What MUDs Do You Play?

RotW Inc asks: "Well now that we've asked the question about what free clients to find for 'mudding', lets start asking the readers which MUDs they prefer? I've been playing Arcane Nites for many years, and recently they've gone under an entire coding change (exp per hit, spheres that contain skills anyone can practice, a hiding/sight % system, ranged fighting, and that's just a taste) and I'd like to compare that to the favorites of others out there."

Re:Dark Castle

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually... most of us left Dark Castle and either play Myrradel or Nodeka these days.

Ishar

[Illusion]

Ishar [ishar.com] is a Diku-style hack'n'slash, but with an all-original code and world that has been around since 1994. As I've been involved with running Ishar for a long time, I can't compare it terribly objectively to other muds, but players tend to report that after playing Ishar, almost everything else on the 'net feels very cheesy and like carbon-copies of each other.

Most of our recent changes have been fairly subtle, like tickless healing, a more free-form combat system, and the introduction of Shadowrun-style held spells. We tend to favor quality of the world and gameplay over feature-of-the-day additions. If you need multiclassing and 60 available races, you'll probably want to look elsewhere.

StarTrek MOO

[QuantumG]

I used to play this cool StarTrek MOO that had a very impressive ship vs ship model. It literally took weeks to become proficient at one of the five stations of the command deck and, if you had the talent, you could control all the stations from the primary command station.. but you always got your ass whipped by any ship that had a full crew. Along with the ship to ship mode you could also walk around like a regular MOO, talk to people, buy and sell goods, etc. Unfortunately I think it shut down :(

AlteredReality

[Herbmaster]

I've been playing this mud called AlteredReality [static.net] for almost 6 years now. It's really good and has the most interesting codebase I've ever seen on a mud. It's based on ROM 2.4 but it doesn't play like a ROM at all. It has neat features like a completely persistent world, roundless fighting and a lot of real-time gameplay stuff. It has an original stat (10 primary stats)/class (they're up to 8 classes)/skill and group-skill system, and it gets rid of a lot of the ROM-lameness inherent in practices, trains, levels, etc. (although there are levels). Level-based PK (noloss) is allowed but it's not a serious PK mud. The NPCs fight mean but fair. Player run clans, and automated quests, arenas, mobprogs... all the stuff you'd expect from a modern MUD. =)

It also has some really cool features for the slashdot-geek, including ssh connections (ssh to port 4005, or telnet to port 4000), and a vt100 terminal mode which makes a mud client unnecessary. It's even got the latest openssh patch applied! The vt100 mode offers an inputline, prompt bar, line editing features, and there's built in speedwalks, etc.

It's got a really good social environment which is probably its other major selling point besides the nifty codebase. They have mudders from all over the world (Guam, Norway, etc. -- seriously). And if you're into building they have a full set of OLC functionality. Oh they have a website [static.net] too, but it's not nearly as good as just logging into the game itself and making a character, perusing the help files, etc.

dwMud

[deemah]

discworld mud [imaginary.com] is the place i'm at.

Lots of flexibility, plenty of social interaction and a great sense of humour.

( guess who's a creator there... )

Re:AlteredReality

[Jahf]

Been playing this morning after seeing this comment. I agree with what you say all too well :)

Bastard.