Achaea implemented a comprehensive system of furniture for player houses today. You can find details in the following files:







Enjoy! Expansions to the furniture system, which is already wildly popular, are being worked on even now.

--matt

Very, very impressive.

Bring on the rocking chairs!

I would like to know the reason for not being able to move or sell your furniture, or even give it to a friend...

I noticed features like this were already being implemented in Imperian. Did you decide to put furniture in Achea during production of Imperian, or did the idea strike you after you observed furniture and its use in Imperian first?

Naah, just one of those things we've wanted to put in for years and only recently got around to it. Some systems are kind of no-brainers if we have time to implement them.

--matt

Clearly this is another attempt by Logos to bilk people out of money. Everyone knows that you go through a process of moving things a little to each side and back again or against different walls when attempting to create a dwelling that reflects ones discerning taste.

Logos knows that persons with a refined sense of aesthetics will be forced to buy credits and sell some off for in game gold in order to purchase another dwelling and additional furniture to create an acceptable living environment rather than live in a house with a substandard use of space.

And think of the indignity one will be exposed to having to allow workmen into ones home to reupholster furniture when the fabrics and designs become passe simply because the pieces can not be removed.

Also, for as much as Logos is against the theft of intellectual property, he doesn't seem to have any compunction against stealing furniture design. He has clearly stolen or at least borrowed extremely heavily from Ethan Allen Furniture's colonial and early European period collections.

I am gaining an increased appreciation for the reasons why people find IRE an intolerable presence on these forums.

Why would you need to give someone furniture?
Guy A: Happy Logosmas! Here's a chair!
Guy B: What? No clothes, or maybe a sword? Just the... The chair? Thanks... Now I can... Sit... On the battlefield...

But in all seriousness, you'd have to drop a lot of gold on a chair and just to give it to your friend is kind of a waste. A true MUD friend is one who doesn't always ask you for stuff of value for free all the time.

Well, we run the home decorators union so this is all part of our careful plot. More money for the workmen = more graft for IRE. In the rough and tumble business of text MUDs, unions just can't get away without paying protection money these days. I sometimes pine for the halcyon days of yore when drivebys and bombings weren't so much a part of MUDs.

*Peer* Get out of my head. We were joking about doing a deal with Ethan Allen to put Ethan Allen branded furniture into Achaea just 2 days ago!


Just wait until we implement our system for window dressings. Then the outrage will really begin.

--matt

Yeah, wow...

I mean, wow.

Furniture. I can hardly contain myself.

You people are unbelieveable.

Don't be sorry.

MUDs have pushed the feature envelope for online games since their beginning.

With the exception of There/Second Life, MMOs are pathetic when it comes to things like furniture.

Cool features shouldn't be mocked. The nature of adding features to a game is that some people will love them, and some people won't really care. The idea is you add enough things so all your players find things interesting.

I'm not mocking the feature, just the overly dramatic reaction to something so mundane. I can hardly stifle my laughter at someone calling an implementation of furniture cool, much less "very, very impressive".

You sound ridiculous. Furniture pushing the envelope?! The envelope must be pretty easy to push in that case.

Ahem:


When we start seeing auctions to buy a chair that fell over starting at $9 for Achaea, then maybe it has pushed the envelope into new and exciting territory in interior decorating.

Furniture is really nothing new or exciting or innovative in any way to MUDs. Any RPI MUD will have "furniture" objects.

I suppose not many H&S MUDs have them which might be the novelty of Achaea's furniture, but it's still not the first time something like that's been done.

On the whole, advertising it just seems to me a lot like an automobile company advertising that their cars now feature wheels.

Take care,

Jason

Hmm, some people here really are terribly negative. It's a nice new feature for Achaea, and I like the amethyst-encrusting option.

Not that Imperian's furniture isn't rather spiffy too, of course. But honestly, if you haven't got anything nice to say, it isn't really worth saying it, at least in this instance. If you really want to make a point, go invent something so you can go and announce it, rather than making pointless flames on someone else's work.

Sorry I obviously disagree. If completely unremarkable things like this are lauded as "impressive" and seen as "pushing the envelope", we are in some seriously bad shape. Pointing this out is hardly pointless.

I could do that, but it wouldn't be the point I'm trying to make. Generally an invention is something that isn't found all over the place. Wouldn't you agree?

I don't particularly want to argue with you, as you seem to be intent on being negative. You are welcome to your own opinions, but if people like, enjoy or are impressed by the features new to Achaea, or indeed any MUD, they have every right to be.

Attempting to detract from a harmless source of enjoyment is not particularly useful or productive. The reaction of most of Achaea is that the new feature is cool, and they approve of it. And incidently, as Achaea previously did not have this, it is a new invention as far as it's concerned.

That's funny. "These chairs are SUPER RARE! The fallen over chairs! Be the first one on your block to have a broken chair! Make your neighbors think you're a fat cow! Only 9$!"

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with being negative, especially when the situation calls for it. Yes it would be nice if we could all sit around on comfy ruby-encrusted cushions, sipping tea and patting ourselves on the back for life's little triumphs, but when you bring your circle of love to a public forum, don't be surprised when someone points out how diluted and meaningless your terms have become.

You just can't accept the fact that to most people this is not impressive, it is not a dream come true, and it does not push the envelope. Call it negativity, I call it truth.

It's amazing the kind of contortions you go through to justify your statements.

On the positive side, there are over 617 muds with furniture, and over 223 muds allow players to create their own custom furniture patterns and stylings.

Welcome to the 1990's :-)

Can you please give me the address of your successful, popular MUD where your fully feature furniture exists, as well as numerous features far superior to it?

Just because something is mundane in RL doesn't mean it is not cool when implemented in a game world.

Furniture that works and can be designed in very detailed ways is very cool and is not something that commonly exists in games (in a well developed, extensive fashion).

The huge mega-million dollar MMOs coming out lately cannot even manage to do it extensively. DAoC had furniture but it was absolute useless garbage.

It is very easy to poo poo something just because you didn't do it yourself.

Any of the RPI MUDs feature similar, and often times quite better, options with furniture than that which Achaea is inflating the significance of.




(To say nothing of Forever's End, Forever Ends, Chronicles of Ritnarium, and any other RPI MUDs that are no more or still in development).

As I've said before, I've tried two of the IRE games and came away noticing nothing that I couldn't find already (and more well-done) on free MUDs. That doesn't just go for furniture alone. I've never encountered RP that surpasses that on the MUDs I've listed above and I've seen great H&S combat on MUDs like Necromium.

Sorry, but the "innovative" and "pushing the envelope" furniture on Achaea is neither innovative nor pushing the envelope. It's old hat and the fact that it didn't exist already in a pay-to-play continues to make me wonder why people choose such games over far better, more innovative, and totally free MUDs. I guess it's like cheap wine. If the best wine you've ever tried comes in a box, you won't really know there's anything better until you try something else.

Take care,

Jason

Welcome to the amazing bizarro-world of Threshold, where only people who have successful, popular MUDs can recognize which features are found all over the goddamn place.

You've gotta be kidding me if you think that the only reason I can't recognize how amazing this envelope-pushing feature is is because I "haven't implemented it myself". Justifying these statements takes 10 minutes with a couple of mudsite search engines.

Oh I certainly agree. It's hard to approach the coolness of being the first kid on the block to own a broken chair.

Janus:Hmm, some people here really are terribly negative. It's a nice new feature for Achaea...

Threshold:It is very easy to poo poo something just because you didn't do it yourself.

1) Please tell me that a thread does not exist where Achaea supporters are decrying negative posting on TMS.  I'd prefer to think it was a hallucination, and not that people have overlooked the_logos's previous posts.  Yui and others are a lot more mature about being critical to boot.

2) While we don't have customizable, purchase-able furniture(*) (we have several stores with customizable products, but not furniture), it is a feature I've seen elsewhere, usually in conjunction with the ability to buy houses, etc.  I think that the original post is well and good, but that people are getting carried away with proclaiming the virtues of the ability to make special chairs.

(*): Different culture, really.  Equipment and possessions are very transient in our game... we try to discourage characters from being too focused on that.

It was actually August of 1989 when players of muds aquired the power to create sofas, beds, ottomans, lazyboys, chairs, curtains, linen, jewel-encrusted, finely lathed and whatever their imagination could possibly conjure up unlimited by color, type, style, weight, height, coverings and someone else's idea of what the "options" were.

By 1991 this furniture was swallowing items, eating players, cooking eggs into omelets, transmuting lead into gold, serving sodas and beer, and of course talking and moving around on its own power.

By 1994 a very much limited and nerfed implementation of furniture started appearing on some Diku muds.

Total stats on furniture so far:
235 items purchased
7.717 million gold total
Average of 32,838 gold per piece

If prof515, Tyche, and Yui Unifex work together, I bet we can keep this thread on the front page of TMS at least another week or two.

--matt

I think you're going to have to wind up some more of your clockwork minions first. But seriously, nobody but yourself cares how much advertisement you get from this.

Various player reactions to furniture, from Achaea's forums at achaea.ire-community.com:

One of the things that has always impressed me about Achaea (apart from the depth in combat) is the way the Divine listen to our requests and suggestions.

I've played several Muds & MMORPG's and I would have to say that your attention to your userbase and customer service is No. 1.

Give yourselves a pat on the back!! Good job all round!

I am aboslutely ecstatic about this implementation! Kudos you wonderful Divine.

Wow, this system is awesome! Thanks.

--matt

I'm unsure as to the purpose of your post. Are you trying to emphasis how many players are delighted with mediocre and outdated features? If so, I'd have thought that would be more than apparent by the number of stock muds out there.

More player quotes, from in-game rather than the communities:

Overall a wonderful and long needed system in terms of the belivability in the world, cheers to the divine for getting it done.

Everything you guys do, you take to the next level. Other MUDs have furniture systems. None that I've seen even come close. This kind of attention to detail is why I've personally spent over $6000 on Iron Realms games.

--matt

Whoops... Looks like furniture was available in Dikus as early as 1993. I stand corrected.

On Tinymuds this was not conceived as a gold sink for an unbalanced game.

On TinyMud a player could spend a penny to create a piece of furniture, rooms cost nothing. Later on TinyMOO and TinyMush this was called a quota. The primary reason for pennies and quota limits was to prevent the mud from running out of memory as it was an expensive and limited on university computers.

Later disk-based muds either eliminated the quota altogether or left it in place but set it higher just to prevent players from spamming the creation of mass quantities of comfortable sofas and chairs.

It is good to see commercial muds attempt exploration of fundamental and ubiquitous concepts found on hobbyist muds ( even if the implementation is severely nerfed and highly restricted).

What's the address of the Sims Online? You know that wildly unpopular mud game entirely about furniture aquisition.

After going through this thread there are two things clear to me:

1.- the_logos (or his Achaea team) implemented furniture in their game, making it available to players who seemingly had wanted this feature for some time. It seems like eventhough some (many?) have been paying to get some quick start/development of their characters and have not had this feature available before, some are glad this has been put in now.

2.- The idea of adding furniture to a text game is not innovative or will change the MUD's paradigm or will cause Microsoft to file for bankrupcy (sadly).

Now, rightly the_logos has used the space on advertising for players to tell everybody that a new (for their MUD at least) feature is available, he has given some links to the relevant information and that was it. Shortly after someone overstated how cool it was (but maybe they were just one of the players who just wanted the feature added for long time). After that, a string of flames about how unoriginal the idea is, how it is amazing people play pay-per-perks games, how so many free games have Hammocks you can sleep in and have had them for a while, etc etc ... it is really amazing how Logos gets immediate responses everytime he posts, I'd swear Yuki is one of his minions because it sure looks like the only goal is to keep the thread alive!

Now seriously, you all are entitled to an opinion, you can of course post it here, but I fail to see why and advertisement must have a discussion attached to it, actually, not a discussion but a flame-war attached to it.

People try to ridicule Achaea because they did not have the simplest of the things, "furniture", but you fail to realize that it is then more impressive that they are so succesful even if they overlooked these "simple things". I have not played Achaea, or any IRE game for that mater, I am actually not fond of the_logos posts most of the time, but latelly it just looks like everybody is so stupidly eager to bash whatever he says or posts that whatever he writes over here becomes in a week-long Achaea (or IRE) advertisement spree.

Contributing to the add-spree ...

... and sincerelly yours ...

Spoke.

Yet more quotes, since some worthy TMS members appear to be quite fascinated by it:

"Once again, Achaea shows why it's the MUD to play."

"This is AWESOME!! Ima decorate my house immediately."

"My major disappointment with this system is the lack of dried mud as a building material. We horkvals like mud. Otherwise, it kicks ass!"

--matt
P.S. I'll be pleased to continue to post quotes as long as so many TMS members show such interest in this topic. Just let me know.

I'm not the biggest fan of Achaea, but Spoke raises a good point in that Achaea has been successful without these features for quite awhile, even when Imperian has had them since opening I believe. I myself was actually quite amazed to learn that Achaea just got it, when another IRE game already has furniture.

I'm all for bashing Achaea, but really, there so many better things to nickpick on, other than furniture.

Now I haven't posted any flames on this thread. I've made some historical observations, and I think some quite encouraging comments lauding our slower and less agile cousins in the commercial mud community.

OH MY GOD! Since a feature existed on some Dikus (most of which nobody ever played), any implementation of a similar feature is therefore lame and not cool.

Xerox was the first company to create the GUI. It sure didn't do them much good though, eh?

Great logic there, trolls.

It really is amazing the degree to which people with NO ACCOMPLISHMENTS will trash the actually productive efforts of other people.

Can somebody tell me how in god's name THE CHAIR THREAD gets more posts than a more intelectually stimulating conversation about race originality, the purpose of life, or something that is not about FURNITURE?!?

Neither, just nothing to be shouting about, and certainly not something which "pushes the feature envelope for online games" as you previously claimed. The_logos has responded to other people in much the same way when they've claimed to have something 'original', so I fail to your problem.

Or perhaps we just don't boast about every minor feature we implement? What next - an advert about how your mud now has objects that save over reboots, perhaps? Maybe some promotional material about now having colour? Or perhaps you've recently introduced mobs? Being over a decade behind the times is not something I'd boast about.

No you're getting it mixed up again. The historical data shows that not only has the envelope already been pushed, it has been pushed further more than a decade prior.

Great reading comprehension, moron.

I don't think anyone said furniture was lame. I mean, where else are you going to sit? It's just not very, very impressive. I know it's convenient for you to see the world in black and white, but believe it or not there are degrees between super awesome and utterly lame.

So you're one of those guys that hates movie reviews because the movie producers didn't write them?

Er, nobody has said anything of the sort. Please read the thread next time.

Some more player testimonials, in this here advertising thread:

"Those kids on TMS forums are funny. Furniture rocks."

"*squeal* FURNITURE!"

--matt

the_logos - is there a specific reason why I would not be able to sell my furniture or just give it to someone else if I so like? I would most importantly like to be able to move it - why is this not possible?

ok