play, both of which were nice touches and added to the friendliness of the atmosphere. I liked the website as well. Several of the links had nothing on them, and I will admit that I was looking forward to a story under that section, but the city map and information found in there was very handy and easy to read.

By the TMC listing, this is a medium world of over 3,000 rooms. All in all, the areas looked nice and there was some nice interactivity in some parts as well. This was something of a must considering the low number of players. There were several things to keep a player busy, though it really would have been nice to see more people playing (this is something of a hint to those of you reading the review). I am still not a big fan of the room rent code to save a player’s equipment. It sort of lacks in character sense and I have kids that yank me away on the spur of the moment, but that is a personal preference but one that I weight somewhat heavily myself. A huge point in their favor in my mind, however, is the all-original standpoint. That takes a great deal of work to rid a mud of all stock and make something from scratch, so that is always worth a look in my opinion.

It took some playing to get the hang of things on Urath for me. Some of the commands and style were completely original, and that made it tough at first to get the hang of things. Thankfully there were some very friendly people on who did not want to see me flounder, and put a few of their hours each into making sure I got off on the right foot. There is another drawback to the seldom-seen imms that I encountered a few times, and that is when crashes occur. They happen on all muds, but I had a tough time getting on the last couple of days now due to them and found that to be a slight disappointment.

In their website Urath claims to be a fairly new mud though I believe they have been underway for quite some time now (700+ days on TMC listing). If you are looking for something new and original, this mud will probably hold some appeal for you, especially if what you are searching for are people who will role-play. If massive numbers of players on-line at once or rampant playerkill is your goal, you would probably be best advised to look elsewhere. As it stands, this mud is fairly enjoyable, but has plenty of room for growth as well.

SlothMUD III is set in an original world, in medieval ages, with all the typical features of a fantasy MUD: alot of gleaming steel and flashy magic, and alot of species such as dragons, goblins, elves, dwarves. Original features include a unique, detailed, well laid-out world with its own history; interesting skills and spells; a good sense of humor. The player system doesn’t include any races at all, and though it’s possible to play the role of whoever you like, it doesn’t give you any special abilities. I found the self-description option definitely short on space (about maybe 250 symbols) to let you create a decent portrait of your character. Other aspects of character creation process are very brief, which to me is an advantage. You only choose your name, class order, hometown, and are ready to wander. There are no restrictions imposed on names, though I doubt a character with an offensive name would last for long ;). The level cost is fixed, and you do not get to choose skills at the beginning. You choose classes instead, and each class has its own skills and spells, strengths and weaknesses. There are eight classes to choose from: mage, cleric, warrior, thief, necromancer, druid, bard, monk, you have to choose four of them. The latter 4 classes have been added only recently and are being tweaked still.

Of those I played, thief and mage are the classes of offense, and warrior and cleric of defense. You do not get to see your stats (Str, Int, Wis, Con and Dex) until level 8. They must be rolled using special tokens that various mobs load. The first two classes affect your stats rolling. I must say it is considerably harder to get good stats if you play a mixture of classes (like thief/mage or mage/warrior) than if you play complementary classes (like mage/cleric or warrior/thief).

There is a help file for each command, and the command list is quite comprehensive. Those commands not available to you are in a different color. Most are intuitively comprehensible, and there are some very curious ones I haven’t seen before, such as ‘hunt’ (lets you track both PCs and NPCs slowly if they are not far away; I found it very useful for the newbie that I was). Quite big is the list of socials, and to my surprise the original Diku social-command stock has been not only expanded but also extensively rewritten.

Frankly, the atmosphere of this MUD was what hooked me up in the first place. Within five minutes of having logged on, I was poked at, licked, patted, and offered help. (I refused, for I usually try to get by alone at first, to see how well a MUD is done.)

The traditional MUD school is well-done, though it only provides basic information for absolute newbies; I personally could have used some guide on the more intricate commands. Public channels are not available until you have reached level 3, and then you have to know they exist in order to turn them on (‘gossip’, ‘auction’, and ‘quest’). It was not until level 10 that I discovered such useful commands as ‘showexits’ and ‘echo’; I think they really should be toggled on by default or included in the MUD school.

Roleplay is not at all imposed upon the players and often (heck, all the time) you hear complete OOCness being discussed on gossip. I didn’t find it much to my liking, but that’s me. Swearing over public channels is not tolerated in general and may earn you a noshout (makes you unable to gossip) if a vigilant Immortal hears you.

You die quite often (ok… I did), but if you ask on gossip fairly, someone helps with corpse retrieval more often than not. Due to the world’s enormity, it may happen that no one is near, which was the only case I didn’t get help. Ironical is the fact that it is harder to level and progress on the continent created for newbies (Valkyre) than it is on the usual continent (Thordfalan & others).

After the actual death, you lie for a few minutes unable to do anything, but someone can raise you from the dead.

Clans do exist on SlothMUD. I do not know how to join one of them; I suspect asking a clan member for an appointment with the elder should be enough. Clans are something that is still a complete mystery to me, and I couldn’t get sufficient information on them.

The world itself is very large, well-written, and has an air of novelty I haven’t seen for a long time. Each room description is unique (at last, no identical generic rooms); there are, however, mobs with identical descriptions. If you are running quickly through well-known rooms, the flow of text can get spammy, but the optional ‘brief’ mode helps. The color palette is nicely developed (though customizable, should the need occur) and helps distinguish important information from simply entertaining.

There are quite alot of areas. During my stay on this MUD, three new ones opened (each with a quest), so the world is growing fairly fast. There are six major continents and two islands. It requires roughly half an hour of real time to travel ’round the world by means of transportation ranging from simple boats to dragons. At higher levels it is possible to apply magic for instant relocation. By the way, you can fish while sailing on a boat or waiting for one (be sure to buy a pole first).

The descriptions actually describe what you see without telling you how to behave, are decently sized and almost without mistakes. If you notice a mistake and submit it through ‘typos’ command, it gets fixed fairly quick. A small number of areas are based on this or that book, such as the Unseen University which comes from Discworld series, or Kendermore from Dragonlance, or the Dragonmount from the Wheel of Time. I found the eclectic mix rather enjoyable. I wonder, if they were an RP-enforced MUD, how well a kender would do at Saidar ;).

The aspect of role-playing is very poor (I’d say almost completely missing). There are no experience points given for RP sessions. Do not take this as a disadvantage, though. There is a certain charm in going about the world hunting equipment, killing monsters, exploring areas as a being not restricted by environment that playing a role imposes.

Some areas really amount to masterpieces. I discovered that simply wandering around and reading descriptions can be very pleasant, not an activity I found enjoyable previously on many other MUDs. Oddly, the hometowns’ descriptions are rather poor in comparison with some distant and faraway areas, though logically it should have been the other way around.

Unfortunately, the MUD has a tendency toward crashing alot (three crashes in a row can get really annoying), though more often than not it stays stable. Usually it comes back online in a few minutes after a crash. The website as such deserves a *clap-clap-clap*. It is fully player-supported. Though I found it a little awkward to navigate, it contains player-supported maps to all areas, some of which are close to perfection, and are really, really the best MUD maps I’ve ever seen (check out the maps for Bal Harbor, Settlestone, Aisholm, Volcano, Tabaxi Wilds, Iceglen, M.A.G.I.C. to see what I am talking about). It is true that the maps kill the adrenaline of exploration, but since using or not using a map is up to you, it is nice to have a choice. Other than the maps, there are a great many additional useful pieces of information. They even have a theme song of their own.

One of SlothMUD’s biggest advantages is the descriptions of rooms, mobs, and objects. They are decently written (some very well so), and there are enough of them to form a large world. They claim having been online for more than 10 years. It can be true. The world is well-balanced in terms of spells/skills, equipment, and economics, and offers a fair challenge. SlothMUD is newbie-friendly and player-killing is limited to the extreme, but nevertheless playing provides enough adrenaline to leave the heart pumping rapidly. In a week’s time of playing I achieved not much, there are hundreds of possibilities still left unexplored.

There are 50 to 60 players online daily and half as much nightly. There aren’t all that many Immortals, maybe about 10 that are regularly visible. I talked to a few and they were helpful as a rule (some of them, though, paid no attention to me and they weren’t AFK – why be visible then?).

In short: I doubt SlothMUD would be home for anyone interested in thorough roleplay or an easy game, but it is the place for someone longing for a MUD to relax, chat, exercise brain, and simply have fun.

Threshold is a fantasy-based MUD with a strong emphasis on roleplaying. It has a well-defined and complex structure, with race, guilds, clans and religions all having importance within the socio-political system. Unlike some roleplaying MUDs, there is also plenty of action in the form of fighting, games, and quests, along with the inevitable enjoyable friction between players of different guilds, clans, etc.

However, a word of caution. Although I really enjoyed Threshold, my first impressions of it were extremely negative. I visited the website and thought yikes, this looks scarily authoritarian. Threshold has only one god, Aristotle, and my initial feelings were that he would be big into control and would rule the place with an iron fist. On starting to play, these feelings were reinforced as I ploughed through acres of helpfiles, where there is a strong ethos of what is and what is not permitted in Threshold.

This really put me off, and I ended up in a total panic about what I could and couldn’t say / do, and I was wary of asking other players for help, as I was so worried about saying ooc things, or what channel I should be using. There is a newbie channel (heritage), but no one used it when I was around. I did wonder if the other newbies also felt embarrassed or worried about asking something you shouldn’t and so, like me, kept silent. On a positive note, the helpfiles are complete, well written, relatively interesting and actually helpful! However, digesting all the information was difficult and I kept stopping and starting as I felt overwhelmed at times. But, you do need the information to actually start existing in Threshold.

My initial fears were unjustified and the theme is well supported by Aristotle. Basically, his position appears to be entirely related to roleplaying integrity and his (and the player’s) conceptualisation of Threshold as a place / world not a game. And, after spending some time in Threshold and seeing how it worked, this is the real theme of the MUD: a true roleplaying environment with an impressive vision. This is a somewhat radical approach and does have to be emphasised to new players, but applause for Aristotle, that he makes the point that perhaps there are things you cannot say and questions you cannot ask in a virtual world.

At first it is frustrating, as this is one of those MUDs where you need to introduce yourself to others, so, although there may be 70 players on line, as a newbie your chances of knowing any of them are slight. However, they are interested in you and conversation initiation is relatively fast, particularly if the characters are of the same guild or race. There are a lot of high level players (obvious ‘cos of the snazzy gear). Just listening to them, which they don’t seem to mind, lets you get a fair idea of the strength of community in Threshold.

Roleplay is a fundamental aspect of Threshold and is of a high standard. Players stay in role and there are plenty of plots and storylines going down. People interact quickly (which can be unusual in roleplaying MUDs) and conversations are rapid. There is inevitably some player killing, but this is in role. Hack and slash it’s not, its more of a fight and think place.

All the high level characters I met were relatively helpful. There is a way of getting your own personal helper, through going to the Tourist Office. This results in a player arriving to talk to you, but even with this I was a little nervous about what I could and couldn’t ask and kept it in role, when really I would have liked to ask for a bit of practical advice about commands and so on!

This is a combat-based MUD with some focus on level. This seemed to give an atmosphere of a sense of purpose and players seemed well rounded. There are pre-guild levels, “heritage”, and these are a solitary existence. However, this doesn’t last too long and you start to be integrated.

The world was well described, I didn’t notice any typos or missing descriptions, everything had an air of completeness and all the wrinkles had been ironed out.

There are stacks of races, ranging from the standard Tolkienesque to some animal-morphed races. The racial cohesion is extended through the existence of racial languages and actions. There are the standard guilds and a couple of extras (such as necromancers). Each guild has its own set of additional abilities and skills and related help files, so the guild choice is really indicative of the role that you intend to play within Threshold.

The fighting is standard, but acceptable. Lots of different areas, some of which are graded, so that you can determine where you should fight. Some quests too, the low-level quest was nice and brief and not at all difficult, and quite informative about how you should be interacting with the world.

It is one of those places where you have to rest and eat and so on, however, it is sufficiently well integrated to stop it being irritating. It also encourages people to sit in the bars and restaurants, so that you can find them. It is a big place, and the exploration capacities are considerable, if you like scouting and mapping and so on, this would be a good MUD for you.

As to who should play Threshold, well, to some degree it would suit almost anyone. However, due to the fact that early days on the MUD are spent pretty much alone, I would suggest you would need some basic knowledge about how to get going and have had some experience elsewhere. If you are an experienced MUDder this is a great place to be, I certainly really enjoyed it. I found that it had mixed up the best of many flavours of MUDs, from the serious roleplaying sort to those that focus almost exclusively on fighting to those that have lots of games. One of the most positive factors about Threshold is that it is mature and has a solid player base, with between 30-70 people on line all the time.

As there is considerable emphasis on roleplay, there is a command that causes a log to be automatically made and be given to the MUD Admin and they can determine if a roleplay bonus is necessary. I thought this was a really neat idea, after having spent much time madly roleplaying in other places, only to realise that no deity around and no bonuses going to emerge (not that one roleplays for bonuses, just sometimes the recognition is nice)

Like many other mature MUDs, players of Threshold are encouraged (but not forced) to contribute financially. Paying the registration fee offers players a number of additional skills, abilities and possibilities. Further information about this can be found at the Threshold website.

Finally, although I found the newbie stage difficult, I felt that this enforced reading of the helpfiles and the need of knowing people was a good approach. It does prevent high level characters being asked numerous silly questions, as can occur in other places, and it would be nice to be high level here.

I would just like to write “TRY IT!” but it deserves more than that. Threshold is a really splendid MUD. It has everything and more that this style of MUD should have. So, if you enjoy an adventure-style MUD, where combat and leveling are important (yet without the tedium of unrestricted player killing) and elegant roleplay is the norm, this could well be your place.

Most importantly, I would like to thank you, the reviewer, for keeping an open mind about Threshold despite your fears that the many help files and single administrator would make for an unpleasant game. I was very happy to hear that your “initial fears were unjustified”. I was thrilled to read that your final conclusion was that the rules and extensive help files helped to create “a true roleplaying environment with an impressive vision”, and I certainly appreciate your “applause for Aristotle”.

Regarding the heritage channel: it is usually very busy. New players are encouraged to make liberal use of the heritage channel to obtain assistance. The only thing they should be aware of is that most likely, other players will tend to answer questions by pointing new players to a help file. It is our philosophy that this is much better in the long run since the new player learns where to find the information as well as the answer to the question.

The STEA (Sable Tourism and Entertainment Authority) will be happy to read the praise they received in this review. I feel they do an excellent job, and I am very proud of them. Aside from planning special events and games in Threshold, they really try to make new players feel welcome and help them adjust to the game. I am happy to say that your good experience with them is very typical =)

I was very happy to read that you found the roleplaying to be of a very high standard, and that you noticed how the players of Threshold stay in character all the time. I am also glad you noticed how easy it was to “get involved” with the community. Threshold is complicated and yes there are a lot of rules and help files. But in the actual game, players are almost always really excited to have new people to play with, and as a result, they enjoy getting new people involved in their conversations and goings on. I am glad your experiences reflected this as well.

>Quoted from the review SUMMARY section:
>
>I would just like to write "TRY IT!" but it deserves more than that.
>Threshold is a really splendid MUD. It has everything and more that this
>style of MUD should have. So, if you enjoy an adventure-style MUD, where
>combat and leveling are important (yet without the tedium of unrestricted
>player killing) and elegant roleplay is the norm, this could well be your
>place. 

Thank you once again for such fine praise. I hope other fans of roleplaying games visit and have a similarly enjoyable experience.

-Michael Hartman (Aristotle@Threshold-rpg.com)

The Inquisition is a unique fantasy world, completely original with no stock zones that I could find. The zones that exist are well-written and make sense within the worldview set forth by the mud-world itself. The world is medieval fantasy, with little obvious magic, thus making it actually worth noting when someone finds magic within the world. The player starts in the section of the city Lithmore, in the old section, where new players can gain initial levels without the restrictions that exist elsewhere on the mud. This is a world that will discourage the casual mudder who’s looking for a quick level-up/grab-n-go experience, for this world requires its inhabitants to be both quick. savvy and persistent. Money is scarce, and killing animals and insects and avians can only get the new player so far.

From my exposure over the months that I’ve visited this world, the mud itself is a friendly place. The immortals are helpful and courteous, and the players are, for the most part, the same. Suggestions are listened to and acted upon, so long as they fit into the world-view of the mud. Questions are answered nicely and concisely, They have a good helpfile system (which gets pointed to a lot) and their web-site is also full of tips and helpful information. The main emphasis of the mud is the role-playing, and they have a fabulous system that automatically awards role-playing experience to those participating in such (and I’d love to know how this is done), so role-playing is a vital part of the mud. I was fortunate enough to participate in a few RP “scenes”, one gained me the position of a retainer of the Duke (I think he was a Duke, he was noble) of Tubor. I saw a wedding, which was quite well done, and the reception that followed presented a tradition where the bride and groom have their wrists bound by a chain of daisies at the culmination of the wedding ceremony, and must remain so bound throughout the reception, thus symbolizing their union and almost forcing them to learn to work together, to begin to rely on each other’s help. I thought this was fascinating, and the two characters who got married played it off without a hitch. (No pun intended)

The world of The Inquisition is relatively small, but since it is role-playing and not hack-n-slash mudding that is the “norm” there, that works rather well for them, since the main key to Role-Playing is finding out _where_ there is RP going on that you can join. In a larger world, this would be near-to-impossible. The room, monster and object descriptions are sometimes a bit rudimentary, but they are all-original, and provide enough atmosphere to support the RP-intent of the mud. They are accurately written, with few, if any, spelling or grammar errors, and those that are found are fixed quickly. This mud is more realistic in the way it presents itself^Å more legitimately medieval than traditional “fantasy”, no flowery crystal-spired turrets, lofty castles that seem impossibly built, it’s all very down-to-earth, thus setting the scene for “realistic” role-playing that focuses less on the power/skill of the character and more on the personality developed.

The one drawback with The Inquisition is this: Unless you have a ton of time to devote, and are good with interacting with other people, you won’t go anywhere in this mud. Levelling outside of Old Lithmore (the newbie area) is slow and virtually impossible beyond about the 7th or 8th level. If you don’t know where role-playing is going on, you’re cut out, and likewise, if no one knows you, it’s much harder to get involved in the role-playing that you do stumble onto. In fact, out of 100 mortal levels possible, you can only reach level 67 by killing things. After that, RPXP (Role-Playing Experience) is the only way to continue your upward climb. So, if you’re like me most days, and prefer to be the “lone leveller” type, this place might not be your best bet. However, if you’re like me on my odd days, and really into role-playing on Muds, then this is the place for you.

The Inquisition is a small-but-growing, role-playing only Mud, and has some of the best mud code I’ve seen yet for role-playing. (I especially enjoy fishing for my dinner, but that’s just me maybe. 🙂 The staff are helpful, the regulars friendly, and the world contributes significantly to the encouragement of actual role-playing. If you’re a RP-er and looking for some “realistic” role-playing, without the influence of the powermudder elite hanging over your head, I’d heartily recommend this Mud to you. Just tell ’em Bertold sent you. 🙂

Have you ever read the summary on the back panel of a book; then begun reading the book to find that there is no similarity? To be honest, that’s how I felt upon entering the worlds of Carrion Fields. Before visiting, I read an interesting (yet rather stereotypical) story on the battles of Chaos and Order, located within the game’s in-depth website. And then, entering the realm, I find no further mention (except through the ‘story’ command) of this epic battle. The realm picks up with a totally different story: the battles of races and classes, and so on. So, beyond Thera’s story of creation, there is no essential theme – just a regular (or so it seems in the beginning) life in the realms of Carrion Fields.

Ahh, but don’t think that there’s nothing to devote yourself to in this world. Upon choosing your race and ethos, you’ll be left to decide your spheres and religion – which all narrows down to, in layman’s terms, your character’s virtues. An impressive array of choices are presented to you, allowing you to design your character’s sphere in any way you see fit; let it be the pursuit of knowledge, the valor of war, or the art of music.

What is a MUD without her players? Absolutely nothing. This is where I find Carrion Fields to excel in. A large base of players, more than 80+ at normal times, most of which seem to be friendly and helpful. I met a few amazingly helpful players, all of which took me under their wing and showed me around, taught me the realm, and even offered me a few maps that they had compiled. Upon one journey, I was with two “newbies”, who revealed to me (OOC) that they had been playing for two years under various different characters. They find Carrion Fields so enthralling that they continue to create new characters and try to advance up again.

Unfortunately, the roleplaying atmosphere did seem rather non-existent for many players. They seem quite content to simply “hack ‘n’ slash”, without any roleplaying. Upon a few adventures, my fellow companions were discussing sound cards and game controllers, until I began to exaggerate my roleplaying – I guess I made them feel guilty 😉 Being a strong advocate of rp’ing, I feel that players should do it on their own, not just follow along with somebody who decides to roleplay.

An almost non-stock world is always enthralling, but only when the rooms have descriptions worth reading. I found, upon travelling most of the world outside (and partially inside) the main town of Galadon that very little time has been put into describing the world. Upon walking through, directly outside the town, I found the exact same description for nearly 25 rooms. Granted, a few sections of a road may be the same in reality, but as you get further away from civilization, wouldn’t you assume the surroundings would change?

The object database, though seemingly normal as far as standard mud objects go, was vastly limited in quantity – which I found rather nice. Only a certain number of objects would load in the realm, making it more difficult to get what you wanted and increasing the amount of pkills necessary for equipping your character. “You may have to kill your neighbor for his armor”, a help file claimed.

Lag was always a problem here, as well as system halts and various crashes (or perhaps it was just a very long slowdown). I found this the most annoying and ever present factor of the game for me (glancing down at my notes right now I see every so often the term “Major Lag” with a couple of exclamation points for emphasis). Granted, lag is not always the fault of Carrion Fields and their equipment, but could also be the routers used to connect my PC to the server. Following this idea, I always made sure to rotate between three ISPs everytime I would connect – unfortunately, the lag remained a very present problem with each connection.

The administrative staff (Immortals) were, as far as I could see, very rarely present, and seemed to not play a major role with players, as their help files incur. It’s suggested that players ALWAYS roleplay and ALWAYS follow their sphere and ethos to assume that you’re always being watched. Apparently the players (at least those I encountered) do not follow this ethic. I did also encounter one or two administrators who felt the need to play the part of an immature child, a few of those annoying types who interfere greatly by simply being a problem to a player. Following and echoing, etc.

The website itself is an amazing source of information and facts, and is definitely a great starting place for newbies to the MUD. It features a well-documented help section, as well as links to outside sources and help files. It also details all spells/skills/songs, etc of the classes and defines the races of the world. A must read for anybody new.

Overall, a very interesting place to play. Though lacking a massive role-playing environment in relation to it’s imitators, it still brings out a large world of intrigue and combat – enthralling any player who may dare to venture into it’s realm. So, if you’re interested in a friendly world, filled to the brim with features, quests, and interesting people, enter the world of Carrion Fields.

As taken straight from the web page, Discworld MUD is a multi-user game based on the Discworld books as written by Terry Pratchett. Having never read the Discworld series, I cannot comment on the theme from that aspect, but as far as interesting ideas, concepts, and theories go, I just have one word to describe it: Wow.

The theme of Discworld, bar anything else, is innovative, clever and witty. Expect the unexpected.

With fish, wombles, intelligent shades of blue, straw dummies, shiny plaques, mended drums, Shifty Jim, Ankh-Morpork pence all on a very chilly spindlewinter’s afternoon, Discworld had me laughing at every second turn, and left me wanting to read more.

The cabbage was a very nice touch (and cute!).

There are never less than 75 people on at a time, not that I saw anyway. Most of the time I saw more than 100. The website claims that 125 is the max, but I saw a few times it peaked 130+. At any rate, the atmosphere of the mud was surprisingly ‘calm’. There were lots of fun shouts, but not a huge amount of spam. I fumbled around for the first couple login hours, but met up with a couple nice semi-newbies who helped me through the process of picking out a guild and showing me where to begin training. I was pleased by how nice everyone seemed to be.

While I was there, I did notice the usual ‘idiot newbie’ log in, but they were dealt with swiftly and patiently by others willing to help out even the most excessively exclaiming newbie. (You know the ones!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????) 😉

Boasting 8000+ rooms, I have to believe the accuracy. For the explorationally challenged, I was absolutely impressed by the website offered by Choppy (found at http://www.bogo.co.uk/chopper/ or just check out Choppy’s finger information). The “Zoom” capability was awesome, and you can tell a whole lot of time went into it 🙂 The FAQ was humorous whilst being helpful, and there’s a handy ‘help essentials’ file too.

As far as my experiences go, I spent most of my time in the main city. Not because I was afraid to venture, or didn’t have the time, but mainly because there was so much to see, and so much to do in there, that I found myself wanting to check out every nook and cranny available to me.

The fact that I advanced all the way to level 7 before I killed a single NPC was awesome– training skills and practicing being a ‘thief’ really helped acclimate myself to the mud. If you go this route, however, prepare to be *extremely* patient — experience comes slowly with training. Leveling was much faster after I put to death a few sad old men 😉

There’s an extensive religion system on Discworld, priests are able to enact ‘rituals’ that have been taught to them. It’s also an alignment based mud, but even though I killed a whole bunch of what I would think of as ‘good’ NPCs, I never strayed from neutral, making me wonder what needs to be done to manipulate your alignment.

I didn’t notice that there were many languages until I got to a higher level, where I noticed that my ‘cost all’ command returned a whole bunch of languages I’d never seen before. However, I never really found any place that used them, all players talked in the ‘universal language’ 😉

NPCs were ‘smart’, I could have discussions with the ones in my guild, and in fact *had* to, to find out what commands to use and in which rooms I should train. Clever responses helped me figure out what i should ask next, and helped me find the answered I needed. There were tour guides as well that could show you around town.

There weren’t as many help files as I would have liked, I tried searching for help on skills and other assorted goodies, but alas didn’t find many at all. If it hadn’t been for a couple of kind players, I would have been stuck wandering the mud in confusion, but once I was shown the initial ropes it was pretty easy to catch on.

The fruitbat flavoured badge was quite tasty…

Wow. I’ve never before seen a mud that has been so intricately put together that I’ve *wanted* to read every description. Being able to search in every room was great, and finding items randomly was great for a newbie — I made some good money from that! To say that Discworld is ‘unique’ might be going too far, but it’s as close to unique that any mud I’ve been on has ever been. A great deal of thought has gone into every aspect, and (surprisingly) considering the age of the mud, it in no way feels stale.

Discworld does not pretend to be what it isn’t, and in fact almost *under* sells itself. The listing on TMC, whilst technically accurate, does not begin to describe the flavour of what Discworld is. The feeling I got from the mud was one of fun, quirkiness, and constant surprises. I spent a whole lot more time on there than I expected, but it was time well spent!

I commend the Administration of Discworld for creating an enjoyable place to visit, and hope that future muds that I review can live up to the standards that Discworld has created.