Posted in Others / Gaming / Online Multiplayer RPG Games
Author: techocian Total-Replies: 5

OK lets skip the Direct X and move back to 3rd world entertainment - MUDs.

=== Introduction ===
The definition of a MUD is Multi-user dungeon. Most people would call it a "text game". By far it is known as one of the most boring games on the net. ome people who try it out - like me ( ) Know the REAL facts. Now I'm going to tell you whats REAL and whats not.

===Why play MUDs?===
Haha! Let's go straight to the point. Can you "kick" an npc and make him hurt in graphic games? Can you wear tattoos or dress yourself up your own way, your own style? What about battling? In most games, there is only one "method" to kill. In MUDs, you get to "jab, punch, kick, hammer, smash, crush..etc...". You also get more skills and things to do as the producers don't have to go to the trouble in generating the graphics.

=== Controls ===
OK I told you what it was like now what are you thinking? "It's just a bunch of letters, and besides, how am i supposed to even MOVE in this game...?" OK firstly, all MUDs maneuver by the words: (N)orth, (S)outh, (E)ast, (W)est. So if you want to move towards the north, you type "n" and you will be transfered to another map to the north. Simple right? What about talking? To talk you would type "say <message>" or just a (') quotation will do and then your message. To send private messages are usually different. In many MUDs, you would have to type "tell <username><message>". Sometimes, you would get a post office in towns for you to send mail. All the rest of the controls you would learn soon enough when you play the MUD itself.

=== What next? ===
Well I would suggest you go with an easy-going MUD first. In my opinion, Ancient Anguish would be a good start. They do not have a newbie tutorial but they DO have a newbie guide online which you can read. Ancient Anguish is a quite "Straight forward" MUD. It has all the features of a normal MUD and newbie-friendly too.
After AA, and you think you could do better, move on to Achaea. Achaea is a more "dedicated" MUD. You have to take tests and pass them in order to be a full guild member or class. I personally like their races too. I chose atavian on my first character in Achaea. Atavians are flying beasts which look like humans but have wings. I had SOO much fun flying on them over seas and rivers and mountains. Especially if some "Jesters"(Another class who dedicates their lives to playing pranks) started "accidentally" dropping banana peels on the floor and you slip. That will make them laugh their heels off. Flying equals you won't get seen and won't drown in deep waters. (But there IS a chance of falling when there are high winds... ).

=== Played it, tried it, HATE IT!! ===
Well if thats the truth, then don't think you're not normal. You're just not one who likes to read much... .

=== Thanks for being a patient reader ===
P.S It will be best if you do not use the telnet client or the Java client. I suggest using gosclient. It's a GREAT client and has all the tools i will ever need to play MUDs.

Hope you enjoyed my guide to influence more people to play MUDs. I hope ya'll enjoy it. ( a.k.a at least, if your fingers don't get tired of all that typing!)

Posted in Others / Gaming / Online Multiplayer RPG Games
Author: techocian Total-Replies: 3

Ancient Anguish, an LPMUD, is quite shallow in giving you a great gaming experience but it has left me with a GREAT impression of MUDs that allowed me to move along with other MUDs. It's a great MUD to start with if you're totally "blur" with text-based games. Sure they don't have a tutorial but its experience that counts the most! =)
Now I'll talk about my first character in AA, which is a ranger. Rangers are most proficient in adapting and survivng in the wilderness (Which is why i chose it because i ALWAYS get lost...). They have skills and abilities allowing them to make use of materials in nature to do certain things. Now i will write a guide on my experience of Rangers and how you should start about with it.

>>{Rangers 101}>>
Alright, when you begin, you have to be a definite half-elf or full elf race. Humans are OK but they do not make good rangers due to their lack of sensibility. The fact that elves have a high wisdom and dexterity allows it to be a better ranger than humans.
When you start off, go 2 south. Which is "s, s" from there you type "grab newbie carving" or I think they might have shortened it do "grab newbie". From here on out, whenever you have any problems, you can type "new <message>" and someone in the newbie line will try to help you out.
Rangers should increase their dexterity along with their wisdom. Of course strength and the rest of the stats are also important but dext and strength should be your main stats to start increase. I'm not going to tell you how to get to the ranger's guild to become a ranger because i feel that it is best you roam around on your own until you've got the whole town memorized in your head. Instead, I will tell about what rangers can do and what is most important to them.
The skills and abilities of rangers are all different but each individual one plays an important part of a ranger's survival. One of the most "valuable" skills which i loved from the start is the "bearings" skill. This skill tells you the approximate location of where you are compared to the main town. It bases on North, North east, East, ... etc to give you a general direction of where you are. There is also a VERY neat set of skills i call the "Devouring of animals". Firstly after you have killed an animal, you "Pluck/skin corpse" it. Next, you "Carve corpse" it. Lastly, you "Gut corpse". These few commands may be simple but is so important to a ranger. Skinning a corpse enables you to have the "pelt" or feathers of a certain animal depending if it's a bird or not. With pelts, you are able to make items such as backpacks, sacks, shields, tents, and so much more. Carving and gutting are 2 extra skills of the set. Carving is getting meat out of the animal and gutting is extracting sinew or any extras that are left over.

I cannot explain all at once so I'll come to a conclusion with a ranger's last piece of advice. A ranger's pet and partner, a wolf/dog. Have a pet wolf/dog allows more flexibility and speed. Although it takes tremendous amount of responsibility to keep a pet, (You have to feed it and train it) it is really valuable at times. It will help you attack the enemy and wolves/dogs are fast and have a high accuracy. These wonderfull creatures are a must-have for a perfect ranger. It is fun to watch them grow with you from a puppy or cub to a fully grown monster. Each individual wolf is also very different from other wolves. You may have a galiant-golden wolf while others may have a sweet-silvered one. It's all based on luck!

Whatever the case of your ranger, I hope you do your best in this MUD. Might get very frustrated at the start and hard to train too. But later you'll find great friends and fun with just a litte mix of words and sentences!

Posted in Others / Gaming / Online Multiplayer RPG Games
Author: Xevian Total-Replies: 31

Ok... I introduced some of those sites to Techocian there... Well now... I have 3 more beta testing games to introduce... I play these to kill time before guild wars comes out!
I agree that pristontale rocked my socks off about 2 years ago... Then i switched to playing Maplestory, but after encountering the SAME monsters to train on for a very long time... I got bored of it...
So I went to find games! I came up with three of them. One of them being a philipline game called Tantra... Rather gorey and very monk-sounding skills and everything... then i tried ROSE online, which is also created by the makers of Ragnarok, Gravity! It was rather cute, save the fact that it is VERY laggy especially in the middle of the day where everyone comes online... I also played A3, The website is rather nice although you must display it in a full screen... The game itself is not bad, except that the music is always the same and it gets on my nerves after listening to it repeating for... one hour or so... So i decided to go to playing ROSE online until Guid Wars comes out!

Posted in Others / Gaming / Text Based Games
Author: Gayla Total-Replies: 17



You might want to take a look at my game "Finding Martin", a large text-based game with a fantasy/scifii/mystery plot involving time travel. This game is available for free download at The "Finding Martin" Homepage. It was named as a finalist in the 2005 XYZZY awards in the categories of Best Game and Best Puzzles, and some of the people who've played it told me that they found it quite addictive. The web site has a walk-through if you find yourself stuck. You can also send me e-mails to ask for hints if you want to avoid accidentally seeing spoilers in the walk-through. I like corresponding with players since it's a good way to meet people who like the same sort of games that I do.

Or, you could check out some other text-based games such as "Augmented Fourth" by Brian Uri, "Curses" by Graham Nelson, and "So Far" by Andrew Plotkin, available at Baf's Guide to the IF Archive. (IF stands for Interactive Fiction, which is what they call text based games nowadays.) All of these games are available as free downloads along with the free interpreter that you'll need to play those games. Baf's Guide also gives instructions on how to download the interpreter(s) for all of the text games in the archive.

For game reviews check out Brass Lantern, SPAG, and Reviews by Dan Shiovitz.

The latest fashion in text-based games these days seems to be for authors to write shorter games that aspire to artistic interactive fiction with dark themes. The ones that I've recommended tend to be older games that focus on fun adventures and challenging puzzles. "Augmented Fourth" has a great sense of humor and is one of my favorites. But there are games suiting a wide variety of preferences in the IF Archive, from religious to pornographic, from horror to slapstick, from deep to silly.

Posted in Others / Gaming / Online Multiplayer RPG Games
Author: patronus4000 Total-Replies: 145

I used to play Runescape (I still log in from time to time, to relive the good old days XD). It got too boring when I reached level 50-something to raise all my stats. XD I lost patience for it by then, but I used to play it fanatically; I'd come home from school, and then login to Runescape. I'm happy I've gotten out of that trance.

Before that, I played Kings of Chaos (KoC) and AdventureQuest (AQ). I find that AQ is even worse than Runescape, as they just have a 2D interface and the characters don't walk anywhere or do anything other than hold weapons/cast spells. KoC takes work, but it's more fun. Basically, you have an army (you can join alliances too) and you can use it to fight other armies (controlled by other users). You can attack to take their gold, which you can use to buy more weapons, mercs, etc. However, you have to log in just about everyday to keep your amount of gold to a low level so that other users won't attack you (they can see the amount of gold you have if their spies are good enough).

*cough* To summarize that, I now don't like many MMORPGs anymore. XD

If you want to play text adventures, you can always check out the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or something. XD Or, on Windows Live (once upon a time known as MSN) Messenger, add textadventurebot@hotmail.com. It's a bot that lets you play text adventures with it! They're quite hard, but they give you maps and stuff. =D

Serena

Posted in Others / Introductions & Welcome (N..
Author: NilsC Total-Replies: 132

Nick, huh. I never had a nick in my life. I guess I was never "hip" enough to get a nick name but that's OK with me.

I am very active in kayak fishing and the sport of kayak fishing. And since we have tournaments and I meet a lot of the people I talk to online I thought it was better to use my real name so that when spoken to I would know that it was me they refered to. I'm known in RW (real world) as Yakfisher_RI but that would be a funny handle on a board for free web hosting In the same kayak fishing community I'm also known under the aliases of "Mad Norwegian" or "Crazy Norwegian" because I take kayakfishing to the extreme edge and sometimes over the edge where I would crash and burn (If it wasn't for being surrounded by water).

I guide and teach kayak fishing and do seminars on the same topic so using my real name makes life a lot easier but maybe to some extent boring

With all the user names and logins aquiered over the years my first name and the first letter of my last name has stuck because I have a hard time remembering what nick I used where if I didn't use the "KISS" method.

Nils