Lament is a fun mud, with a rich, addictive crafting system, great roleplay background, history, and atmosphere. I've loved playing it, despite the flaws it does have, so feel free to take my criticisms below with a grain of salt and try the game out for yourself.

First, the pros: * A generally great staff of immortals, with one exception (see below). * An addictive and comprehensive crafting system. * A vast and interesting wilderness to explore. * Features coded to help visually impaired players (although, see below for some qualifications). * An expansive skill system with free-form learning -- You learn skills by performing relevant activities. * A custom style editor -- fight with as much defense or offense as you wish, without relying on precoded styles. * A relatively fun ranged combat system, with some caveats noted below.

And the cons: * A bland melee combat system, with no flavour messages, special moves, or bonus mastery messages and techniques. You simply autocombat swing, and your opponent does likewise. * An unreliable ranged combat system that's not likely to see changes in the near future -- the staff have intimated that rebalancing ranged combat is nowhere on their priorities list. You can aim for a bodypart and hit 20 other different spots, then switch to aiming for one of those other parts to try and cripple it... only to finally hit the spot you've been trying to hit all that time. Damage is always extremely random, and the very expensive end-game arrow upgrades provide no recognizable bonus over any other arrow types. * Despite crippling wounds and amputations, creatures do not bleed to death, completely destroying the immersion. * Animals who are completely amputated can often still wriggle across the ground faster than a player can walk, jog, or even run, unless they've put in a lot of time to grind up their movement skills. * There's a distinct lack of liquid crafting, so you can't create any beverages, poisons, or liquid resources for other crafts. * very slow developmental speed for core changes. Content changes do come in with reliability, but if you want a staff sling or a wagon, for example, you'll be waiting a long time. * The features to help visually impaired players aren't yet quite complete. Sighted players can see vast distances on their ASCII map, whereas visually impaired players using the screen reader mode are limited to only ever seeing adjacent tiles, making exploration well nigh impossible. * No player housing. You're limited to leaving all the stuff you've worked for out in canvas tents without any degree of security. Furthermore, if you threaten to return the favour by raiding the camp of the offenders, you are somehow breaking their courtesy rules. * Arbitrary staff member(s) who can decide to deal out character punishments at a whim. If you have any divergent views, keep them to yourself. They'll treat a difference of opinion as a breach of the rules and ban you on the spot. Also, don't criticize the mud. If your criticisms somehow influence another player in a way that doesn't impress the staff, they will add it to your file as if it were a direct offense.

There are a lot of other features and criticisms I am missing, but I'm sure you'll make your own conclusions about the game anyway. Just bear in mind that the game is in, and has been in alpha state for years. Despite that and my own experiences, you may find Lament to be a great home. For anyone else who doesn't like snails's pace development or arbitrary rules, consider another mud to play for now.