Wasn't sure where to put it, but it may affect many administrators.

As most of you know, Achaea has been trying to pass itself off as the #1 MUD in the world for some time now, and as a shock to many people, overnight in the lists they have not only beaten my MUD, a first (and mine is only in alpha, with a player base of about 5), but everyone elses as well, including Medievia's constant online playerbase of, 500+ is it? 600+? not sure exactly.

In any event, just so the rest of the mudding community doesn't think that Achaea has grown overnight or added something spectacular, or changed ownership, their latest attempt is simple: bribery.

After making false claims, false quotes, and many other false things, this is the next step in the series that once again sets Achaea at the top of the laughing stock of the mudding community.

They have they're website scripted so that when one of their players, whois is online, clicks on the vote link, the website searched the playerlists, finds a matching IP and gives the player a 10% experience bonus for gaining xp, and a 10% cut in loss of xp for dying.

I'm not sure if this is ethical or not, but I just thought I'd give everyone a heads up.

In defense of Achaea, it is a very well written piece of code, and I have nothing against the programming, but it is backed by one of the most corruptable staff the mudding community has yet to see.

James Meyer
aka Aldyn, Creator and Founder of Aeledius

Synozeer banned Medievia from the listings, after it was proven that they were violating the Diku license. However there are indeed several other muds with "large" playerbases. I'd be interested to hear what the official take is on such a script - because if it's allowed, I can see a lot of other muds following suit.

My mistake, I wasn't aware Medievia had been banned. I had heard much talk of it, but wasn't sure if it was ever followed up.

Congratulations on that point.

And yes, it is not a very hard script to create. I was thinking about employing such a script myself a while ago just because I was curious as to whether it was mostly players or non-players visiting my site.

Personally I find it bad ethical practice, but that is what I have come to expect from Achaea's governing staff.

Aldyn, Creator and Founder of Aeledius

It seems a little sleazy, but there also doesn't seem to be a rule against it.

Heya all,

I think it smells a tiny bit, on the other side as an objective and distrusting mudder (yes, I think I am), I'd say it's strange they need to promote their mud like that, and apparently that's their way of xp-ing, *shrug* don't see much challenge in that, nor do I see a rp reason for it (I voted on a website in the outerworld and I gained 10k xp in this fictional world?!?).

But that's just me...

Dre

You know, I play RoD as well and because I know you on RoD as well, I'll just give you a Funny Look(tm) instead of wondering wether you really play RoD if you got such an image of the current immortals/staff...

Big deal. RoD has bots constantly spamming a vote link. No one cares.

Frankly, Achaea is the most newb-friendly MUD I've ever played, and the system is quite a bit of fun (not playing it right now, but I'm not playing anything else...)

GenmaC, you cannot "spam" the votes. Even if you set it up to remove the cookies each time, Synozeer would quickly see that all the votes were coming from the same IP address and remove them (and if a mud kept repeating the process, I suspect they'd have their entry removed).

I'd like to know if the experience gain that people are said to get for voting to Achaea can be confirmed. If this is true it certainly is slimly. Since there is no message board or news on the site relating to this topic it's a bit hard to find out for sure. Is there an offical word on this subject that i could find anywhere?

Also i've heard that the quotes on the site are bogus. "The only MUD that still matters" -RPGplanet.com for an example. I, personally was having problems finding ANY meantion of Achaea at RPGplanet.com. That being the case, I find it hard to believe that it was thought to be the only MUD that "still matters."

What i've heard is that the quote did in fact come from RPGplanet.com, but as a "player review". No one who works for RPGplanet.com said that. To me, that seems pretty misleading.

If anyone knows the offical stance on this topic, please share.

I realize the thread has gone off tangent, but the idea that rewarding players for voting is evil has me curious. Haing just read through the terms of service I didnt notice anything about rules to encourage voting.  Running scripts that spam the count is brought up, as it should be, but why does anyone care how i entice people to vote for the my site.  Its seems as though you are complaining about people using a system the way it is setup.

Pretty much everyone with any kind of common sense realizes that the list isnt based on the "best" mud but instead on the most populated.  It seems to reflect that pretty well.  Who cares if they reward exp, titles, or whatever.  If I reward players who frequent XXX sites will everyone get upset because im giving in game rewards for ooc activities?  I run a pay-to-paly game and I offer a free month for referrals is that an unethical way to promote my game?

Provided that the new tops of the list are not encouraging the players to cheat the current system through scripts or whatnot ( or doing it themselves) I don't really see the reason everyone is so upset by it.  We are getting exactly what the system promotes.

Anyone who has an account there can confirm it.  Every few minutes, if you haven't voted for them that day, it sends you this messing within the MUD:

[Tip]: Did you know that you could be getting a 10% bonus to your experience gain? Read HELP BLESSING for more info.

Contents of HELP BLESSING:

The blessing will give you a 10% bonus to all xp you gain, and reduce any xp you lose from death by 10%. They all wear off at midnight GMT with the Orphean Serenade, but you can easily get one again.

All you have to do is:
1. Go to
2. Click on the 'Vote for Achaea as #1 MUD' button.
3. Click on the 'Click Here To Enter' box.

That's it! Any character online from the same internet address (more formally called an IP address) will receive the blessing within a minute or so. The blessing will last until midnight GMT, at which point you simply vote again to
get the blessing again. We appreciate you doing this for us, and the blessing is our thank you. Thanks!

INFO: We know that some people are unable to get the blessing even though they have voted. This is a result of your ISP (often AOL) forcing you to use a web proxy. Most of the problems can be fixed if you're an AOL users by simply using a browser different from the AOL one. For instance, a standard Internet Explorer installation will work fine.

There are bots that sit there and say "Vote for RoD on topmudsites!" and then list the link to do so. I only played for a couple of days (99% of which I spent in hell, for *gasp* PK, the most deadly of sins).

In other words, big deal.

And frankly, the voting system is skewed toward high player numbers.

In my opinion, the review system is far more broken and should be fixed - there are system uptime/downtime notices posted as reviews, for crap's sake!

Well i kind of agree with you on the "p2p" muds are evil thing. The only reason I stayed in Achaea long enough to become attached to it is that you don't HAVE to pay.

You're entitled to your opinion on the matter...like I said, I won't argue it's not sleazy. I'm just making sure any judgements people make are based on facts...

And I'm not accusing anyone in particular, but there seemed to be a thread of achaea-bashing and calling the admins liars and complete jerks based on...well, I don't know what.

Rhaky