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Old 05-18-2014, 06:53 AM   #5
Thayet
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Join Date: Dec 2013
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Re: Unwritten Legends!

Continuing...

With one or two exceptions, UL's races are fairly stock fantasy, and its cultures are not purely original creations but are direct analogues of various real-life cultures. This simplifies creating a more in-depth picture of a character's culture and homeland because you can just look up what that culture was like in real life and incorporate elements of it as you see fit, and obviously what you can find in a history book is going to be way more detailed (and often more interesting) than what even the most prolific fantasy writer will come up with. However, it's also pretty lazy, and a little racist in places when you realize that non-white/western cultures have been flattened, whitewashed, or heavily stereotyped; the "gypsy" trope is alive and well and the various cultural groups of Africa has been merged into one big homogenized mass, for example.

The main area of the game is Britain, specifically York circa 1700s. There is also an accessible Japan/Nagasaki analogue (and several races native to it) written by people who were clearly huge fans of anime; two of the races can actually have pink or blue hair. These are currently the only accessible places in the game, though your character can be from anywhere in the game world. They just can't actually go there.

The main game area's religions/gods are honestly pretty flat, and since they figure into a lot of the large plots that happen this can be frustrating. Fortunately, this is made up for by a number of PCs who have done pretty great things with the scant options available.

Almost every single PC in the game is a magic user owing to the fact that most of the classes use magic and event/roleplaying options for non-magic users can often feel extremely lacking, as most staff-run events are distinctly supernatural/magic oriented. The magic system in general is...okay. I wouldn't say there's really anything special about it but it's not bad or anything.

IC romantic relationships are a thing with a few married couples existing, and cybersex happens as well, but is limited to happening in locked rooms per policy. I call this neutral because while I'm not personally into that, some people are, so do whatever tickles your pickle as long as no one else has to see it. If you're after that you will absolutely find people willing to indulge you. If you're not, there's plenty that goes on besides textsex. If you're okay with relationships but not cybering, there are people who are fine with that too.

For downsides...the single biggest problem is that the population is pretty anemic. The application thing probably contributes to this, but part of it is that there's just not a whole lot to do past a certain point, especially if there isn't an event going on. I'd say it varies on average from 10-25 people during peak evening hours, and people are frequently kind of off doing their own thing. It rarely reaches 30 players, but things do peak more when there are events actively taking place.

There is nearly no development at the moment for classes past level ~20. There used to be, but the classes were all gutted, everyone's levels reset, and everything is now in the process of undergoing complete restructuring and recoding. There have been classes with few to none of their key abilities finished for years now, though all classes are at a minimum playable. That said, the classes that ARE developed are fairly well done, but that development still stops at a very low level.

Non-combat options for advancement technically exist but are frankly kind of bad. The best option, fishing, requires you to be good at combat anyway because it's possible to pull up a mob that will automatically flex to your level and assume you have combat skills to match, which will murder you quickly if you don't. The other options -- foraging, metallurgy, alchemy, locksmithing -- grant vanishingly little experience and aren't really viable methods of advancement. Since you need to level to access your abilities, that leaves combat.

Crafting skills exist but there are almost no actual crafting systems implemented yet and what exists is extremely bare-bones, nor are they slated for development any time soon because classes come first. This contributes to there being very little to do.

The end result of the previous three things means what you will spend most of your non-scene/RP time doing is combat. And since combat is very simple, that can get very boring. You can continue leveling past the point where you continue getting new goodies for it, but there's nothing really waiting for you at the end of the rainbow except more rainbow. Which is great if you like rainbows.

The application is horrible and despite protests is not going anywhere. Old players and staff alike insist it acts as quality control; I and others believe this is ridiculous. I'll say don't let it discourage you, but I'm aware the entire concept of filling out an application so you can pretend to be a text elf is a little offensive. C'est la vie.

Staff are all volunteers and they're not immune to all the staff problems that plague every other MUD on the planet. People will vanish, projects get forgotten, people have bad days, people play favorites. This isn't really a unique thing to UL in the slightest, but neither is UL magically above any of this either. There have been one or two big dramas in the history of the MUD and the most recent one was responsible for driving away a good quarter of the active players at the time. Neither side will admit fault to this day, and as a new player it frankly feels like a frustrating specter hanging over the game that continues to color quite a lot of staff and player decisions, policies, and interactions.

Events (often called IA for "interaction") appear to frequently just grind to a halt after some fairly steady pacing and wind-up, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. That said, when there is stuff going on it's usually pretty good, but there is a trend of events having a very strong start and buildup then really petering off, either dying completely or puttering into an unsatisfying, railroad-y ending after a long pause. I suspect this is because there is actually a dearth of IA GMs, with the result that the bulk of the events heavy lifting ends up being handled by one or two people who, understandably, get burned out or busy or just plain run into situations they don't know how to respond to. That said, the most recently concluded event took an entirely different approach and seems to have been wildly successful, so perhaps that's a herald of things to come.

Like most established games, UL has an old guard, and it can be challenging to break into things if you don't have an "in" or you don't get lucky. Fortunately, if you're willing to play along and be buddies with their characters you can probably assimilate with one of the established groups, and there are a handful of PCs who seem to go out of their way to draw new players into stuff going on, but if you resist the cliques you're kind of on your own. If you actually manage to get on their bad side, your recourses become slim to nonexistent even if their characters harm or kill yours, nevermind IA involvement; because the justice system is largely PC-run with little staff oversight, those with significant staff-appointed positions have a considerable edge in conflicts, and this is by design.

Related, it is very hard to play a criminal of any kind if you aren't "in." The small population contributes a lot to this...plus there just isn't a lot of support for it if you aren't willing to go through one or two specific people. If you want to play a shady underworld type your work will be cut out for you. Basically, expect to fail. If you're okay with that, go for it.

Factions exist as they do in every game, and these factions frequently divide people OOCly as well as ICly; this means backbiting and gossip and plotting in IMs and other OOC venues. It can be very difficult to tell ahead of time which players are like this. My advice would be to not give your OOC contact information to anyone to be honest, and just immerse yourself in the game as-is. If you absolutely need to make OOC arrangements for something (a pre-planned event for example), use the forums or OOC whispers in-game.

Finally...you'll notice if you check their forums that among the stickied posts are ones concerning sexual scenario and sexual assault roleplay and the policies governing it. This is because UL has a history of problems with players involved in these things. In the relatively short time I have played this has come up several times that I'm personally aware of and I say players because there is more than one. I'm aware this is by far the most damning thing on this list, though that isn't to say it's something that comes up with great frequency.


All this said, I wouldn't still be playing UL if I didn't feel like the good outweighed the bad. I do believe the game is worth a shot and that the bulk of the active community is amazing to middling talent. I've really enjoyed the game, it's a good game with a lot of good people in it and I'd really love to see more people come and make it even better. I'm posting this so people can really make an informed choice about whether the game and the community are going to be a fit for them, because I feel like the best way of attracting long-term players is with honesty over glowing solicitations followed by unpleasant surprises. Everyone says their MUD is the best, after all... UL ain't perfect, but it's got some neat stuff going for it.

I reiterate that UL has given me some of the best roleplayed scenes and most interesting character interactions I've ever had in over ten years of MU*ing. That's what I'm looking for in a MU*, and that's what I've found here. Sooo...maybe come give it a shot.

Last edited by Thayet : 05-18-2014 at 08:57 AM. Reason: typoz
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