[rotm_adm]

As of January 1st, 2006, Realm of the Magi [RotM] (formally DragonStorm) will be closing its doors. Our game has been running for nearly 8 years, but with the decline of active players and world builders, we have finally decided it was time to close down.

Every year, usually around the first part of summer and winter, we loose alot of our player base and our development team as well. Though we get a few of those lost souls back, every year we get smaller and smaller. At one time, we averaged nearly 45 players on at any given day... now its more like 3 players all week (including visitors). I have tried to make personal sacrifices to keep the dream alive, but it seems I have finallyfailed to bring back hope to our wonderful game.

Realm of the Magi's (RotM) mudlib is considered one of the finest ever created. We have taken the structure of Lima, Amylaar and other types and combined them into one, fully-functional, scable mudlib that had an endless number of features and enhancements. We had a player & coder modifiable ANSI color system for rooms and objects, a structured daemon system, a functional in-game security and editing system, a integrated channel system with Intermud support, a unique, response-based quest system that no other LPmud ever though of creating, an integrated MySQL daemon system with in-game shell editor, a balanced command system, and even our own World Builder handbook -- to help teach LPC to new recruits and to even strengthen our own development teams and much much more than I can explain here.

I wanted to say 'thank you' for everyone here that was willing to donate time and effort to help our game last as long as it did. RotM made several advances in LPmud mudlib development, but that would not have been possible without the help from many players, wizards and admins from TMS coming over and helping us to get the ball rolling.

Once again -- Thanks.

-- Silverthorn

[Anitra]

It's really sad to see a good mud go down. It illustrates once again how hard it is for the small muds to compete with the big commercial ones that can spend a lot of money on banners and other advertising.

[the_logos]

Sorry to hear about that, Silverthorn.

--matt

[WarHound]

This is one of those times I feel terrible to see a mud go. I've meant to stop in and make an effort at getting into this mud for awhile, and now the chance is gone.

Damn shame. Luck with future endeavors, Silverthorn and players of RotM.

-WP

[rotm_adm]

The real reason RotM is shutting down, is not for money, but mostly due to the lack of developers  willing to learn the LPC programming language and the number of mentors/admin willing to have the time (and patience) to teach it and improve the mudlib for easier use. An average joe can learn the basics in about a week, especially since we even developed our own world builder's handbook w/ lots of examples.

One of the things we had on the list was to consolidate the inherits to be more structured rather than having lots of redundant code. This alone was around 50 to 60k lines of multiple inherits that would needed to be recoded and better organized (i.e. weapon.c, armor.c, thing.c, treasure.c, player.c, living.c, monster.c, food.c, etc). Our timeframe was like 4 to 6 months of redesign and redevelopment... but with only 2 active LPC admins... I highly doubt that was going to happen in that timeframe.

Maybe one day I will look at resurrecting the mudlib along w/ its modified LDmud 3.2.9 driver (we added some driver-related efuns to make it a bit more robust... but doing so also modified the mudlib so it wont work w/ newer LDmud releases w/o ALOT of modifications).

Til then, I think this is the best thing to do -- maybe sort of help with the design of a new deployment plan and better structure for not just the game, but anyone that becomes a part of it later on.

-- Silver