Throughout the past 8 years or so, I'd played Awake or its derivatives off and on. Although never for any given length of time, until September or October of 2006 when I started again and got hooked.

The codebase is exceptionally well done, with a system that's almost perfectly matched to canon Shadowrun. For the most part, players are helpful and engage in interesting and well-performed roleplay, which was I think, the main reason that I was hooked to the game.

I went from having little to no experience with the MUD and having only a general understanding of the concepts of canon Shadowrun rules to having an intricate knowledge of both. After a few months of playing I became a newbie helper. A position designed, as you may guess, to help newbies with my experience and knowledge of the MUD, and awhile after that, I received the position of questor so that I could encourage RP on the MUD.

Awakened Worlds is a fantastic MUD environment, that has kept me vastly entertained for the past year and a half. Most of the players are wonderful, as is the majority of the staff.

On the downside, one will likely experience problems with entrenched older players. Due to changes in the code such as the reduction in the economy, elimination of many bugs, changes in equipment availability, lowering of skill caps, etc. older players have obtained a profound advantage that newer players will have difficulty matching. Furthermore, some older players have become so entrenched that they are nearly immune to the rules that the immortals are supposed to enforce. Often one will encounter a double-standard being in play in any dispute between an older and newer player, and sometimes older players will perform blatantly illegal actions without receiving punishment. After winding up on the wrong end of an older player/newer player dispute, that began via OOC harassment through code exploitation, I lost most of my interest in the MUD.

Despite all of the redeeming factors in its rewarding RP, intricate code base, and for the most part fantastic playerbase, I can't bring myself to persist in playing on a MUD where the rules do not apply equally to everybody. I hope that I've done the MUD justice with a fair and honest review, and hope that those things that are wrong change for the better.

-- Meursault