[Abel_SH]

Hi all,

I'm one of the imms currently operating StormHunters, and we've been making heavy modifications to our Ack!Mud4.2 codebase since 2005. We often make a number of changes based on the requests of our playerbase, and have a fairly strong base of veterans to complement the newer players.

I'll toss up our canned description here, simply because people read bullet lists more than walls of text If you have any questions about the MUD or anything I've written here, please feel free to reply, PM me or hop on the MUD to chat. There are usually a few people around regardless of time of day, but I'm EST so I'm around more in the evenings for my time zone.

Address: sh.ackmud.net 7000
Website: stormhunters.ackmud.net

[Ide]

I'm not trolling here but just genuinely curious -- is there storm hunting in your mud?

[Abel_SH]

Haha, there is not The name was chosen by earlier staff, and we've just stuck with it since.

[plamzi]

After reading this post, I almost finished creating a char in StormHunters, but was turned off by a hostile player. If you guys are serious about trying to attract fresh blood, one thing you may consider is moderating your public channels better. The first 5 min. in a newbie's visit are crucial.

[Abel_SH]

Sorry about that, Plamzi. In general, our players are friendly and helpful to new players... that particular one has been reminded of our (very) limited set of rules, and been warned of the consequences for continuing to take those actions.

I've made a minor addition to our next patch to handle the creation confusion you came across, so hopefully the same problem won't stop others in the future (Improved the error syntax message to support the room description instruction).

[plamzi]

It's good to see that there's a pro-active dev on board.

[thatgirl]

Not a bad mud over all, colorful and seemingly friendly from the two days I've spend lurking about. It is fairly easy to navigate once you get used to the exits being at the top of the desc rather than the bottom. There isn't much in the ways of RP but if you like this sort of mud you will feel right at home. I would say give it a good 30 minute trial to get out of the creation and down into the real part of the mud. I really liked that despite picking one main class, you could learn a bit in each of the classes if you wanted to, helping raise hp/mana/ftg, seemed like a bonus to have a high hp mage.

If I were to make one suggestion to staff it would simply be to toggle those extra channels off for new players, leaving only the newbie channel. Teach them how to toggle them on and off if you like, but it was very spamy trying to read through the tour with so many things happening in the background.

[Abel_SH]

Thanks for the kind words, thatgirl. Glad you decided to drop by

Do you feel that we would be better off shortening the creation process, or did you find it worthwhile?

As for the channels, that's a good idea. Was it the automated quest stuff (crusade channel) or the general chatter (OOC/gossip) that was spamming you? My only concern with disabling all but newbie is that the MUD may appear dead to someone who is expecting to see players chatting.

I've gotten about 10+ things down for newbie-friendly changes already, so it's been great to have you (and others) drop by and speak your mind.

[Ghostcat]

I'm rather liking it so far. Usually I don't play no RP games, but this is hitting my nostalgia button.

The ability to extreme multiclass is nice, as are the automated quests. The world seems rather condensed, and it can be hard to figure out where to go, without asking for help though.

Oh, is there some code for CMUD to make gauges and stuff? I could probably throw something together with very little effort.

[KaVir]

They support MSDP and ATCP, so yes you can easily create gauges, or even a full GUI if you wish (although I don't know how flexible CMUD is in that respect - but it's certainly possible with MUSHclient and Mudlet).