[Scooch]

As the title states, I'm pretty new to this whole MUD business. I've poked around a bit. I played a bit of Archaea, and then found out it eventually become a pay to win game. I immediately dropped that. I've heard of Aardwolf, but that's often said to be endlessly grindy. I've also heard of Discworld, but I'm not sure if that is serious enough for me to really get into. Lastly, I checked out BatMUD. I like how BatMUD's custom client has a few graphics on it like Achaea's. I'm not quite sure if I like BatMUD, I haven't sat down and ran through any of it. I have a feeling it may not be serious enough for my taste, since there are ducks and penguins as playable races.

That's pretty much all I know about this stuff. I want to find something where combat is enjoyable, RP (I see a MUD's strength to be RP quality, otherwise I'd play something else), there is some seriousness (but not somewhere where I'll be ripped to pieces by the community for my noobness), and PvP. Those are ordered in importance.

Bonus points to someone who can find me a Warhammer MUD? I searched but I couldn't find anything, what the heck man?

Oh, and population is important to me. I'm not sure how many people is enough, but I'd like enough to run into a fair amount of people in most hours.

[Davairus]

I am interested in you because you seem willing to give criticism and its on point. Our game meets the minimum requirements you mentioned. Lets see how you like it.



Good luck in your search. Hope you find the game you are looking for. She's out there somewhere.

[AldoRaines]

Games Workshop is pretty protective of their IP's. I'm sure that someone has tried to make one at some point, only to receive a nasty letter from them.

Just my guess.

[Newworlds]

Hello Scooch!

I suggest you come on by New Worlds Ateraan and here is why, based on your requirements:

1. Combat Enjoyable: You have the option of multiple guilds and a variety of professions, weapons, armour, styles, and powers to allow you a complete varying degree of combat enjoyment. Quests, adventures, ships, cities, invasions, group adventuring (even caravans with guards and ships that battle at sea) with as many as 20 or 30 adventurers grouping together.

2. Roleplay: NWA is roleplay enforced and has varying degrees of locations and ways to start in the game for those very experienced to the amateur. The community is incredible giving you guides, staff, and players to help you get started, while at the same time having areas that can be very difficult and intense if you want to try that.

3. PVP: Player vs. player on social, religious, political, and combat levels are all part of NWA. PVP requires roleplay though even in combat/pk realms, meaning that you can't just run around attacking people without roleplay reasons. So the integrity of the story and game is kept intact.

4. Population: NWA is one of the largest text games around with over 100 players on at any given time. We have large events such as festivals and invasions that can involved dozens of players.

I would suggest you start in the Kingdom if you try out NWA as it is much more friendly to the new player.

Good Luck on your search!

[Myrlyn]

4Dimensions (4dimensions.org 6000)

Probably the only real failure is the amount of active players online at any time - though recently night time (EST) has been a bit busier than previously. And hopefully with the addition of Molly's new zone in a day or two, it will be busier as players will be required to group in groups of at least 3 to get the best EQ in the zone.

The players used to be mostly European so the busiest times was earlier in the US day, but it seems to have started shifting to more US times with players located throughout the US.

We have, as stated in the name of the mud, 4 Dimensions (Prehistoric, Medieval, Old West, Future) and only 8 races (2 from each dimension: Centaur, Faun (Pre), Dwarf, Elf (Med), Gringo, Indian (Old West), Spacewolf, Martian (Future)).

4Dimensions also has add-ons to mush client that gives you a map on the side and also some pictures to tell which spells/skills you currently have active. If interested, you can download from the website (4dimensions.org).

The focus is mostly on questing - so quite a few mobs are able to be interacted with - with hack and slash as a plan if you don't like to quest (questing is fun, but sometimes difficult). While 4dimensions would like to grow a roleplayer base, it needs to start with actually getting active roleplayers who stay around long enough to attract other rpers.

4dimensions has quite a few newbie helpers and even those not flagged as such tend to be more then happy to help the newbies out. There is also the ability to go PK so you can run around and kill other people that are PK. The Pkers tend to have their own community as only a PKer knows how a Pker thinks.

Where ever you land as your mud home, I do hope you find a place you truly enjoy and are able to call home.

[Tristan1992]

GateWay's races are all standard fantasy races. All the areas are fantasy, no lasers or other anachronisms. Oh and it's always been free for the last 24 years. as for seriousness in general, the MUD's "respectable". It's the people that might be a bit wacky at times...

GW's combat is fun, each guild has unique and even challenging to use powers. RP is mostly guild based. The feud between the Lost Knights and the Serpent Warriors is quite intense. Newbies are never put down here and yes we have opt in PK.

The population varies. The playerbase in total is probably in the thousands. Sometimes the old ones like to hide in the woodwork and need a good knock to get them to come and play...

[Jazuela]

I'll suggest Armageddon. It's free, no pay at all. Because of the roleplay and the nature of the code, the grind is only grindy if you want it to be grindy. It doesn't have to be grindy at all and in fact you can play without having ever bumped up a single coded skill at all. The coded skills exist more to support the roleplay, rather than the roleplay being based around the coded skills. However - if your character were to desire work as a crafter, it'd be in his best interest to actually -be- a crafter since the people who hire him would want to see some actual results at some point That's just an example.

Combat can be enjoyable. It depends on what you consider enjoyable combat. I assumed I'd never play a combat-oriented character when I first started playing Arm, but eventually I did, and it turns out I rather enjoy it. But most of my characters don't spend all that much of their time using their combat skills. Again - it's optional, and depends on the character you create and its background and desires and goals and where he fits in the world.

Serious - definitely serious. It's pretty hard-core roleplay. If a new player shows up thinking he'll play Gandalf the Grey and demand respect and make it really REALLY obvious that he's only there to grief - then he's be treated as griefers by players and - if it doesn't stop - by staff. On the other hand, if a new player shows interest in the genre and theme of the game (a hybrid similarity between the Dark Sun D&D campaign and a desert world similar to Herbert's Dune series), shows an attempt to learn the syntax, and is willing to accept help when it looks like it's needed, he'll be welcomed and encouraged by pretty much everyone who plays.

Player base size: Definitely not massive, but not exactly sparse either. I play sometimes off-peak (eastern daylight, middle of the day or early morning sometimes), and usually find at least 20 people logged in when I type "who." During peak time (around 9-10 eastern time), there's upward to around 70, 80 people, and sometimes even over 100 if "something really awesome" is going on (otherwise known as an RPT). You might not necessarily run into any of those people - it depends on where your character is. If he's in a spot where people often congregate, then he'll eventually run into people. If he's in a clan that's currently populated by a lot of PCs, then he'll have plenty of interaction. If he's in an isolated spot though, he might not see a single other PC all day long. Even if there's 100 people logged in. The nice thing about Arm, is that if there are 100 people logged in, most of them are *not* idle or afk. Most of them are really there, watching their screen, and actively interacting with the game world.

Game client stuff: You can use their fairly primitive browser-based cleint, or you can use any telnet client and customize it however you wish. There are no graphics though - a couple of -very- primitive maps of the cities in-game (ascii maps). If you want fancy colors you'd have to configure them client-side.

No ducks or penguins. You can find their main website here:

[ShaLeah]

This.

It's the last mud I've ever played and I started mudding in 1997.