MUDs are MMORPGs too!

My own thoughts about the MUD industry and how it stays afloat with MMO competition.

Author: Ergload

If you've ever wanted to play an MMORPG that puts heavy emphasis on community, socialization and roleplay, then maybe you should try MUDs!

It's true that MMOs are becoming more advanced than ever, maybe we'll even see real-time combat in a non-instance world someday; but the truth is that MMORPGs have really only advanced graphically, mechanically we are still playing the same games over and over. Drag your spells to your toolbar, advance your skill tree, and maybe join a guild to do PvP or epic raids. 

Guilds in MMORPGs aren't actually designed for roleplay. Almost every MMO with guilds pretty much lets anyone create one as long as enough people sign a charter. You usually see things like "will pay people to sign my guild charter, you can quit after its created". I don't think this lends any roleplay value to the universe because in the MUDs I play, guilds actually make you feel like a part of a faction.

Guilds have real political hierarchy structures in a MUD I play called "Achaea". Newbes start out at the bottom ranks of their guild and work their way up through socialization, being a team-player and sometimes doing little tests created by their guild leaders. It's entirely possible to start out at the bottom and then work your way up to Guild Leader, because it's possible to hold real political elections in Achaea! So if you don't like the job that your guild leader is doing, get some guildmates to support you and contest them for their position. 

The rabbit hole goes much deeper, it's little social mechanics like political elections and becoming a Faction leader that makes MUD players feel like they are actually a part of the world. People get really invested into their characters and there's a real sense of accomplishment when other players vote for you as their leader, and there's real feelings of betrayal when a guild member steals all the bank funds.

The HTML5 client for Achaea is in open beta, and all players are invited to give the new client a test. The new client has many features like recording gameplay with real-time playback, lots of scripting support, and gameplay in general feels much smoother on the client. The Achaea forums have also been given a tremendous makeover, and users are now required to log in using their character name. No more anonymous forum trolling!

As you can see from above screens the HTML5 client is much fancier, has a larger screenwidth and is much more customizable compared to the old Flash client below.

Of course playing MUDs through your browser is just one option, many players like to download the free MUD client called Mudlet, or a paid one like Cmud, and you can download lots of MUD scripts from Iron Realms for your favourite MUD games.

For anyone interested in apocalyptic theories, it's interesting to note that many secularist organizations believe in a more inspiring future. While some might believe in "the end of the world", it's more likely that humanity as a whole is becoming more conscience on a global scale; forces are actively working towards an awakening where the veils of nationality, language, and class are stripped away to reveal the universal culture of mankind that was there all along.

As MMORPG players I think we're experiencing this phenomena first-hand; gamers are always demanding a more social experience, something that mimics real society in the virtual world. Gamers are demanding dynamic stories that they can impact now more than ever, and I think it's reflective of the general state of humanity, we're tired of being on a linear path both in-game and out, and we want to dynamically effect the world around us.

It's said that our pineal gland, or "third eye", is responsible for intuition, the phenomena known as the "gut-feeling". It's our window into our sixth sense, the gateway into our spiritual selves. In the popular MUD game "Achaea", a quest can be done that harvests children for their pineal glands. Whether or not you believe in spirituality is up to you, but you don't have to be religious to believe in the human spirit. So while what I'm saying isn't necessarily grounded in facts, only a cynic would argue that there hasn't been a series of global awakenings; revolution for Egypt, riots in Bahraini, riots in Romania. Mankind all over is waking up to the fact that we're all neighbors, and that elite forces have been squaring us against eachother for too long.

To conclude, I think as MMORPG players we're hoping for the big social breakthrough in the videogame landscape, but it's happening right outside our windows, and we're ignoring it for whatever game is sucking our souls away.

Even though I've always been a fan of MUDs and other MMORPG games, I was still pretty active through highschool; basketball, martial arts, running every day, lifting weights with my bros.  But then around 21 I stopped being active almost completely. Long nights of MMORPG gaming, eating junk food and just being indoors all day. I made lots of excuses like, my apartment wasn't big enough for exercise equipment, or I couldn't afford a good diet to see good results so why should I even try?

My body began to pay for my lazy lifestyle and I started seeing some flab around my stomach, I couldn't jog without becoming out of breath, and I just felt overall out of shape. There's a noticeable difference when you're in-shape and out-of-shape, like your limbs just feel heavy and dull when you are OOS but I was full of energy and sharp reflexes when I was active.

To start getting back into shape, I started slow and worked with what I had: limited resources and a cramped space. A quick Amazon spree procured the tools necessary to combat my bodies increasing flabbiness.

(best purchases ever)

Also I knew I needed to change my diet, but I'm on a budget. I have a high metabolism so I want a diet that lets me gain weight, something with lots of calories, low carbs and good proteins. I've been sticking with this;

• Breakfast: Eggs, toast with peanut butter, yogurt, milk, protein bar
• Lunch: Pasta, chicken, baked beans
• Dinner: Lean meats like fat-cut-out steaks and italian sausage
• Snacks between meals: Fig Newtons, mixed nuts, bagels, cottage cheese, carrots, celery sticks, peanut butter

Because vanilla Elder Scrolls is so much fun...

Gamers have been begging for an Elder Scrolls massively multiplayer game for a long time now. So long, in fact, that the expectations of any MMO product they release at this point are far too high for the company to meet. I mean, we're talking about Bethesda, a company who has released one buggy console port after the next while completely ignoring the PC community. Even Skyrim's lead producer admits that the company is focusing on console first. So why should we, as PC gamers, be excited for any news regarding an Elder Scrolls MMO?

Bethesda's business model operates on the idea that they can release a game worthy of 6 out of 10 stars by itself. They don't set the bar very high for themselves because the mod community will come in and fix everything that is broken with the games. The mod community will release glorious high-definition texture packs, the mod community will create new areas and NPCs, the mod community will do everything that Bethesda is too lazy to do themselves, which is actually polish their games after they've been released.

So who does Bethesda expect is going to polish their MMO? Are we supposed to believe that they will keep gamers happy with new content using subscription revenue? Don't make me laugh. It's not like they're running MUDs where the admins can just train players to build new areas using tools built into the games.

 It's happened. The industry can't produce a product that seems to impress gamers anymore. Blame it on copycat mechanics, blame it on that seemingly impenetrable "wall" between 3d and reality that developers can't cross over. Sure, MMOs have their core players, but the majority of gamers are endlessly floundering from one MMORPG to the next, complaining about this one's lack of crafting, lack of story, lack of community, lack of PvE group content, lack of gameplay in general.

The bar has become way too high, I mean are we really expecting Tera and Guild Wars 2 to be the new standard? Look how fast SWTOR and Diablo 3 were trashed. And sure, the games sell. If the name of the game is sales numbers, then these titles win. But we all know better, we all know that we've been waiting for a game with a little longevity, with a little developer support and with the common sense to listen to its audience. Does such a game exist? Who knows, it's hard to give any of them a chance long enough to find out.

I feel like finding a game to occupy my time was much easier when I was a kid. Maybe because back then you had to actually plan your game purchases (and by plan your game purchases I mean beg your parents to take you to the store). If you came from a low-medium income family like me then you had a small collection of SNES games obtained mostly from birthdays, Christmas, trading from friends or whatever other manner your method was of playing new games.

Do you remember renting games? That was our first early dose of "comparison shopping". Then came the demo disc, and these two things combined created a generation of kids who could be picky about what games we wanted to play. And now we have Youtube and websites like MMORPG.com where we can rank games before they're released and cast our harshest criticism at a game after watching 10 seconds of beta gameplay footage on Youtube.

Despite all this, I think this is the way the market should be. Why shouldn't we have instant comparison at our fingertips? I'm glad we're past the age of spending our hard earned money on crappy titles. If adult gamers are jaded, its because we spent our childhoods putting up with less-than-satisfying game purchases. For the top 20 Super Nintendo games, there are 3000 more games that you've never heard of, or were suckered into buying.

So I guess my point is, while we should feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to shopping around for games, we should probably lower our expectations a little bit and be willing to give more games a chance, instead of using the comparison shopping tools at our disposal as an excuse to flip through videogames like flipping through channels. Geeze, whens the last time anyone actually flipped channels on TV? I just endlessly browse Netflix, cursing at them for having all the movies I want to watch available on DVD only. Oh well, atleast MUD games haven't failed me yet.

Comment below if you have any thoughts.

Normally I blog about Achaea, but I've been hooked on Battlefield 3 lately. I updated my graphics card from a Radeon 5670 to a 6870, now I'm running every game I play on ultra settings! Couldn't have upgraded at a better time with Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 right around the corner. After playing on some 64 player servers on the enormous Conquest maps I found myself designing a MMOFPS in my head. A true MMOFPS hasn't been designed due to modern technical limitations, as things get laggy with just 64 players in BF3.

Ever since I was a kid I always found a logical fallacy with the concept of "virtual reality" - how do you prevent yourself from bumping into walls? My idea of virtual reality was influenced by an X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully enter a virtual reality world, where dying in the game has real life consequences. 

Also, I got one of these really cheap "virtual reality" headsets for a birthday. It was pretty sucktastic and I mean like, you were basically looking at 8-bit graphics in the little headset, and the stupid motion sensors to detect your punches and kicks didn't work 95% of the time. The whole premise of the game was to block your opponents attacks and shurikens, but you had to make these big fan waving motions to get the thing to detect blocks. Also you couldn't really kick as high as the kid on the box. I remember snapping my cord by kicking too high.

Virtual Reality Hamster Balls

Some company named Virtusphere has designed these giant hamster cage balls where you walk inside the ball and as your momentum rotates it, your character moves in that directions. Sounds kind of cool, but 1: they're freaking expensive ($28,000), and 2: the designers admit it takes some work to get the ball rolling.

So while we're getting closer to the ultimate "soldier experience" without actually having to enlist in the Army, it's still just a grossly expensive prototype. 

With all the FPS options out there, I find myself asking what game should I play? I think part of this problem is developers pushing a sequel or new title every few months instead of supporting the current games. DLC is still a big industry but the current model seems to be "release a few DLC packs, then sequel". I want to see a game designed with long-term update support in mind. Why can't developers just stick with one game, then keep us supplied with constant updates? So one thing that a MMOFPS should do is be connected to the real world in a way that updates the game world with content from real life. Real life news headlines flashing across the billboards, clothes for your character from real life fashion designers. A game world that is so large, there are roads and highways and traffic laws, and players can drive from one town to the next, getting into epic gun battles along the way. 

I'm thinking Grand Theft Auto + Borderlands + Second Life all baked into a delicious pie of open-world freedom, mayhem and pure fun. Totally customizable character right down to the length of your toenails, clothing stores, Are you with me? Comment below!

This blog is about my character's life in the free to play MMO Achaea.

Achaea artwork by Chris Bourassa

I play a Serpent in Achaea which is like a rogue class. You can use a dagger and a whip to stab and garrote people, you get a pet snake which bites with different venoms, you can blend in with the shadows and become completely invisible and you can snipe people with your bow. It's really fun to sneak around during raids and snipe people, then run back to your group.

I decided to record some big group PvP raiding, theres a lot of action happening on the screen but I managed to get a kill.

Gameplay Footage

City destruction is pretty cool too, if you have a large enough group you can invade an enemy city and summon elemental fireballs of destruction to rain down and destroy the environment. Shops become unusable and the other team has to repair their city, and your team gets some experience.

Another thing I love about the Serpent class is the thieving skills, where you can rob other players who aren't paying attention. It's extremely difficult to rob someone who is at their keyboard, but catch someone AFK and you can get away with their backpack and gold.

This blog is about my character's life in the text-based MMORPG, Achaea

I recently became the Minister of Culture in Shallam, the City of Light. It's been fun so far because Shallam is a city / player-faction of about 100 or more players. There are 5 other player-factions and they all have their own leadership structure. You gain rank by making friends, playing the politics is a game in itself. So basically my job as MoC is to come up with fun events for the city like an arena PvP contest. If I start slacking off, another player can apply for my position and the Council can vote on it.

The city newspaper is where I have the most fun, and creative freedom. Our city has a newspaper that gets sold by NPCs and I spend a couple hours every week writing a new one. It's all in roleplay so the newspaper articles are all about current events in the game, and people can rent ad space for their shops, etc.

It's also fun controlling the cities NPC town crier. I program up to 10 phrases for it to yell and everyone within the vicinity can hear it.

A Shallamese herald yells, "Orphans can be snatched up by perverted Occultists, make sure to enroll them in the Te'Serran academy."

As a fantasy novel fan I was pretty overjoyed to find out that the Riftwar Saga series was being turned into an MMORPG. The Riftwar Saga is the first series of the Riftwar Cycle, a series of fantasy novels written by New York Times bestselling author Raymond E. Feist; the stories take place in the fictional worlds of Midkemia and Kelewar, and human magicians are able to travel through dimensional rifts that connect planets.

Midkemia Online is pretty far into the beta stages and so far I'm enjoying the combat mechanics. It has a really cool dodging system, you can manually duck and dodge your opponents attacks in real-time. There are Thief skills for stealing from other players, but it's pretty tricky. Thieves tend to die alot.

I'm also really excited about the non-instanced player housing, and unlike other MMOs built using the Rapture engine, Midkemia Online has out-of-subdivision housing (which makes it less likely for other players to try and break into your house).

The PvP is pretty violent too, there's all sorts of gruesome ways to finish off your opponent like chopping their head off or slitting their throat from behind. If this game had to be submitted to the ESRB it'd probably get a Mature+ rating or more.

I'm enjoying the community so far, there's definitely a dedication to roleplay as the staff runs events based on things that happened in the books. If you've read the books it's always fun when a familiar character appears, like Jimmy the Hand. Hopefully the beta wraps up soon and the developers roll out all the awesome features we've been promised, but all the crafting and PvP duelling is done and very top-notch. I was excited to find out my character can forge his own weapons with the Blacksmithing skillset, and there's a wide variety of weapons too. Fun stuff!