[Oliver]

Let me introduce myself, first of all. My name is Oliver. I work on a MUD called Visions of Conflict (we like to abbreviate to VoC, as per usual MUD three-letter-acronym standards) along with several other people. I serve in the capacity of Coder/Occasional Builder/General Admin. In the past couple months, we've been working to develop the coded infrastructure of our game and we've decided it's time to try to recruit some more members to our team.

This post is probably getting boring already, so I'll move on to the good stuff: why you should work with us. Our project originated because every member of it is a long-time MUDder who has been relatively dissatisfied with the MUDs that we've played in our lives. While we're very capable of realizing what awesome features they've had, often-times the negative features outweigh the good ones. With this in mind, we decided that the only acceptable alternative was to create our own game. Our MUD will be heavily roleplay-enforced, but we're very keen not to allow our game to experience the negative side effects of that paradigm. Allow me to list a few of the neatest features our MUD has/will have/will not have.

Mechanics-Specific:
- Fifteen completely original classes, several of which have very neat mechanics and flavor. There is a strong balance between casting and melee classes.
- A system wherein players can learn a finite number of (generally quest-specific) abilities outside of their class called "prestige abilities."
- A redone, practiceless skill system where each skill/spell has a rating between 0 and 25.
- A redone, intuitive, and EXP-less levelling system based off cumulative skill ratings (rather than EXP) to ameloriate the repetetive hack and slashing of EXP-levelling (and better simulate actual character progression).
- No permdeath. We think this is bad because permdeath inevitably ends up in people being afraid to die. When people are afraid to die, they're afraid to kill. When no one is in danger of being killed, IC death becomes a joke.
- An innovative death system that incorporates roleplay and other players when a PC is killed.
- No pre-creation Staff Approval of players. Waiting to be approved is boring and we know this.

Roleplay-Specific:
- A completely original world and world-lore.
- A dynamic introduction system in which you can introduce yourself as whatever you want, or remember players as anything you want.
- An intuitive, perspective-specific emote command that supports targeting of multiple specific players or objects.
- Five major (and several minor) cities, each with detailed culture and their own coded, completely player-run governmental organizations.

Of the above, only the class coding and world-building are not yet complete, though both have begun and are actively being developed.

While we know that every facet of our game is not unique (and I have not advertised our game as the Hottest New MUD), with the combination of ideas, implementation, and (possibly most crucially) help from a cohesive team of developers and players, we're confident that it will evolve to become something that is different from every other MUD.

If you are interested in becoming involved with the project, please-- contact us. It's very likely that we can find something you can help with, whether it be coding, building, web design, conceptualization, et cetera. We would love to let you use any of the skills you possess to positively impact our game.

If you're interested, log on at omen.genesismuds.com, port 6010. You can view "help updates" and "help old_updates_2" if you would like to see a public changelog. If you would rather talk over an IM client, I can be reached over AIM at Carrillo129 over MSN at , or you can email the entire development team at . Thanks for the time you took to read this.