[nasredin]

Hi,

ArcticMUD was and remains THE only MUD for me. We are traditionally proud of the huge and well-developed world, unique classes with unique spells and skills, unrestricted PK and coded clans. Arctic is on-line from 1992,
we're not some unstable beta or one of the "new great MUD projects... unfortunately, not open for public yet..."
Our code is stable, tested and fully functional with the new features added regularly, but one at a time.

These days, we usually have 25-50 players on-line. We would like to double those numbers (thus my post here).

Our world is based on Krynn from Dragonlance books. To tell the truth, I started playing ArcticMUD being introduced to it by a friend (10+ years ago), and then decided to read the novels to learn more about Krynn. And know what? I was disappointed. The books were nowhere near as elaborated and exciting as the adventures in Arctic.

In fact, some of the best areas in the game were based on Dragonlance in general and didn't have direct prototypes in the books. The only place to learn the story of the feud between the Aurinites Order and the Gargoyle Clan, the role of the 3 witches and the sacrifice of their father is ArcticMUD. I wish the builder of the area publishes it as a book one day...


What I particularly like about Arctic is that there is something for everyone. Certain players may show more interest in this or that aspect of the game (e.g. in explore or in pkill), and they will find a lot of opportunities to do exactly that. On the other hand, Arctic is not just a sum of those activities - they exist to support and supplement each other in many complicated and well-balanced ways.


One of the greatest features of Arctic is restricted game information. In many MUDs, once a zone is explored, there is no more mystery about it. In Arctic, knowledge is power and the players are reluctant to share the location of treasure vaults and dragon lairs, let alone to reveal the traps and obstacles that block the way. All good equipment is limited and all the powerful spellbooks and druid tablets are quite rare, the less people know where they load the better are your chances to have the bunge of them. Thus, one never runs out of new challenges and of new zones to explore, and even our largest and most powerful clans don't know all the quests in the game.

If you ever read a book about a wizard who completed a difficult quest and finally got a powerful ancient artifact that no one else in the entire world had, you may have wondered what that wizard actually felt at that moment. Seek no further! Hundreds of Arctic quests with unique, powerful rewards wait for you!


I'm an explorer type and thus it was natural for me to praise the elaborate world design, the sophisticated quests and the quality of zone layout. However, the majority - if not the vast majority - of Arctic players would name unrestricted pkill as our greatest asset.

We do not have a special pkill arena - the entire world is the site of battle. Have you found a room with a nasty special or a mobile that doesn't like unexpected visitors? Lure your opponents to the location and see them defeated!

We do not have opt-in or level restricted pkill. Have that little bastard said some obscenity about your mom? Aim the fireball and toast the miscreant!

A big part of our PvP is related to the feud between the big clans that lasts for months and years. However, that's not the only option. Do you feel powerful and agressive? Does a player that you see resting by the crossroads have a shining sword that should righfully belong to you? Do you simply dislike their name or the way they looked at you? Draw you sword and attack! Just make sure your survive the retaliatory strike then :--P

On top of that, we have PK tournaments where the greatest among our great pkillers prove their worth. The last tournament was on November 9, 2008. Here is the log of one of the final battles (team contest, 5x5 format) on our pkill site:



Arctic is not roleplay-intensive. An interesting thing that I noticed was the fact that there is very little roleplay In Character, but more of it in Out of Character channels. When doing a hack-n-slash zone with groups of cunning AI-controlled mobiles that heal, rescue and assist each other, there is little time for storytelling. But then, "a good computer game is the one that can be played without a computer". When a player feels imaginative, they express it later on one of the game boards. Or become a zone builder :--)

Our playerbase is really international. Aside from the English-speaking world, we have Finns, Greeks, Russians (I'm a Russian btw), Danes, Germans, Chineese, Egyptians etc., all having their distinctive playing styles and habits. Once again, ArcticMUD has something for anyone.


Well, this post is already too long. Hope you found it not too boring. See you in ArcticMUD!