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Old 10-05-2007, 06:45 AM   #6
KaVir
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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Re: Help me find a mud that suits me

God Wars II covers all of your requirements and preferences.

godwars2.com 3000

There's quite a steep learning curve though - in particular, the coordinate-based (roomless) movement and the manual combat system are very different to what most players are used to, and if you'd rather stick with something familiar you won't enjoy this mud.

If you do fancy giving it a go, I'd suggest having a look over the newbie guide first:

To address the requirements and preferences:

A decent playerbase. It doesn't have to be like Aardwolf, but if the playerbase is so low that it causes problems in the game, it's not for me.

As of writing this, the average playerbase is 28.06, calculated over the current 256 hours and 18 minutes uptime. The peak during that time was 45 players. The game focuses on solo play, so it doesn't need a huge playerbase to be fun.

A good playerkiller system. Free-for-all is fine with me as long as it's backed up by cool code.

Combat is the main focus of the mud, using a unique system I've spent several years designing and developing (I even created a separate codebase specifically to test the prototype of the combat system). PK is unrestricted after classing.

Something to do for new players. I once found a mud that seemed perfect apart from the fact that everybody was max level with the best possible equipment, leaving the (very rare) new players to basically solo themselves all the way up to a point where they weren't ignored by the rest of the playerbase.

There's plenty of stuff for new players to do. You've got the practice grounds and the prison where you can learn the combat system, the dojo where you fight your way through nine martial artists of increasing difficulty, the black knight's tower, six dungeon quests, plus the classing dungeons. Once you class, you get additional quests as well as exploration rewards.

Right now there's a lack of mid-game quests, and not much for players to do once they've maxed out (other than PK). That's what I'm currently working on addressing - but new players at least have plenty to do.

I really dislike muds where you have to wait ages before accessing features, so a lot of things can be done right from the start. For example, each player begins with their own home plane which they can terraform as they see fit, as well as 10 stores (each of which can hold up to 25 items). There's also the 'Great War', a minigame that starts every 6 hours, in which all players are on equal footing - meaning you can log on as a brand new character, join the war, and beat people who have been playing for thousands of hours.

As little as possible of: staff favoritism, elitist attitude, immature playerbase, griefers.

There are no real rules, and some of the players have quite large egos, but they're mostly a fairly nice and helpful bunch as long as you're not rude to them, and as long as you're willing to make an effort (they don't suffer fools gladly).

In the past there were problems with a few of the players discussing some very tasteless topics on the chat channel. In response, I created another channel (off by default) and asked the individuals to take their less-tasteful discussions there. This has worked reasonably well, but you'll still encounter topics on chat that some might find offensive.

I've also had trouble with griefer PKers, but have implemented measures to greatly reduce it - plus if they're much stronger than you, the only thing you'll lose is a little pride.

Must be completely free to play, with no in-game benefits for "donations".

It is completely free. We don't accept donations. Not even beer.

NOT roleplay enforced. I play on an RPI when I want that, I'm just looking for a hack'n'slash mud on the side.

The mud is specifically non-RP, although it includes the same sort of thematic detail that I'd include were I creating an RP mud.

A reasonable selection of class and race choices. By reasonable I mean more than one or two, but less than thirty. Few things deter me more than a screen full of race options where they only differ by name and two stat points.

No races, 5 classes (vampire, werewolf, mage, demon and dragon) - but each class can be played in many different ways. For example, dragons can choose between human form, draconian form and dragon form. A dragon who selected dragon form could then choose from various colours, pedigrees and breeds. They could then pick to be either land, sea or sky-based, choose to either wear barding or collect a treasure hoard, select between rage-oriented bonuses or having a calm and focused mind, focus on physical combat using their jaws, claws, breath, wings and tail, or play as a spellcaster using draconic spell sigils, etc, etc.

There's lots of class options, but you can't pick more than a handful of them, and many are mutually exclusive. Fortunately you can freely redesign your character, completely changing everything except your name and class, so you don't have to worry about making a bad choice and then suffering for it forever after.

Moderate progression difficulty. I don't want to reach max level in 3 days, but I don't want to spend 2 years doing it either. Same goes for equipment.

Most players need around 10-20 hours to class their first character (it tends to take around 4-5 hours the second time around, once you know how to play, as player skills play quite an important role).

After classing, advancement will depend on how often you play - the game strongly rewards casual play (i.e., a couple of hours per day). I think you could do it in 6 months, but most players don't go flat-out so it's hard to tell (the best example I can think of is one player who's advanced 75% of the way in a little under 2 months - but it gets slower to advance as you get more powerful, so it's difficult to extrapolate).

Medieval fantasy setting prefered, although I'm open to trying other themes if the game is good.

Dark fantasy - much like medieval fantasy, but the players are supernatural beings and monsters of horror.
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