Cardea: Through the Gateway and Beyond
by
Pelleas
I’ve been playing Cardea for three years now, and still find it as original and challenging as I did when I first started. Players of many ages and from many different places around the world have characters in Cardea, and this adds to the richness and community spirit that has always been present. The world is thoughtfully constructed, with painstaking attention to detail throughout – from the high quality of location descriptions and quests, to the diversity and ingenuity of skills that the wide range of guilds possesses.
The game’s administration team have years of role-playing experience and excellent knowledge of mythical and medieval sources, which enable them to design a consistently fresh and believable world without conforming too much to anything that has been done before – the atmosphere of Cardea is familiar to many legends, but has its own uniqueness and style.
Cardea is very ‘newbie-friendly’. That is, newcomers to the game are guided through the basics of playing via an automated introduction system, which teaches them basic commands and a little geography to ease them into the world without too much difficulty. There are also many players who go out of their way to help new folk find their feet during their early days.
Another virtue of Cardea is that players are encouraged to stay ‘in character’, and develop their character’s personality as well as become more powerful and skilful if they so wish. This sets Cardea apart from the many muds where players converse openly about real-world topics and tend to play just to ‘level’ and gain power. There are as many battles of wits and philosophical debates as there are physical confrontations, and these can all have much effect upon the politics of the world. There are many on-going plots in which one can become involved, and these can change the state of the world and make your character a part of the long, detailed Cardean history.
Much thought has gone into making the world as ‘fair’ as possible. And so, each attacking ability will have some form of counter-defence (if your character has managed to gain a relevant skill or find some item to use). Unfair advantage of using force to kill those considerably less powerful than oneself is restricted, not by stopping the killing but by the more powerful character’s being disadvantaged in several ways after causing the death, thus deterring them from doing it too often. Also, characters who have died will come back to life temporarily shielded (or possibly permanently) from almost all attacks until the shield is voluntarily removed, giving them breathing space if they do not wish to be killed again.
Cardea is constantly being refined and expanded. It is never allowed to grow stagnant, and any system bugs are dealt with swiftly.
If you wish to play and develop a multi-faceted character in a high-quality, original fantasy-world that is full of mature players, then look no further. If you want to live in a land that you can help shape and directly influence, you have found it. This is the mud you have been looking for – one that you can totally immerse yourself within.
