These are some very interesting times we are living in. Realms of Despair is nothing like it used to be. Any reviews you have seen previously are moot now. Anything you ever knew of it is moot now. It is Realms 2.0, and it is by far the best medieval MUD on the net.

The Shattering came last week with a bang. Avatars of great strength paniced. Shocktroopers of even more strength attacked Darkhaven. Bodies were strewn everywhere. Almost all the deities that the avatars called upon had already fallen dead. What was going to happen?

"Shutdown by Kali"

Suddenly it was all dead silent. As the Black Monk said, "It would go out with a whisper." When people finally got back into Darkhaven, they found that everything was strangely different. They had new abilities, but had lost some. New deities had arisen, but none could be found. Everyone was confused. Every area that we were used to had been moved. Old directions were thrown out the window. For the first time in years, many of us had to EXPLORE! We found new places and new creatures. It was wonderful!

If you don't find yourself logging into Realms of Despair for your daily MUD fix, you are missing out.

realms.game.org:4000


Eddy!

Just a note about the above post...

The recent changes to RoD are the result of literally thousands of hours of work by a dedicated team of builders and coders over the course of four years.

If you were an old, bored avatar who moved on to other MUDs, now is the time to have your addiction rekindled.

Come and see the evolution of an eight year old MUD...

Enter the Realms of Despair!

Aye, I've played RoD on and off for 5 years. I've never had so much fun as I'm having now. And I've played literally hundreds of MUDs. This is the best I've found.

Hmm, I decided earlier not to reply to this because no one is really interested in my opinion around here, but after reading a few negative reviews about RoD, I decided to post anyways to stop people from burning themselves and hurting RoD as well in the process. So, here's my shot at giving people some basic information about RoD.

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Newbie-unfriendliness
Depending on when you log on, you can encounter the good part of the RoD Newbie Council, or the bad part. There are several people in the NC that truely love to help newbies and the like, heck, even non-NC people sometimes like to help. Notice though, that these people aren't online very often and more often then not, you'll run into NC people who are only in NC as a temporary step up to something else. How to get around this? You can't. All a matter of chance that nothing horrible happens to you as a newbie. If it does, you might be lucky and find helpful people. Or not.

Biased in-game leadership and immortals
This sounds worse then it is really, but unless you are willing to suck up to several imms and come to the annual RoD reunion to prove your "being part" of it all, you simply aren't going to be accepted as a part of the mud later on. Also, you can forget about most guilds and orders in this game as well. I've seen the most stupid and biased people rise up to quite powerfull positions simply because they knew the right people to suck up to. How to get around this? Simple, don't comment on anything while you are there and don't even bother with guilds or orders untill you know a few people in there quite well. Also a word of caution, don't trust the immortals, they are quite untrustworthy.

Your opinion is worth less then you are as a player
Don't ever think anyone cares about you or your opinion on public channels. You can expect to get flamed by the "in" people and punished by imms if you say anything back. No matter how right you (think) you are, you will always bite the dust if the person you're argueing with has an imm friend backing him/her. If people claim computers are made out of taffy, just nod and agree.

Leveling is dull and impossible. At best
Don't expect any fun untill you reach level 50.

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Still though, there are also allot of good things abour RoD. Active players, lots of stuff going on and not every player and immortal is an evil magalomaniac retard bent on conquering your soul. Some are nice to talk to from time to time. Just treat everyone with respect on here, don't get involved with the mud itself too much and have a bit of mudding experience. Even better, come play RoD with a bunch of friends so you can evade the already existing cliques and you're bound to have lots of fun!

It's not that we're not interested in your opinions in general, but just that many of us are tired of hearing your constant rantings about Realms of Despair, and "how badly they treated you". You were banned for harrassing a female player, and then repeatedly (and publically) bad-mouthing several immortals after they warned you to leave her alone. As I told you last time we discussed this issue, that would get you banned from almost any mud (and I'd have serious doubts about playing a mud which didn't). You wouldn't have lasted as long as you did if you'd tried that on any mud I might run.

Your latest post, while better than your comment in March which stated only "Hopefully someone napalmed the RoD server and lined up all players in front of an Iraqi firing squad", is still little more than an attempt to discredit RoD. You need to learn to accept the consequences of your actions. Yes, I know your "reasoning" behind what you did, but can't you see that it was still wrong? And even if such "harrassment" were somehow justified, you need to realise that rules are there for everyone to follow - a mud cannot make exceptions for one person, or they will lose all credibility.

Hmm, you got a point there, although this post isn't aimed against RoD. If you read the last paragraphs, you'll read that I actually do recommed RoD with a few precautions which are very true in my experience and are backed up by several people (big names) I know on the MUD who agree with me that the higher echelons of RoD are rotten to the core. For example, have you ever read m post about ? It's completely accurate except that I purposefully left out one thing: The harrasser is a well-known and loved immortal on RoD who actively tried to set me up against a wonderful girl. I left the immortal bit out because wether she's an imm or not wouldn't make a difference to the situation and most of you people are horribly biased towards imms anyways. The worst thing was, that when I confronted the girl with the fact one immortal was harrassing her, she first gave me two other names who previously harrassed her. That makes three immortals harrassing one player, which all sounds very believable to me. I know two immortals in question are quite capable of being bitter harrassers and the third one was the one who lied to me. That, and I've been the victim of immortal harrassment myself, so yes, I think that this is all very likely to happen to the poor girl.

Anyways, end of rant, I'm getting off topic here into the "emotional dribble" zone. I posted my previous post on here to stop people from taking too lightly of the "ruling class" of RoD. Like I said, RoD itself is a great place to be and you can meet allot of nice people there. I did. The fact I was banned is irrelevant, I generally said the same thing to people I knew online before I got banned and I will untill things start to change. Then again, I'm just a small fish in a big pond, but hey, the same fact didn't stop Napoleon from conquering Europe. (And he was a damned tiny fella!)

The newbie-friendly atmosphere is no less than any other MUD, Ingham. You should take into account the number of newbies we get per day compared to any other MUD and just how much the MUD itself applies itself to the newbies, not just NCers. Adding the newbie council on top of that, plus heal/spell bots, I'd say RoD is almost too newbie friendly, but that's just me.


It is an outright lie to say you can go no where and your opinion means nothing if you don't suck up. I got stabbed, my gender changed 3 times, and renamed by an imm. Would you call that sucking up? Yet I am a very popular guy. And saying you can't trust the immortals is ridiculous. They've always been there when I needed them and all I had to do was ask. Did you ever try that?

The fact is, YOU had a bad experience because of what YOU did and you are still blaming everyone else. Time to get with it.

I've never seen any evidence of corrupt immortals, barring a couple of exceptions - both of whom were deleted after their activities came to light. I have, however, heard of your antics from a number of players, and from what I've heard I find it unsurprising that you were deleted. Violating the rules and repeatedly publically insulting the staff is going to get you banned from most muds - that's not "corruption", it's simply the only way you can keep the mud running smoothly. I happen to know someone who knows the "true" story of your bannings, so I shall post that information as soon as I get a reply.

Realms of Despair is the original Smaug MUD. We have an active Roleplaying community, an active player-killing community, and a very active peaceful community. Players can choose from 13 classes (inluding one deadly-only class) and 13 races. Characters appearances are customizable on creation and we have a vast collection of equipment that is level/gender/class/race specific.

We boast well over 150 original, exclusive areas, with a total of over 20,000 rooms. Mob killing, or "running" is one of our most popular activities, with monster difficulties varying from easy one-player kills to difficult group kills.

We have four deadly-only Clans and many peaceful-only Guilds and Orders for players to join to interact closer with other players. We have two councils which are actively working towards helping players, The Symposium which hears ideas for changes, and the Newbie Council which is always willing to help out new players. Our team of Immortals are always willing to answer any questions and to help out however neccessary.

With a player base of over 20,000 characters, and regularly seeing between 300 and 400 characters online at a time, we're a very popular, incredibly stable MUD, so come try us and you might find not only a fun game, but a fun community too!

reams.game.org:4000

We're number 10 on Top Mud Sites and rising.

Asking for votes has always been pretty relaxed on Realms of Despair. For months we've sat on the top 20 list with little more than one notice asking players to vote for us. Over the past few days, our players have been incredibly enthusiastic and have pushed for votes. We jumped from rank 18 to rank 10 in four days.

Realms of Despair is going nowhere but up. Our 300+ active players per DAY agree and love the MUD, come and join the fun and experience what our current players love.

What does Realms of Despair offer?

* Newbie Friendliness - we have a council of mortals and immortals (the Newbie Council) dedicated to serving new players and helping them with any problem they may need, and a separate area for new players where they can learn the game without the stress of instantly competing with other players. Frequent new players compliment us on our newbie friendliness.

* Variety - 13 classes (including one pkill-only class) and 13 in-game races (lizardmen can no longer be created) with each class having their own set of skills/spells and each race having their own racial abilities means that there's a miriad of possible choices for you to choose from for your character.

* Pkill optional - Play as a deadly player, constantly on the run or terrorising other deadly players, or play as a peaceful and only participtate in pkill when you feel like it. The choice is yours!

* Roleplay optional - Nations are uncoded organisations which every player is a part of, yet can optionally participate in that run frequent roleplay scenes, and Sanctus Irae is our only rp-encorfced selective organisation for those who are more serious about roleplay.

* Organisations - Ever-changing clans for deadly players, class-sspecific guilds and selective/elite orders for peaceful players give you the opportunity to make friends, run major mobs with vast groups of people, or even lead an organisation and run it your way!

* Councils - Three mortal councils exist in Realms of Despair: The Newbie Council which dedicates its time to helping new players in any matter they need, The Symposium which hears ideas for improvements to the game from other players and passes them (ie: players control aspects of how the game develops), and The Pkill Conclave which acts like The Symposium, although strictly for pkill matters only.

* Immortal Councils - Many immortal-only councils operate to help better the game. The Quest Council frequently runs quests for players, rewarded with glory or gold or other prizes, the Herald Assembly maintains an open line of communication with players for questions/comments/suggestions and plans the annual Reunion, a real-life event where hundreds of players gather in Canada for days of partying, and many more, including the Council of Elders which oversees the games operation.

* Immortals - We have a vast, friendly team of Immortals which are hand-picked from the mortal community for their excellence at some aspect of the game. Immortals are always there to hear comments, settle disputes, and even have a sense of humour. I know, it's amazing, we're actually cool people. Send us a tell anytime and we'll actually HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU! Like wow. Of course our higher-level imms might be busy making the game cooler, but most are always willing to hang out and have fun.

I don't know what else I can put here, so I've asked players to post their own thoughts about Realms of Despair. Come try us out! Hope to see you soon!

The appeal of all RPG-like games is the sense of bettering yourself. Levelling up and getting the best eq, even through hours of grueling and utterly dull 'gameplay', is inexplicably perceived as entertainment among a vast number of people. I am one of these people, and I played this mud for about four years.

If you are one of those people who enjoy enduring painfully dull and repetitive mob fights and ludicrously drawn-out and humiliating levelling, then this MUD is a good choice. There is plenty of content to trudge through here, and plenty of players to interact with (for better or for worse).
The immortals are also very friendly, but if you step out of line, remember that there is no Bill of Rights. Their tyrannical creed is law, and they are far from unbiased.

I am not saying you wont have fun here. Like I said, there are many features that many people enjoy. Are you one of them?