The MUD Connector

I've been playing this game for over 20 years now. Basically, whenever a new modern game comes out for PC or consoles that I'm interested in, I take off from Ancient Anguish and go play it. Then, after a while I get bored and come back here. I'm not sure how to explain the feeling, but Ancient Anguish has that old RPG feel that you get while playing the really good games from us older people's generation. I'm talking about Final Fantasy, Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, Shining Force, Shining in the Darkness, Breath of Fire, Diablo 1, Summoner, etcetera. There's a very fun nostalgia feeling you get while playing. At its core this game is a hack n' slash, dungeon loot crawler with a ton of additional activities and RPG elements. If you were to combine Dungeon Siege 1, Diablo 2, and Neverwinter Nights you'd pretty much have the modern version of Ancient Anguish.

Ancient Anguish is not suitable for children. The admin would like to claim otherwise, although they do NOTHING to control the environment to protect minors from being exposed to adult material. They do not own up to their tolerance of obscene materials, refusing to warn parents by categorizing themselves as 'adult'. The players are often found having sexually explicit conversations on public lines without consideration to who else might be reading the text. There are always conversations about drug use to be found, encouraging others by example to try them. The vulgarity is not censored, and yet the administration claims it to be a family mud. Even the webpage now shows a very realistic picture of an elven woman wearing nothing from the waist down.

I played on this mud for 12 years coming and going but mostly active the whole time. I've seen it evolve and get better and better. I've seen players come and go and staff come and go. I've seen grand story lines take place and I've seen minor ones. It has its problems but it also has some good points. The staff is a mix of great and just there. Don't get me wrong they are all helpful but not all the staff understands some of the systems the game has. I took a look at the very first review and it talked about remort which I found funny because it is still not coded in. But it the coder is great and has added some amazing things. The players...are a grand mix. You have some that are serious and open and will rp all the time with anyone and try to help anyone they can. Then you have some players that pretty much are only after sexual rp. Then you have a few toxic players that if they don't like you will either refuse to acknowledge your character or they will try to screw up their story or insult them. There are rules in place through many many help files and these are strict at times and other times there is leeway. I have a love hate relationship with this mud and I was recently banned for mouthing off to a staff member. That being said i was having a bad day and exploded. The staff doesn't seem to be on the same page with a lot of things and if one of the owners is gone the rest tend to stand around and do nothing. I had a shop i was working on and it took two years to get approved because a staff member would come in, and then vanish, come back and vanish again. The other staff members didn't know enough to do it without the them. The game has subclasses and some are way better than others and there is no balance to it really. The motto the staff uses is we are not d&d but at the same time they use and copy a lot from d&d but leave out the other bits to fine tune it, just to be "different". The big story lines tend to revolve around the same characters and sometimes they even push out other characters and sort of hog the spotlight. Like I said there is a lot wrong with the game...but I love it and I'm gonna miss it. It hurts that I'm disliked so much that I cant come back. I know people there better than people irl. I'd do anything to play here again. And I recommend it to new players with words of warning. There is a small player base and you will be ignored by some of the characters unless you progress their story. There are some good players and they are hidden within the game. Honestly some of newbie helpers are the ones that do it the most. The mud is my home...and they are my family. Dysfunctional as hell. But family all the same...I will miss you TG.

I considered leaving a more in-depth review after my time spent here, though I find it regretful to admit that it would be very similar to that of the one most recent(Posted December 12, 2018) and almost redundant. So I will add what little I can while acknowledging such when necessary.

  There certainly are people within the playerbase who care deeply about the shared experience offered towards players. Their patience knows no bounds, and they have my utmost respect for carrying on despite those who make it difficult. That being said, their excuses are easy to make with an admittedly small playerbase that has been around for many years, some of them even handed a spot as an Immortal - of which there is a baffling amount with how much work is needed to be done that simply isn't. Immortal responsibilities, as stated in the previous review, are a tangled mess and held back by those absent - my limited experience, and on a completely different MUD mind you, as an Admin(glorified Customer Service in my case) makes this easier to understand and accept, although precautions should have been taken to prevent these problems from growing to the state they're presently in.

  With the aforementioned playercount is the inevitable relaxation of rules or, more accurately, a reluctance to hold people accountable. Again, the other review had mentioned how this more-or-less results in badmouthing other players(not characters) openly across public channels, both former and current with little regard for respect or privacy. I had witnessed this twice, and it did involve the participation of staff. Were this a more private environment it would be expected, but in the presence of new players and with a desperate need for such, it reflects poorly on the community and forms a terrible first impression, not to mention souring the mood for those wanting to abstain from such drama.

  Erotic Roleplay is discussed quite often and, as others have hinted at, is seemingly an obsession of the playerbase. Before accusations are leveled my way, I have no shame in partaking and, as a writer, have done my fair share of oddities for sheer amusement. I don't see it as a problem in and of itself. I see it as a problem when it is a barrier for roleplay, or what entices those to bring new players into the clique. I've witnessed it and also took part myself - offer yourself as a carrot on a stick and you will be brought in and, depending on how open you are, elevated to a more desirable status. Vella was a nobody until I set her to be sexually available, in which I found her pulled into a longstanding storyline that had been and possibly still is on hold and on a first name basis with characters that had otherwise completely ignored her regardless of past roleplay. My perspective had shifted drastically, and not in a good way - it cheapened my views of the MUD and, unfortunately, I had less respect for those who were, In-Character, prominent figures of the community. A possibly uncouth accusation, though the coincidence allows for interpretation.

  This MUD, the stories it holds, the constant additions to its codebase; they're let down by apathy. I wanted to put my heart into my character and forge her destiny, but my attempts failed. I became disappointed. When I did get involved in something important? I didn't feel I'd earned it.

So I quit.

Sindome is a really cool and fun game to play. It really captures that Dystopian feel, and really brings together the CP theme.

Some Pro's: Large playerbase - The playerbase is usually upwards of 60 at any given time. You will probably always have someone else to play with, which is a commodity in modern day mud gaming.

Easy interface - It is super easy to figure out the skills and stats system.

RP intensive - The game is heavily RP enforced!

Some con's: The OOC community. If you value your sanity or enjoy playing the game, do NOT connect to the games OOC channels. Talking to other players in an OOC is against the rules, so monitored OOC channels exist so players can casually chat about things. Huge mistake. There is a person who spends hours on there typing to themselves, some strange elitist clique that fancies themselves marginalized minorities that double as professional victims, and political activists that label anything they disagree with as Nazism, and some weird guy that follows them around agreeing with everything they say in hopes of hooking up with them (he has mentioned this multiple times). The forums are just as awful. Don't let this ruin the game for you though, just avoid these channels and you should be able to avoid the cancel culture running rampant in Sindome.

Cyberware: While there is an okay selection of cyberware, there could be tons more. The limited selection tends to leave cyber combo's as predictable and not very exciting.

Decking: Unless you are a veteran of this game, just don't even bother making a decker. You will see why.

Overall I give Sindome 7.5/10

It's not perfect, but what is?

Early last year, I popped in on this MUD while looking through the Dragonball MUDs on this site. I was looking for something nostalgic to play with a friend. I was surprised when I logged in to find its community and staff active. The changes board showed pages and pages of updates made to the game just within the last couple of days! I really didn't expect it to be so alive, as these things tend to stagnate. They were all incredibly friendly to me, with another player called Euthansia taking me up under his wing to help me out and show me around, and Schil(who is still a Head Admin) doing much the same, even allowing me to test out an archetype I wanted to play(More on those later) since the MUD was still in beta.

The second thing I noticed was that while the game still had that vaguely nostalgic feeling, its systems were VASTLY different than I was used to. Its combat is far more engaging, with a timer system on attacks to make you think about what attacks to use and when, rather than just spamming whatever your highest PL attack was. None of the stock areas that seem to come with all Saga clones are on the areas list either; Its areas are all unique and very well detailed, managing to feel very different from each other through clever use of area and room flags as well as extensive quests scattered throughout them.

Then there's the biggest unaddressed features: Its races and archetypes selection. It has a nice selection of races, both classic to Dragonball canon as well as some others which take inspiration from the series while mixing in its own flavours. These races all come with different skills, transformations and such - as you would expect - But where in most other Dragonball MUDs I've played the differences are largely cosmetic, these skills and transformations genuinely make the races feel different from each other. They accomplish this by giving every race a list of advantages and disadvantages, and coding unique affects for skills unique to that race.

As cool as that is, that's not even touching on the other thing I mentioned, the archetypes. Archetypes are a kind of sub-race or class within a given race that makes them even more unique. So for example, the Namekian race has four unique archetypes within itself! The difference between say, a Fighter Namekian and a Dragon Clan Namekian is absolutely massive. They play almost nothing alike, and they're the exact same race. Imagine how much different either one of those feels to play compared to one of the other, different races. The highest recommendation I can give is this: The system for races & archetypes is 100% the thing that hooked me into this MUD initially. I actually remember reading through the helpfiles and feeling the exact moment I knew I was hooked.

As much fun as it was, after a few weeks I actually quit the MUD for a while; Not because of anything wrong with the MUD itself, but because my friend had left for personal reasons and I didn't want to keep playing without him. Its systems are definitely addictive though, because I thought about it from time to time, wanting to hop back in and explore more of it. Wondering what sort of changes they'd made in the mean time.

Then, late last year (November, I think) I actually came back to it with friend in tow and found that as expected the updates had been MASSIVE. Races were more complete, had more skills, there were far more areas, and the game in general was bigger. Everything I liked was still there, but more refined and running more smoothly. It was fantastic! After playing around for about a week more, I knew it was something I wanted to contribute to myself so I put myself out there and they were happy to hire me on.

Seeing it from behind the scenes has only made me appreciate more what goes into making a MUD of this quality. A month or two later, it now sports TEN more areas and THREE more races than it had when I came back to it late last year. No exaggeration.

At the start of the New Year, DBNU's undergone a playerwipe and has been officially declared to be out of beta. With its fresh launch already underway, now is the absolute best time to get started with us! We have an incredibly active playerbase with upwards of 15+ online during the day and plenty of night owls as well. The community is great, and while some of them like to have a laugh or do the odd murder to each other, at the end of the day everyone's ready to help out a new player.

Thank you to the community for making playing this MUD such an overwhelmingly positive experience. Special thanks to Hokai, Schil, and Magmarashi for creating a great place for that community. :) - Clear

Dark Pawns is a very fun and rewarding MUD, beautiful in its simplicity.

There aren't 100 different races that barely differ from each other and there aren't 50 different classes full of useless skills. Three melee classes and three magic-using classes that allow you to enjoy the world within through their eyes and skills. Classes compliment each other well and you're allowed three characters on at a time, letting you have anything from a traditional tank/damage dealer/healer combo to solo mobs or two damage dealers/support classes and a healer to help other players take down larger foes.

I really love a few things about Dark Pawns: one would be the distribution of gear. Some items are available by killing a fairly easy mob yet are considered an endgame or at least an essential mid-level item. Other pieces of rare gear have very low drop rates and/or are on big mobs that require help from others. This always gives you something to do and strive for.

Another thing I love is the remort system. This allows your base character to turn into a more powerful version of the original class you pick. A mere thief can grow into an assassin, learning new skills, gaining more hit points and hitting harder. You can also continue to remort to keep getting better and better starts until you gain "perfect" stats so that you no longer have to eat or drink.

The combat and mobs you fight are all very cool. With combat it's exciting when you start to get enough decent gear to slash/pierce more difficult mobs hard, contributing to the fight more. You have to use certain skills depending on the fight, like a warrior's bash to knock a magic-using mob to the ground or a thief's circle to backstab during a fight, doing maximum damage while your tank takes hits. Better have a good tank that can rescue you in a moment's notice or you'll get OBLITERATED or EVISCERATED by the mob six times in one round, halving your hp.

The areas all have cool room descriptions and there are some very unique enemies within. Some of my favorite times were going to Amber castle to kill ghosts with my clan mates or to Grey Keep to kill Hiscdrezzez, the snake-like bastard whose room is in a no spell zone so you have to use flee/regen tactics to earn the valuable gear he drops. Other zones require waterwalk or quick traversal to get through safely but always provide good xp or cool eq to be had.

Lastly, the players. I'm not the roleplaying type and neither were these guys from what I could gather, which was a relief to me. Everyone was talking on a personal level when I joined and yet they made me feel welcome right from the beginning, answering any questions I had even when I felt annoying or knew I should just figure it out on my own but wanted to lessen my chances of dying. Clan Trinity is a newbie-focused clan of very capable players but everyone on the mud helped me in a big way, whether it be gear or knowledge; both more often than not.

All of my attempts to describe to you the majesty of Dark Pawns really pales in comparison to actually playing and learning it ... it's truly unique and a pleasure to play. My mind would drift off daily while at work or with friends, wondering what gear I could get on my own, how many levels I could grind out or what big mobs my clan and I would wack that day. Thanks to everyone for making it such a fun game and the immortals for their hard work keeping the place running smoothly.

Please check out www.dpreturns.com to look at the directions to zones while you play to get a feel for the game and the cool stuff you can eventually see. Also type prompt all and auto loot when you make a new character. All of the directions on the site start from Market Square, 4s of the Temple altar in the home town of Kir Drax'in.

Oh, by the way, player killing is allowed so don't throw a tantrum when you get killed for being the newbie.

Gameplay is marginally improved from stock DIKU but not by much. If you played a DIKU game in the past you'll be able to figure out how to play pretty easily. Most of the rest of the learning curve is figuring out how to roleplay in the world, which is also pretty easy, since standards are minimal. Just do things your character would do and you should be fine. There's no need to be flashy and write novel-length poses.

The question, really, is why would you want to play? The administration has 17 staff members on it as of this writing. The three Producers direct the game at the topmost level. They "oversee the direction of the world at large and help ensure the atmosphere of the game is constant", according to the website. What this translates to is they ensure nothing of significance changes within the game. There is certainly no worldwide political intrigue; ever since they closed Tuluk off and pretended it doesn't exist, there is no conflict between states. All of the Producers are programmers. They don't care about what makes the game a roleplaying game; things like story are beneath them. They're focused on repeatedly fixing their own mistakes and making sure the game doesn't crash. Then there are three Administrators, who are basically middle management. They try to lead independent spheres of the game, but often get embroiled in rules enforcement and other petty stuff that the Producers should really be handling. There are eight Storytellers, who manage individual clans within those spheres. But since they can only allow things the Administrators allow them to, and Producers give permission to Administrators to act, nothing actually happens since the staff are constantly tied up in a bureaucratic mess. The remaining three staff members are builders, who do an unspecified amount of work since very few new objects get added to the game, and staff are notoriously not fans of adding new things on behalf of players. This mismanaged bureaucracy allows staff to conduct a lot of unofficial actions, such as harassment of players and extensive cheating. Staff's mortal characters are easy to identify by how overpowered they are.

Given staff's focus on making sure nothing of significance actually happens, it's up to players to make the world exciting. What can they do, though? They can ask for permission and aid from staff, who then get to arbitrarily decide if the player's character has the resources and political pull needed to get something done. And if they can't secure that from the staff, then nothing of significance happens. Since it's so difficult to get staff to agree to help with anything, players are left to fend for themselves when it comes to plots. Interpersonal conflict between characters is high because staff have no control or sway over that, so it becomes the primary source of RP. What this ends up amounting to is independent characters trying to set up distribution channels, where hunters grind for raw goods to sell to crafters, who make finished goods to sell on the market. That's the extent of the economic cooperation and competition you'll find on this game. Then there's competition over "mates".which gets incredibly dumb. If you want an easy ride through the game, just roll a female human character and make her reasonably eye-catching. If you're lucky, a PC will scoop you up and will never betray you. If you're unlucky, one of the abusive staff members will send you a very pushy message that can range from unwanted flirting to outright harassment, as what happened recently. Just search for Armageddon on reddit.com/r/MUD and you will see the relevant posts eventually.

This game is in serious decline, and both the players and staff blame "rogue players" for posting negative reviews, claiming the reviews are falsified in an effort to drag the game's reputation through the mud, so to speak. To that I ask, what reputation? It's already very negative, to the point that the MUD community on Reddit associates the word "Armageddon" with rampant staff-led abuse endorsed by loyal veteran players. This review won't make a difference, but I'm sure someone from Armageddon will take issue with it. It doesn't matter to me, though. I quit the game before the holiday season and don't intend to return. And a lot of people are following me: the game's activity numbers have been down for the past several years while other roleplaying games are growing. The staff turn a blind eye to their own failures and the players assure one another that everything is fine. But everything is not fine. The whole thing is collapsing on top of them and they're too willfully blind to see it for themselves.