When I first started playing Accursed Lands, I was quite confused. There was no clear purpose to the game, no obvious mobs that needed defeating, and my character got banged up pretty badly by even the seagulls that were wandering around my starting city.

Then I realized what Accursed Lands was all about, the roleplaying. After I'd explored my starting city for a while, a bit confused (since the MUD I came from had a graphic map in a custom client), I managed to find my way into the wilderness. My jaw dropped as I saw the full color ASCII map open up and show that I was standing in the middle of a group of islands surrounded by water for as far as I could see.

After I swam a bit to an adjacent island, looking for something interesting or perhaps another player to interact with, I found both. There were some wood products that had been strewn about in a particular area of forest that also housed a lane leading up to a monastery.

I decided to hang around, looking at the furniture and things, when another player walked up to me and started showing me the ropes of the game (most likely sensing my newbieness). The transition was very smooth, and soon enough he had taken me to the mainland, where I saw my second city, a bustling harbor town with a great bazaar (full of player shops).

I had a pretty smooth entry, but even for those that don't get as lucky as I did, there are mentors available to newbies and a newbie channel to ask basic questions about syntax and other sorts of things.

However, be warned. On AL, we take roleplay very seriously, and to limit the amount of OOC knowledge transfer, however incidental, to characters, there's a strict IC/OOC separation policy. In addition to not using OOC information IC, you're expected to stay silent about IC information when talking on channels or, hopefully, even between friends on AIM and such.

But in any case, AL's got such a rich theme that's so fun to discover for yourself, you'd probably be pretty angry at anyone who ruined the suprises for you anyway.

AL's a great game with a lot of interesting things to do for everyone. Crafters, socializers, explorers, heck, even PKers have a lot to do in AL (a quick note about PK; it's -got- to be roleplayed, random slaying for no reason isn't tolerated). Our skill-based learn-it-by-trying system is one of the most realistic out there, and with a busy team of creators we're only getting better by the day.

Come check us out!