Long post ahoy! Consider yourself warned.
Armageddon MUD is the best role-playing MUD you're going to find. While it's not perfect, if you come in with the right expectations, you can have a lot of fun. No game - ever - has made my heart pound from the stress of being hunted by enemies, sad (or happy!) to see another PC die (or get what was coming to them), or as curious to discover answers that I did not have. The perma-death and relationship building, along with the sometimes cruel and unforgiving environment full of things that can surprise you for better or more often worse, is unparalleled. If this sounds cool to you, dive in and see what you think.
There are a wide variety of character archetypes to play from the coded perspective, and an infinite number of personalities and social traits to play as. The game has a karma system to unlock more powerful coded abilities and races that require special play, but even at the 0 karma level there's so many possibilities you could play for years and not explore all of them.
At its core, the game is about a broken world that is ruled by a couple of god king despots and their lackeys. Generally speaking, your PC will be coming from squalor and trying to make something of themselves and just survive, frankly. The fun of the game is with interaction with other players via their PCs. There are some true stars that are a lot of fun to interact with. Staff position certain players in leadership roles to facilitate clan play and others are promoted up through the ranks organically themselves. Catching one of these PCs and getting hired on is the best way for a new player to learn the ropes. A good leadership PC facilitates plots for everyone around them, both in and out of their clan.
Just a few blurbs to address a couple of the other reviews I read here. Not tooting my own horn, however I played heavily for well over a decade before joining staff for a multi-year stint (now retired) at that as well, so I have a pretty good grasp on the world, its mechanics, how the game works, how the staff works, and so on. Consider me "woke" when it comes to ArmageddonMUD.
Re: The "OOC" community around the game can be a weak point. * The discussion board on the official game isn't the most welcoming of places (the word toxic gets used and sometimes that's accurate) and sometimes there are back channel discussions between players that cause problems. You aren't supposed to talk about in character stuff when you aren't playing the game "in character" and when this happens, it's always bad. That's fair and something the game could definitely improve on. * There's also a self-promoting 'community' of people who seem to enjoy bashing the game endlessly, despite largely having vowed to have long ago quit playing it(?), which seems to speak to how passionate people get about Arm - for better or worse. Mostly they complain about staff, often as a result of staff penalizing them for a rule violation or being a toxic member of the community (see above). While some fraction of this is warranted, as staff do make mistakes sometimes - more of it falls between misguided arguments and outright libel. Some of the more negative reviews here smell like they come from this group, and should not be taken at face value. I'd encourage anyone who is intrigued by the game to give it a shot and make your own judgement instead. * On a more positive note, semi-recently, the staff has opened a Discord server that seems to be a pretty chill place where people talk nicer with one another, help new players, and so on. * Not participating in the OOC channels at all is largely viable, though some clans will expect you to read the clan GDB forum for coordinating playtimes - and I would recommend reading the staff announcements section of the GDB but you don't even need to make an account there to do that.
Re: coded skills and so forth
* If you're interested in the kind of mud where you go out and own things in combat as your primary activity, there are better choices out there.
* The other variant here is players who want to "grind up" to be "the best at
Re: Karma * Karma reviews were re-opened in the last year or two and are fully operational now as far as I know. They stopped doing them while they were overhauling the classes and the magick system. Players who lack the karma to try a role can also "special application" a role that's beyond their reach. This is an excellent way to get noticed and experience with karma roles, when played responsibly. * As of several years ago, the karma system is codified that players must meet certain criteria to be graded at various levels of karma. While there's still some subjectivity to it, it's a lot better than it was in the distant past where staff could just arbitrarily hook people up with karma. The new system, while imperfect, is infinitely more fair. * If players want more karma, best thing to do is special app something at +1 their karma level and play it responsibly for a respectable period of time (before dying to a scrab, getting thrown in the arena for insubordination, and so on).
Re: Simple statements about staff and fair expectations * Staff are players who work part-time to support the game. They have jobs, families, and so on - just like you. Do unto others... * Generally speaking, most plots are supposed to be player-run, not run by staff. When staff run plots, it's often to orchestrate some larger change that is happening in the game that needs framing. * Staff can't make everyone happy, all the time. Literally impossible - someone is always unhappy with any decision that gets made about the game, regardless of which way it goes. * Staff don't have cheaty avatars or run around killing players, helping their friends, or anything of that nature. This categorically does not happen. * While it's not required, communicating with the staff via character reports is a good way to get your PC involved in plots and is one criteria for earning karma.
Re: Sex, consent, female stereotyping, etc. * While there absolutely is "erotic" role play, it is by no means required, and you won't be excluded from plots because you don't "mudsex." You do you.
* The blurb about the female characters being treated living sex toys is up to the portrayal of the PC. As one might expect, more than half of players are male, and some of them play female PCs who are described with barbie-like proportions and are shallowly portrayed in-game as primarily sexual entities. This much I agree with, and while some (including me) find it distasteful, there's also an audience for that amongst the playerbase. To be fair, some female players also enjoy this sort of roleplay and do the same sort of thing, which propagates this phenomena. However, there are also female PCs that never engage in this sort of play. Sometimes, male players might imprint their real life prejudices into the game and treat female PCs as fragile or needing protection, opening doors for them, chivalry - and all that. This is literally against the rules as Zalanthan females are expressly defined as being equivalently strong, smart, and capable in all respects to their male counterparts. The staff team (up to and including the producer level) has a pretty strong feminist streak over the years and the no-BS rules around equality, consent, and so on reflect this. Bottom line is that while a female PC might occasionally run into a male player who plays outside the bounds (loosely defined above) that is the exception rather than the rule, and they should be called out on it if and when it happens. See above point about it not being required and there's a long list of extremely successful female PCs who weren't at all about sex.
* Re: Desertman's reply to the review that I discuss above - Desertman's Sept 29 post is excellent and he is spot on. As a staffer I was familiar with the player, attest to his credentials (including not always getting along with staff - haha) and will heartily +1 to everything he said here. Also, the game could use you man - you ought to return!
* Lastly! If someone was really having sex in a tavern, in front of a crowd, you should have wished up about it and staff should have responded. If you did this and got no response, it's probable that no staff were around at the time. That's both ICly and OOCly inappropriate. You could have also submitted a player complaint request through the website and that would ensure it was investigated by an admin or producer.
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