Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Join the madness this weekend and experience Abandoned Realms like never before! Rise through the ranks and become part of the most intense game I have ever played. The Learning curve is not steep at all and there are many devoted IMMS around to help all new players. Constant changes and updates keep Thera ever turning. There are no global channels so don't expect a chat experience with spam killing Mobs on the side. The RP here is deep and honestly brilliant. If you don't like PK, become a Herald and write monthly news letters called the Mystique. If writing is not your thing, become a Mystic and learn the Lore of the land. The Legion and the Knights constantly battle throughout the land, while the Keepers of Balance seek to do just that, keep the balance. The Iron Fist of the Justice attempts to chase down the criminals and those who break the law. The Vampires stalk the night, waiting for there prey to least expect it. Those of the Strife attempt to better there records in duels all over the land. Immense yourself in the greatness, the one mud you have been looking for. Three tips for all of you new players after creation, automap, scroll 0, prompt 6. See you in the game.

The IP address is 23.92.24.184 port 9000.

Visit the Website:
Jump in IRC and chat with us:(#SPOON)

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Abandoned Realms is now Streaming Live on our homepage! We will have live streams of PvP/PvE/RP events! Come check it out at

Also check out our Twitter for updates and things that impact the game

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Isn't this the game that was pretty much ?

I just want to make sure.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

No we have never cheated our voting in any way at all. There are no facts just other gamers coming to our mud at odd times and saying we do not have the player base to support our votes, but we really do and we have facts to prove that. So please stop trying to troll our game.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Yes, and it was so blatant they were recently removed from the rankings list.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

My #9 TMC ranking is clearly a fairly earned vote because it is behind a human-approved account login process. I don't see us getting pulled down there. Why dont you send him an email too, Matt? Because our 109 votes there cannot be fair right?


Attached "outboundvotes" is our analytics from our landing page for outgoing voteclicks to TMS for the last 3 weeks.

Attachment 13

Attaching "incomingtraffic" is our apparent traffic from TMS.


Attachment 14

Attached is a breakdown of the votes my analytics has collected by GEO.

Attachment 15

Funnily enough, these metrics match up almost identically with our TMC votes.


So lets see,
I can count the vote properly.
Adam @ Mudconnector can count the vote properly.
TMS cannot count the vote properly.
we've also been top 20 and occasionally top 10 on TMS for 12 years

So whose fault is it?

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Oh wow, I am so sorry to have falsely accused you. There was another MUD, called Aabrahan, the Accursed Lands, or something similar, that Derek and I caught blatantly and outrageously cheating last month. When I saw Abandoned Lands being accused of cheating, I confused it with the other game and mailed Derek. He also confused your game with the other game, and banned you.

This morning, while on vacation in the Sierras, I was out walking and suddenly the name Aabrahan popped into my head and I thought, "Uh oh." Mailed Derek as soon as I got back and he checked and confirmed we messed up.

Very very sorry man! Hope you understand it was an honest mistake, and will soon be rectified.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Now this is pure awesome. dentin posted a comment in another topic accusing this MUD of cheating the votes and complained that his own MUD Alter Aeon was not in the top 20. Abandoned Realms gets banned and looky here, Alter Aeon is in the top 20 now, this is epic! I always knew something was up with dentin and now this proves that guy is malicious and a better troll than I am. Grats dentin, you win MUD Troll of the Year!

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

I really don't think that's the case. Dentin did a reasonable analysis of Abandoned Lands voting pattern and found it to be an outlier. He looks to have been wrong but being wrong - innocently - happens.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

I am waiting for access to the AR forum to post this there. Reposting here and in the other AR thread so there is no more confusion.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I owe Abandoned Realms a full apology and reinstatement of their position in the TMS rankings. I won't name names, but the MUD we had an issue with huge proxy voting last month was not Abandoned Realms, it was another MUD with a very similar ID. The reason you were given so little benefit of the doubt this month was on the basis of that flawed premise. Dumb mistake and while it's little comfort to you now, you can be sure that I will check and double check the next time this happens.

I did in fact receive an email from Sarapis asking me to check your rankings as the numbers seemed suspicious based on player count. This happens quite often and is not malicious. Usually I login to the MUD in question and see they are really pushing hard on the voting, there are a lot more players then their seems based on visibility, etc and their vote numbers are plausible. After hanging out some on AR myself and reviewing your stats I believe that is the case here. Also note that Sarapis played a significant part in identifying my mistake, so please hold no bad feelings towards him.

This mistake and situation is all mine, not trying to pass blame at all. However, just a thought for if you find yourself in a similar situation with another site or service at some point - decide who is going to communicate with them. I received email from 6 different AR imms, none of them copying the other, each telling me how lame the site is anyway while at the same time asking to be reinstated. Either way, there is no good excuse for what happened here and I am going to post this same note on TMS.

Finally, I understand Davarius was mad and may or may not have meant some of the things he posted in our forum. If you see any value in a TMS banner ad at all, I am prepared to run one for you for 3 months free of charge.

Sincerely,
Lasher

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

You are all awesome! I am very happy that everything is fine now.
Mistakes happen all the time, especially in Courts…

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Thanks for announcing this. Our entire imm staff and some of our players freaked out on the spot and all started sending Lasher emails immediately after we were taken down. Some of us were less gracious than others.

It's not entirely surprising that we were confused with FL (or that FL was cheating the vote). Forsaken Lands or whatever they renamed themselves to to cheat the Mudconnector list (something like Aaabarahaha to appear higher in their alphabetical list) was a clone of our mud from stolen code. They'd look very similar to us on a brief inspection, like just logging in to check who's online.

Also, since we're a full PK mud with full looting and permadeath, our concurrent users at off-peak hours tend to be low. This is due to the fact that people won't log in unless they are combat-ready and can devote 100% of their attention to the game, or because they're worried about a powerful player being online if they log in and risking death. It's safer to log in during peak hours when they have friendly characters nearby. If we were more peaceful you might see more players playing off-peak while they're at work or doing other things, but people really play our game for the sense of realism and permanence that comes with the high lethality of PK, so... we're stuck with that until we can get more players. Long story short, we have a lot more players than it looks like we do and they connect with each other via social media sites rather than in-game..

Our forum uses a fake "captcha" that you can only learn about via in-game helpfiles to cut back on forum spam, that's why you couldn't get an account made. I've posted your announcement to our players and hidden my previous messages on the subject.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Thank you, apology accepted. I'm glad to see the matter finally properly investigated and the MUD restored. I've edited down my posts accordingly.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

Thanks for giving it a second look Lasher. Glad all is well, now come people and let me spill your blood in Abandoned Realms! SURGE IN 20 mins! GET SOME!!!!!

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

DarkOzma,

We've been hovering in the low 20's for a couple of months now, and we pop into the high teens every now and again. It's better explained as a normal fluctuation than malice.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

I still maintain that the voting pattern looks very suspicious (see for the userload estimates I used.) However, Lasher's analysis and opinion has significant weight.

Therefore, I retract my accusation that Abandoned Realms is cheating on their TMS votes.

-dentin

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

I haven't played AR in a long time, but I vote pretty often still because I love the game. I'd bet there are a few other people like me. That website you linked, it seems pretty unreliable. Beyond not giving any details on how the data is parsed or who runs it (I'm guessing you?), the data itself is incomplete and unreliable.

From the "who" command.

Whereas what your website is saying is that the peak is "7". Like Davairus mentioned before, AR is an active PK mud without an AFK function. If you are AFK, you get voided out and disconnected. Unless there's constant observation, the website is going to completely mess up the player count.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

There is no voting link to TMS from your landing page, so I don't expect you to get much votes. You will get votes from donors no matter how hard you make it, because they are invested and want to see a return on that investment, but a "free" player is not going to bother crawling through two different links to vote. Voting is annoying for then. If I was a player voting for your game I would vote max once a day and probably give up completely after a week instead of bookmarking the page (I'm very lazy and I wouldnt exert effort with 70 other players to rely on). You're killing it yourself dentin. Just fix your site and the problem will go away.

Re: Abandoned Realms, 2x Exp Weekend!
 

To be fair, mudstats says that Aarchon's 30 day max is 6 players and we have 8 people on right now. We have 10-15 online pretty regularly, and peak around 20.