PoS~ Staffed by a rather large group of imms for an Ack!Mud, there are at minimum four active IMMs working on code trying to get new things implimented.

Reboots happen once a week now, typically on Sunday night. Reboots can bring in anything from new areas or skills to a batch of new bug fixes or tweaks.

The mud has two active playerbases. I say this because there's the American crowd, and the Asian crowd. There are typically 6-10 active American players on during normal hours, and 4-6 Asian players on late at night.

Low end leveling (A nightmare on most muds) is rather easy here, allowing for quick immersion into the world. There is currently a lot to do upon realming (Attaining the highest level group), including questing (You can have up to 5 uniques wearable at a time.), and rare checking (The mud offers a wide variety of rares at realm, which can keep you busy for weeks trying to find them all).

Upon reaching Legend (The highest achievable point currently in the game. Technically, you can only wear two more pieces of equipment, but you do get several new skills), you can trade in experience points for quest points, encouraging high level characters to do more than just idle, with more things in the works for legends to do and strive for.

As with all ack muds, classes and races are a little unbalanced. Good aligned adepts still struggle to do some of the things evil aligned adepts can do easily (IE, quest/gather equipment), and not all races are currently useful, but unlike most Ack muds, the imm staff on PoS are working with the players to fix this and strengthen the variety players have when chosing their character.

The PK system is the same old established Ack Mud system, and isn't really stressed on PoS as the playerbase is still trying to establish itself. Most players are old Ack players who have known each other for years, and tend to do very little serious PKing verse each other. That is not to say the mud does not cater to people who want to PK, as there are several players who can PK well and spar often to keep their skills up.

The class system is very tiered. There are 5 basic classes everyone gets (War, Thi, Cle, Mag, Psi), with 80 levels per class. This in turn translates to two remort classes (Necromancer, Sorcerer, Knight, Monk, Assassin). After that, players can choose from 1 of 6 (Exorcist, Living Shadow, Dark Templar, Blademaster, Malakim, or Deity) realm classes, each which has two different Legend classes to chose from at end game, for a total of 9 classes worth of skills at max level.

Character paths are heavily defined by the remort classes you take, as well as the realm classes. Legend classes for the most part add a little flavor, but only a few REALLY affect how your character will be played.

Unlike most Ack!Muds, eq stats are insane or extreme. A race with low dex will find its AC lacking before uniques and rare equipment, just as a race with low strength will find its hitroll/damroll lacking.

A stock adept probably won't last verse a fully equiped, rared, uniqued adept, as it should be. I view this as a reward for people who put forth the effort to gather that equipment, and not as a punishment for people who want to be able to stand toe to toe with more experienced players without putting forth the same effort.

There are currently 5 clans, of which 3 are active. The current five clans are Helsing, Unleashed, The Fallen, The Unforgiven, and Celestial Abyss.

Celestial Abyss is a neutral, newbie friendly clan with a lot of good information for begining players.

The Fallen is a pk active clan with a lot of active members. Unleashed are 'Team Asia' so to speak, with most of the muds Asian-located players in it.

Helsing are a semi-active clan that claims to hunt 'Super naturals' with 3 active members who are almost always on, and several semi-active members.

The Unforgiven is sort of the dark horse clan. Sometimes they are very active, and sometimes you can go for days without seeing their members.

If I was just starting out on the mud, I'd chose CA, Fallen, or Unleashed and then make a choice on a permanent clan once I had a better grasp of the mud. Or, better yet, bring your friends, and push an inactive clan out of a clan slot. Haha.

There -are- supers (Werewolves, Vampires) in this mud, but they aren't currently active. (There may be a few active supers on the mud, but not many) Supers are currently in the process of being re-vamped and re-balanced, so ideas are welcome while this is being done.

The quest system is standard Ack!Mud fair, being level/mob/timer driven. There are a few alternate means of getting quest points, but questing still remains the fastest.

Other than that, the atmosphere is very friendly and people are incredibly helpful. The imm staff is active, or will at least tell you when real life issues are piling up so they have to take a few days off. The only bad thing is that maybe they are a little too relaxed when it comes to dealing with problem players, and maybe other than the big three, there isn't much power delegated.

There was one problem player who drove away at least 5 other players that they kept trying to rehabilitate rather than get rid of.

Two or three of the imms don't have the power to run games or imm quests, which is a shame.

Still, easily the best Ack!Mud I've played in forever, and with a continued growth of it's player base, I can see it becoming the best.

One wish of mine would be that they contact other imms or allow people with code experience the chance to add to the code. There are tons of ACK! snippets out there and players with ACK! coding experience who have little things to offer. Allowing those players the ability to volunteer their code to the mud would be nice.

-Redrum 16MAY06