I heard alot about Cybersphere from several friends of mine on another MOO. Some things were bad, some things were good. I decided to see for myself what the game was like, so I popped on and did the little Guest tour, which was certainly interesting, even though my guest character wasn't strong enough to pick up the gun he was issued during the tour.

I started the registration process dealie, which meant I had to submit a character history for the staff to review, which personally I think is a pretty good idea. The staff get to make sure you're a quality roleplayer and not just some little kid who's going to break all the rules. So, I spend several days scavenging through their timeline and game history in order to make my character's history intertwine with the game history, so I'll feel more a part of the game. I submit it, it gets approved, I get my password and whatnot to log in and start chargen.

Chargen was cool and though confusing at times, most things had little explinations and descriptions, so I at least knew a little bit about what I was doing. In the end I had a rather crappy, but not terribly so, pistol-wielding combat character with some biking knowledge. I did my @nudities and everything and was approved. Then jumped in game.

Though many of the room descriptions were terribly bland (or nonexistent), and the map helpfile was out of date, the players were really helpful and fun to RP with. A nice bartender girl, Cordelia was very friendly in helping me get used to the new MOO and several other characters were just as inviting. Lazarus, another player, was kind enough to hire my character on the spot, and within the first two days I'd already had several memorable RP experiences with him. The players seem real great there.

My problem, however, is not with the players. By the third day or so, my character got a job with an NPC who ran a casino and offered rather low-paying automated jobs for players, either courier runs or little jobs where you would just have to stand around and wait for some shady guy to come in and meet her. Anyway, I'd received the latter job when another player walked in, who the NPC apparently didn't like. She yelled at him to leave, then immediately attacked him. My character of course jumps in thinking this is the fellow who he's supposed to help her with if there are any problems. My character KO's, wakes up to see the NPC dead, then KO's again. He wakes up being dragged to the doctor by the player. Some neat RP ensues, and I think that's that.

When I return to the NPC's place to get another job, she immediately attacks my character with a katana. He barely survives. Every time he walks in, she attacks him, so he figures 'Since she's the only person who hates me, should I die, I'll check back here to see what's up.' (Because there is a clone-related life-insurance deal with most cyberpunk games I've been on, including Cybersphere). Not so much a good idea as I later discovered.

Of course, I didn't know that this would really last too long. I figured it was a bug. I couldn't figure out how to contact the admin though, short of email, so I ended up submitting the bug using the @bug command. I also attempted to page several administrators, including one named 'Master_Shake.' We'll get back to him later.

The next day, I sign on and decide to go see what's up with this NPC chick anyway. My character walks in and she's like 'Leave, now!' And immediately jumps him. He gets away, but then decides to go back in and attempt to finish the job. He's angry. Of course, he ends up dying. His clone pops out of the 'vats' and because of all of his problems with her, he figures he'll go see if that's who dunnit. Of course it was, and he found his corpse there. He grabbed it and managed to get away before she attacked again. Got his stuff back.

Now, I understand that this probably would look fishy if you'd been ignoring that player's pages about the issue previously. I suppose this is what had been happening, as Master_Shake took my character out of the game to reprimand me. I, of course, was a bit peeved, but apologized for seeming rude when I mentioned that he must've been ignoring my pages.

We continued to talk, though I was terribly confused at what he was trying to say. Apparently it made sense to him that my character would be attacked on-sight by this NPC when he had tried to save this NPC woman's life. Though I disagreed with him, he was at least civil towards me, though he did treat me as if I had the intelligence of a child. Before we could get very far into the conversation however, another administrator appeared who went by 'El Presidente.' I have never been treated with such disrespect by a MOO/MUD administrator in my entire 8 or so years experience with them. Because of this I decided that I would not bother the fine staff over at Cybersphere ever again with my presence. I salute them on their ability to ignore and insult the intelligence of their playerbase.

I give Cybersphere a 3/10.