FiranMUX does some things very, very well. There are some problems,
however, and some key differences in philosophy from most MU*. Players
interested in joining the game would do well to understand just what
they are getting into.

On the positive side, Firan is 'newbie-friendly'. They even won an
award certifying this. The reasons behind this are probably threefold:
First, the helpfiles. Firan's news and helpfiles are the most
complete and thorough documentation I have ever seen on any game.
Secondly, the game maintains a large staff of wizards and player
helpers who constantly man the Help Channel and provide friendly
answers to just about any possible question (usually by referring the
questioner to the already-written helpfile on the topic.) Finally, it
is easy to 'jump in feet first' in the game because all characters
are pre-generated with detailed backgrounds, statistics, character
secrets, and most importantly, a set of relationships to other
characters which provide hooks for future roleplay. The many coded
systems can be a challenge for a newcomer, but with patience and the
helpful assistance of players and staff, most can be learned as-you-go
without difficulty.

Countering these positives are a series of systemic problems. Most
obviously, the many coded systems are flawed and do not serve their
apparent intent. The intent must in many cases be arbitrarily imposed
by the staff. For example, the listing page advertises 'social,
economic, and physical combat.' The social combat system is one of
the most laughable. Coded systems of gaining and losing points are
trivial in amount compared to the massive social 'hits' and
'gains' imposed by staff. It is easily observed that the best way
for a character to 'climb the social ladder' is to not have a
player. Characters on the roster make no mistakes, and thus do much
better in a system where mistakes are penalized much more often and
more heavily than good behavior is rewarded. Perhaps the most glaring
proof the system is flawed is that periodically staff will go through
and arbitrarily assign social 'hits' to people who have simply
accrued too many points, calling them 'social climbers'. It seems
useless to have a competitive system which rewards success by putting
you back where you started. While the reasoning for this (to keep the
middle class below the nobility) seems reasonable, the reasoning also
negates the need for the system at all.

This same arbitrariness is found in the game's economic system. The
advertisement to 'use your economic skills to ... deplete the city's
supply of a given resource -- driving up the market, or instigating
riots and strikes!' is not really possible. Food riots are sparked
primarily by OOC player inactivity and neglect, rather than anyone's
IC use of coded economic skills. Additionally, the most efficient way
to 'make' money in the game is via an OOC means: logging on at least
once every 6 hours to have your character sleep and nap, storing up
'energy reserve' points which can then be sold completely
independent of the game's market. Again, the staff has on at least
two recent occasions arbitrarily taken money from commoners and handed
it out to the nobility (once completely arbitrarily and on another
occasion citing 'building repairs'). Other arbitrary economic
changes keep trying and failing to fix the system, such as making gems
ten times as valuable overnight, adding 'tolls' for commoners which
do little economically but suppress gathering in central locations for
roleplay, and deciding that there's an iron shortage which can only
really be enforced by arbitrary external rules, not code.

Physical combat is driven by character statistics, and has many
flaws. One key problem is that players are allowed to raise their (IC)
skills by accumulating (OOC-earned) experience points. Characters who
have had active players thus have better skills than characters who
are on the roster. While this seems a nice way to reward longevity
with players, it unbalances the combat system. Another key problem in
the combat system is that while many aspects of combat (hit/miss/how
hard) are determined by character stats and a roll of the dice, combat
is regulated by timers which are entirely deterministic. If your
character's stats aren't as good as the other character's, he will
always fight faster than you and can easily take advantage of the
engaging/disengaging rules to prev2ent you from ever landing a hit.

In addition to the problems outlined with the coded systems, Firan is
showing signs of 'age'. While at its inception, with a small
playerbase, small roster of characters, and fresh plots, secrets, and
active 'heroes' who drove the initial storyline, it was no doubt an
outstanding game. Through no fault of the staff, a major event
occurred in January 2003 where a player (through cheating) essentially
incited a massive civil war and caused the common enemy to invade and
essentially ended the story. Staff was faced with several bad choices
in trying to recover the game, ultimately choosing to make much of the
event a 'dream from the gods' and to advance the timescale to try to
get the next generation in power. Unfortunately, this still left much
of the damage from the dream event, such as the outing of many of the
key characters' secret plots and intrigues, and the game has never
recovered.

Also part of the 'age' problem is the large roster of characters,
which easily grow out of date. While the staff makes an effort to keep
these updated, there are simply too many to possibly keep up with, and
these out-of-date characters present a challenge to new players, who
rarely stick around to play them consistently. Active players with
relationships to these characters must constantly make excuses for why
they're not around. Inevitably, the 'honeymoon' period for a new
character ends with some of the characters' closest relationships
going back on the roster and never being consistently played again,
leading to frustration. While in many cases a character 'abandoned'
by most of their family would likely go with them, the practice of
'alt-hopping' is strongly frowned upon, and thus players are
pressured to 'stick it out' with situations greatly lacking in
potential.

Another problem of the game's age is the constantly expanding staff.
Most of the best players end up joining the staff, which results in
them being so overwhelmed by their staff duties that their characters,
usually some of the most important feature roles on the game, become
very inactive. To the staff's credit, they do spend some time trying
to run plots and generate roleplay, but are more frequently
overwhelmed by simply trying to monitor, some might feel, too closely.

Monitoring is one policy point where Firan differs greatly from
almost every other MU* I have played: there is no expectation of
privacy. Staff can, and does, spy on roleplay, allegedly to reward
excellent roleplay or keep tabs on running plots. Almost everything
done in the game is logged in some manner somewhere, including a staff
bulletin board which records every time two characters have carnal
relations.

Another key policy point players ought to be willing to abide by is
the chief wizardess' 'living room' philosophy. She treats the
online game as an extension of the tabletop game originally started in
her living room, and players are guests there. It is poor manners to
complain about your hostess, even if you walk outside to do it, and
you can be banned from the game for public or private criticism of the
staff. Even by posting this somewhat negative review here, I fear such
a reprisal. But just as if I had people in my living room I'd
probably have different standards for my old friends and new guests,
there are varying standards on the game for these categories of
people. There is most definitely a clique of players (staff and those
few privy to the staff gossip) and those who are forever on the
outside (usually the subject of the staff gossip, where negative
opinions are constantly reinforced leaving little room for change).
Just don't try to point that out in any forum where it can be
attributed to your name.

A final policy point stemming from the living room philosophy is that
of fairness to repeat victims of harassment. In any individual
situation, staff strives to act fairly, but this is sometimes
difficult in a 'he said/she said' situation. Most disturbing, staff
has actually posted a policy where a player can be penalized for
'taking too much staff time.' Even if you have done nothing wrong,
but have been wronged by a clique of several other players picking on
you, making complaints about each of them puts you at risk of
overusing scarce staff resources and receiving a punishment. Sometimes
a player doesn't even need to actually do anything at all, but if
their name comes up in an argument between two other players, it can
count against them. As with complaints about staff, sometimes it's
best to keep your mouth shut and endure the inequity.

In summary, Firan is a large game that's easy to step into (if you
don't happen to get a stale character), has many excellent
roleplayers (if they're not too busy staffing), and has many coded
systems (that you can pretend are balanced) to try to enhance the
realism. If you are willing to give up your roleplaying privacy, your
ability to complain, and don't mind the occasional arbitrary staff
decisions, you might enjoy it. Personally, I would caution against
getting too involved in an aging game which has lost its lustre and
simply outgrown and outlived the days of its prime.