I'm not going to try and dazzle you with evocative (I hardly even know what that word means- am I using it right?) imagery and dazzling descriptions and mindlessly devoted prattle about how amazing and devoted out immortal staff if. Because I'm not like that. Instead i'm going to churn out a boring feature list because it involves little real imagination. I need to save my imagination for the amazing roleplay created in our beautiful game by our hard-working immortals! Ahem, whoops, slipped. Won't happen again. Anyway, time for BULLET POINTS!

- Your a Dinosaur! RAWR! You've got teeth clawz n' jawz! Thus, as a dinosaur, you can't talk. The only way of comunication in the mud is emotes. Interesting or annoying, you pick. Creates very unique Arr-pee though.

- All Dinosaurs are members of packs (Unless they were exiled for being bad wittle kiddies) which are led by an Alpha (Male or Female), who in turn as an Alpha Mate and Alpha Consorts (Of the opposite sex, i'd presume). Below them is the Hunt Leader, follow by Hunters, beginning Hunters, scouts, and various hatchlings. Not happy with the way things are going? Slay your leader and take things into your own hands.

- Hungry? Slay your pack leader just for the #### of it, and eat him! If your tuff-E-nuff, that is. (Not suggested)

- Hunting involves tracking down your prey, ambushing it, then chasing it down while whittling away at it and trying to herd it from the rest of it's kind (Who don't take kindly to that sort of thing).

- Hunting isn't like in other muds where you just butcher hordes of enemies at a time. Even at low levels your prey will put up quite a fight, and later on you'll have to rest between most battles. You get enough experiance to compensate for this, though, so don't think it will take you 10 hours to reach level 3.

- Mating system that allows a male and female to have fully playable kiddies! Usually Alpha's don't let anyone else in the pack mate, but maybe yours will be nice (Or maybe you won't be). Or just mate with the alpha, whatever.

- Lots of other cool stuff, I think. So come on down, I'm Razer! And if your reading this, Voidrider... I am NOT Razer!

You're....You're serious?!

No, wait...I need a real question. Are you saying the game is sexy, or the dinosaurs? This is quite important to me.

Well the game is automatically sexy because I'm in it, and I suppose that the dinosaurs are sexy from an In-Character point of view.

Well, dinosaurs go "RAWR", as you previously mentioned, and they do cut a striking figure. My problem with dino sexiness is that some of them, mainly the plant-eaters, seem to have, erm, a little extra tonnage on them. They need to hit the gym, especially the cardio machines. I also think that something like a triceratops needs to look into moisturizing. Who really wants to be makin' sweet sweet love to something whose skin makes sandpaper feel like a baby's bottom?

Might I suggest, therefore, that you offer an option for a reduced calorie diet and perhaps some circuit training for the more sedentary of dinosaurs on your mud? Maybe a spa as well so that we can work on the texture of their skin and make it more appealing to we dino fetishists.

--matt

All this talk of dino-love is getting me hot and bothered. How about a link to your site and an address for your MUD?

- Ryan

The mud is at stormhaven.genesismuds.com 5500, or so I am told.

Okay, which smartass created a character named 'Rowr'?

You give me a great idea! What if I could manufacture a synthetic skin that is, I quote, 'As soft as a baby's bottom', to be grafted onto people who want softer skin! The middle-aged women would go wild! I'd be rich!

Greetings all,
As one of the elementals at Age of Reptiles, I'd like to say in response to Kenjar's statement "the amazing roleplay created in our beautiful game by our hard-working immortals!", that it is the players themselves who shine with their seemingly limitless imaginitivity, and the roleplay interaction in game, without any type of speech, is truly amazing to see. Kudos to all, you are the reason Age of Reptiles is destined to become a classic! As for those who are unsure about playing a dinosaur, come have a look, we always have time to answer questions or provide assisistance!

Maybe I'm just weird, but I find this hilarious. So if I choose a name like bob, somebody is going to complain that "There weren't any dinosaurs named bob! That isn't a proper prehistoric name!"?


Okay, even more confusing then the use of names by non-talking creatures is the race selection. It says type help [race] for help but that doesn't seem to be working. And one of the two starting races is elemental, but on the webpage it says elementals are admin.

But Bob -isn't- a proper dinosaur name so they'd be right to complain. I thought it was well known that as the dinosaurs evolved, the languages of the various species merged into a sort of proto-language that shared the same words for core concepts like "hunt" and "run" but had different words for things and concepts particular to their specific species. So, for instance, a Bigosaurus, one of the largest of the plant-eaters, required that it be in the water most of the time in order to support its massive bulk. So, you can imagine that Bigosaurs had a lot of words for "rest" and "comfort" and "spa" On the other hand, something like a T-rex spoke in a dialect called "Bush" that emphasized action verbs and de-emphasized any sort of subtle shades of meaning, as it was a species not given to much reflection or thought. But if you wanted a word for "kill", you talked to the T-rex.

Now, what's really interesting is that you can directly trace this dinosauric proto-language to the Finno-Ugrian languages of modern day. And really, if you consider the Bigosaur's addiction to mud baths and spas generally it's not a far leap of the imagination to connect that to the Finnish love of saunas. And come to think of it, my dad, who is a Transylvanian-born Hungarian, had a sauna in our house growing up.

My personal theory is that when most of the dinosaurs died off due to massive bacterial infection in their much-loved spas (and the subsequent dying off of the predators that depended on the spa-lovers), the Dirtosaurus burrowed from its native home in and around what is now northern Africa, under the Mediterranean to hide beneath the Carpathians while the climate fixed itself. And, of course, that's where vampires and their need to spend time with soil from their home comes from. I haven't figured out yet where the Finns figure in in, but I think it's because the survivors went there first in the summer-time and were fooled by all the lakes. Boy were they in for a surprise when winter hit. Those without saunas were finished.

--matt

It can't be 100% realistic or we would have to spend 10 hours a day logged in and sleeping. In AoR, the Deinonychus are smarter than they would normally be; just smart enough to show a wider range of emotions and thoughts, and even those are limited. So they would of course be able to tell the differance between two deino's, either by a physical marking (It is suggested that players use colors and nouns in their name, such as Redjaw), or maybe just a sound that they assign to that person.

And as for the race selection, elementals are listed but can't be chosen- I really have no idea why they're there. Help Deinonychus works fine for me, maybe just not in creation.

Since this mud is so unique, it might be worthwhile for you all to post (or publish on your site) some logs of the roleplaying from the mud. I'd certainly be interested in seeing the general flavor of the way the players interact ingame via their emoting.