[Hades_Kane]

We are proud to announce the opening of our newest mini-game to End of Time... Triple Triad!

Very, very closely inspired by the game of the same name from Final Fantasy VIII, Triple Triad allows you to buy individual cards or booster packs, trade cards with or win cards from other players.

The first "card club" has opened in the basement of the Balamb Hotel, and upon your first visit, you will be given a complimentary starter deck of Triple Triad cards that you can use to play and challenge other players. As the game grows in popularity, other card clubs will begin to spring up the world over!

For those unfamiliar with the game, it is a playable collectible card game played on a 3x3 grid. There are multiple optional rule sets that can be enabled, determining things from optional game rules (from elemental affinity to the cards themselves to combo rules that will turn more than just one card) to different trade rules (all, none, 1 card, random 1 card, etc). Many fans of Final Fantasy VIII will attest to the addictive nature of the game and how many hours they spent playing that part of the game!

Other recent additions include:

-We have expanded and made modifications to our world power and clan structures. Many of the changes have been targeted toward making the clans more recognizable from their game counterparts, while opening up additional room for more clan and roleplay options. Our clans now emcompass three major world powers of Shin-Ra, The Empire, and Guardia (which also encompasses Baron), along with the three rebel clans of AVALANCHE, The Returners and the Mystics. As a result, Castle City Jad has been replaced as a Hometown by the Town of Truce and a few other tweaks have been made to the world map and area levels. There has also been the addition of a non-RP-required clan for adventurers and treasure hunters called the Treasure Hunter's Consortium, so now even if you have no interest in RP, you can still participate in the clans.

-The pace all over the game has been increased, from lowering the amount of exp required to progress, to increasing the ability for players to deal out damage. Some changes in regard to this include: General balance adjustments made to make mobs both harder and quicker to kill; enhancements made to limit breaks to make them more powerful; buff spells can now be "refreshed" instead of waiting to wear off, making for it easier for casters to keep themselves or group members up-to-date on their spells; combat rounds run on a quicker timer, which makes the speed value (and agility) more noticeable point to point; stats like attack, defense and similar are now more directly factored into damage, making it easier to predict and manage what to expect with your character's output; several pulses/timers are now on seconds instead of minutes, including spell affects and healing, which makes things like extremely potent but short lived spell affects possible, and along with a general mana healing buff, makes dungeon crawling and "down time" spent healing go by quicker; we have converted from just a post "wait state" for skill and spell use to a combination cooldown and wait state, which also increases the game pace by allowing more frequent (but varied) skill use and also makes having multiple skills more worthwhile, while also creating some interesting skill stacking and interaction combos between the skills.

-New sets of potions (stronger restorative values) have been added while the costs of the previous have been lowered.

-PK has undergone a handful of changes: players now do 50% damage to one another to make for more exciting and strategic battles; there is now a PK range of 7 levels (the same as our grouping range); there are now two types of PK defined by looting options, default and opt-in. The default allows no corpse looting from either end and the consequences of a PK death are lessened. The opt-in allows for full corpse looting, but both players must have opted in, in order for the looting to be unlocked. Non consensual PK is still restricted by valid RP reason, however.

Many more changes have happened in the last 6 months and the playerbase is on a very noticeable uptick. Now is the perfect time to jump on board!

You can connect to End of Time through host eotmud.com and port 4000.

More infomation on the game can be found at:









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TL;DR Version: End of Time is a Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Chrono Cross based ROM MUD that doesn't require previous knowledge of Final Fantasy to enjoy and understand. We boast numerous unique features including a deep magic and combat system, team attacks, an ANSI world map, racial templates including Vampires and Werewolves, detailed character creation, Chocobo Training and Racing, the Triple Triad minigame from FF8 and much more! We currently have over 136 areas open and ready for exploration. The game has been in development for YEARS and only recently been opened. With much to do and plenty of spots that need filled, this is a perfect time to jump on board!


Full Version:
End of Time is a Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross based MUD with some influence from the Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu series. It was built ontop of the ROM Codebase, but has progressed far beyond anything resembling stock.

While we are a 'themed' MUD, previous experience with Final Fantasy or Chrono is NOT necessary to play, enjoy, and understand the game. Our areas, races, and classes are based on the worlds in our theme, but woven together for an original, if not "inspired by" experience.

We boast numerous ORIGINAL features UNIQUE to our game. Some of these include the ability to create custom skills known as "limit breaks" whose usage bar increases under circumstances YOU decide, with affects and messaging decided by YOU. Our magic system has seen a complete rewrite, with the ability to modify, retarget, cancel, combine and other things to
spells while they are being cast. Our combat system, while round based, has been broken out of the traditional timed rounds and its timing is based on your stats. You can buy, trade, win, or lose in our full featured Triple Triad mini game inspired by the one from Final Fantasy VIII. We also have a system for Chocobo Riding, Racing and training!

Our game offers several other features, including random battles in the vein of console RPGs, team attacks that groups can perform in the vein of the Chrono series (known as dual and triple techs), elemental alignments for players and rooms, experience points for skill use, class promotion that allows you to pick the class direction your character will progress through, detailed character customization that allows you to set what your character looks like in creation, racial templates that "overlay" your current race (includes Vampires, Werewolves, Undead/Unsent) and much more!

Our world has areas mostly based out of Final Fantasy and the Chrono series, but are arranged and developed in a way that is original to our game. Familiarity with the games is not necessary, or in some respects even helpful, so there is NO entry level barrier to people not familiar with the theme. For those who aren't, you can expect a predominately Fantasy setting, with elements of low technology, mythological elements, and political intrigue all mixed together. Indeed, any "events" from any of the games comprising our history date back at least 30 years prior to the current in-game timeline, and so most of the story and roleplay will have little to do with events from the game; they are simply backstory. There are NO PC versions of characters from the games to contend with, as we are driving for originality in our stories, just in the themed setting we have crafted. At of this post, there are over 136 areas completed and accessible as well. The world and clan systems are all setup for a large playerbase, which we hope to someday achieve.

We have been development for literally YEARS, with elements of the story and roleplay dating back two MUDs and 12 years prior. A lot of time and work has gone into crafting a completely non-stock world, with tons of things in the code re-written from scratch or very heavily modified. I am hoping to draw in some players to start filling in key immortal and player roles. Leaders for the 3 major government clans have been filled, but otherwise many of the top positions within them are open while the recent addition of three smaller, rebel clans provide even more opportunity for leadership positions to be taken. We also have a non-rp clan for Adventurers and Treasure Hunters called the Treasure Hunter's Consortium, so those with no interest in RP can still participate in the clan system. There is a very small immortal staff now, with plenty of room for more. This is a really well crafted game whose potential now rests in the hands of the players and with a solid playerbase, I have little doubt it will soar to great heights.

[Hades_Kane]

[Hades_Kane]

[dark acacia]

This looks truly interesting!

I don't understand why people seem to prefer the card game from FF8 over FF9, though.

[Hades_Kane]

I appreciate it!

I couldn't get into the FF9 card game myself. Maybe it's because I spent way more hours playing Triple Triad than I may care to admit, but after loving TT as much as I did (I even collected the cards RL), 9's felt like a pale imitation to me. I tried to get into it, I just couldn't...

9 is probably my second least favorite of the series I've played, though, so that could be affecting my opinion on it overall, too.

[dark acacia]

I don't remember enough about either card game, but I remember finding the one in FF9 more fun.

Now I want to play FF9 again. It was my favorite of the PSX trilogy (excluding FFT, which I also loved).

[dark acacia]

I tried it out and so far it seems pretty run-of-the-mill as far as standard combat goes. It's another one of those train/practice games, but with a Final Fantasy feel to it. I guess RP is encouraged, but the community seems to be too small for anything serious.

[Hades_Kane]

Wow, way to deeply misrepresent and boil your comments down to something so simple

Short of something Godwars II level, you're unlikely to find a game, especially from the Diku branch, whose combat has as much depth, strategy, and things to do in it as End of Time does, and especially when you consider the myriad elements that makes the combat anything but run of the mill, from the multiple angles even the most basic forms of combat have multiple tools of their disposal (even excluding class skills), to the endlessly intricate and strategic facets of the magic system (from the casting itself, to the elemental system, to all of the strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited), to the various ways in which group members can interact to accomplish goals (including skills designed specifically for playing off one another, to the dual/triple/quadruple etc. techs that can be discovered and performed).

Of course, if someone were to quickly breeze into the game or was generally uninterested in exploring the depth the combat system has to offer, it could possibly be misconstrued as "run of the mill" or "standard" combat. End of Time carries with it enough of a learning curve as is, there are various elements about the game, intentionally so, that can be played by only scratching the surface. You can enter combat and forgo things like assault, tension, attack, defend, using your limit breaks, ignoring the enemies' weaknesses and modifying the room's elemental fields, you can use skills with reckless abandon without considering and planning out the balance between the cooldown for the skill and the associated wait times, without ever even noticing the techs that can be performed, or without ever modifying a spell, or stacking them, or combining them into vastly more powerful affects. You can sit in one spot and "bash" ad nauseam or cast a spell and sit back and watch it fire just like on other Diku branched MUDs. You can fight in a group and ignore the fact that you have specialized skills for guarding your Mage who should probably be fighting from the back row to minimize their threat level to the NPC and the damage they take. You can neglect pretty much every aspect of the additional and "optional" aspects of combat, but you are missing out on being a much more effective player of the game.

The tools are there, and there are many, but it's up to the player to use them or not. Generally easing someone new to the game into all it has to offer tends to work a bit better than slamming them or forcing them to basically relearn how to play something. And besides, that's what our multi-pronged, optional Newbie School is designed to do, for those that don't decide to skip it and consequently miss out on early advantages of a lot of this type of thing the game has.

Our skill system also has far more to offer than just a "train/practice" game. Far removed from our Diku roots, we have no effective stat cap. You could pour every bit of AP you get into a single stat and you won't ever "max out" to the 255 cap. Aside from having no need for a "trainer" to increase your stats, we also have no "guildmaster" type of mobs like your typical "train/practice" game. You won't go to a single mob to learn everything, nor will you find the same requirements to learn a skill. There are dozens upon dozens of teachers scattered throughout the game. If you are a Knight trying to find that Power Break skill, it could be on that Elios, the Wandering Knight in the town of Karnak, or it could be over in Mysidia, a reward given to you tasked for solving the Orc problem deep in the caverns of the nearby mountains. You may find it in a hollowed tree in Macalania Forest, but the ease of the task of learning it from the guy who lives in that tree may come at a cost of money or only learning it to a lower proficiency than if you quested for the other guy. As a result, a more invested player, seeking the nooks and crannies of the game, will find things, including skills, that the more casual player may not. You can't take for granted you just find a teacher mob and BAM, everything you'll ever need to pick up as a skill is waiting for you. Aside from all of this, since so many skills do require AP, since there is no effective stat cap, and since every point of every stat matters and counts for something, this makes AP far more valuable and definitely worth more than your typical "trains and pracs" on other games. You won't find yourself maxing stats by level 10 and then having a ton of throw away skill points after the fact on EoT.

And that's just for the skills that require being taught. Many are class default, which of course are learned automatically upon a certain level. But plenty of others can only be unlocked after mastering other skills. That fireball spell you learned as a Red elemental aligned Knight is nice, but once you max that spell, you'll automatically learn combustion at a higher than mid level of proficiency. And as a Knight, after maxing fireball, you also gain access to the flame sabre spell, yet another way to take advantage of elemental strengths and weaknesses presented throughout the game, both for yourself and your group members. Did you pick up Tremor as well, being a secondary green element? Well, you can learn "magma splash" automatically after you master tremor along with fireball, as both are allied elements. Of course, this doesn't touch on actually combining a casting of tremor and fireball to create magma splash if you don't have the spells mastered yet. This isn't even to mention the most powerful spells in the game, beauties such as Meteor, Comet, X-Zone, etc., can only be cast by discovering and casting their secret combinations. There are even spell and skill trees that are unlocked by mastering the necessary prerequisites. This isn't limited to just spells, either. Thieves, upon mastering skills like sneak and backstab, can unlock skills such as shadow step. Fighters don't have to go all over the place to find their blitzes... spend a bit more than normal AP on picking up the blitz base ability, and the rest of your blitz techniques are learned automatically upon reaching the required level. This isn't the only "skill set" available in the game. This is even it's own method of progression, as skill usage and especially improvement, bonus experience. Many players get a significant chunk of their experience from their skill training, and there are plenty of players who have taken a bit of a focus on skill training over gaining levels, and managing to unlock quite a number of powerful abilities at lower levels than many of their peers.

As far as the community size? For a game basically just getting started in trying to build that sort of thing, especially doing this in 2014, I think being able to log on and see nearly a dozen people connected at various points in the day (and it not JUST being the same handful of players in and out) isn't doing too bad. You compare our numbers using a site like Mudstats and we hang pretty close to the other games in the Final Fantasy theme, too, games that have been around and establishing their communities for far longer.

We have a very strong, very unique game to offer players, and as we are really just beginning to build a core playerbase and community, I have little doubt that we will have great success in building a strong playerbase.

[dark acacia]

Oh, I'm still playing there.

Most train/practice MUDs I've seen do their own unique spin on the system, but it's still more or less the same thing.

There is a train NPC right in the middle of the newbie area, and giving one skill to one or two teacher NPCs is pretty much the same as everywhere else, except that they're all scattered around somewhere to increase the timesink potential instead of in a few logical places.

[Ssolvarain]

I'm assuming you're an expert on these.... what did you call them..."train/practice MUDs"?