On the occasions when I want to kill some time by messing around on a hack and slash, I want a few things:
1) Interesting races and classes that are well fleshed out. It's frustrating when there's thirty races but half the abilities are "still in development" when you check the helpfile.
2) I don't want to be dependent on other players to get myself leveled. I should be able to find enough newbie areas around the base city to move myself up and start exploring the levels as well as new areas. I shouldn't have to be a long-time player just to be able to get started.
3) No crappy stock areas, with one line descriptions like "A wierd monster is here and he is scarred of you!" I do like some entertaining text. By the same token, the description -should- warn me not to step into that death trap, because dying over and over to the scarred monster is no fun.
4) Although this may sound like it's contradicting #2 - newbie friendly players are nice, but mainly I don't like the places where the higher levels go out of their way to kill newbies or grief them (Dark Castle would be a great example of points 1, 2, and 3, but it's just too frustrating to play there because people constantly mess with you.) But a lot of people findpkill the main allure of a MUD, so opinions will vary there.
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