The Gathering... has many options for players. A large world to explore, and variations of colors to use to customize everything from your character description, to gear, to even your character's own player home. There are many commands that can be used towards making your roleplay experience fun.

It used to be a good MUD. It's gone downhill. I truly hope each year it'll start to get better, and when it seems like it does or will it degrades once more. :(

Warning: This MUD is truly for Adults. It has sexual content even in "safe" roleplay places, and that can be read in the roleplay notes, including Bestiality, Incest, Underage Sex (14 years is the minimum for SRP for the character, though players are much older), Rape, Fetal Deaths, Kidnapping, and fetishes I dare not name, and some of these that are combined. If you cannot handle these roleplay topics, even in hearing about them, move onto another game.

TLDR: I suggest moving onto another MUD where the staff is truly attentive to all that is needed of ALL the player base equally. If this MUD gets into the high 10 ranks it may very well have changed to truly be able to handle new players. To this day of this review posted, the staff is incapable of handling who they have now that have been within them for years to a decade, and who are likely getting fed up with the staff and player behavior alike, though doing things against their very own rules.

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The staff don't really want to do anything about it. This game needs new staff, and kick off the inactive ones or the ones who aren't doing the roles they had agreed to take on. More, or new staff, to take over roles/duties that are necessary to the continuing success of the game. Especially to help their players in roleplay that has to do with the world. There is a control issue with the owners (one in particular who has created the entirety of the world, changed, and pretty much taken it over from what it used to be), and everything that owner has control over or knows will be put on hold for months to a OVER a YEAR when this owner is away.

The players are expected to be patient, to wait that long, to find other things (when no other staff can help, and what game actually works like this?), or the player (not the staff in question) will be made to feel guilty for not being more patient. The smart thing for them to set us is to make it that not one staff member is in charge of any one thing. Then they all can do things for the game and players, and when one is on hiatus another can easily take over. The staff now will get frustrated with players "whining" about these things. They have no remorse for their players, and will expect the players to have remorse for the staff who are having troubles IRL.

Players are not there to know about the real life situations of the staff, or other players. They are there to PLAY and the duty of the staff is to make this game, in its entirety, a fun and welcome place to play.

TG is essentially a gloried sex chat room with the minor aspect of roleplay for players to live out their fantasies.

You will find married couples with numerous characters intertwined with each other (a 10 alt limit), having numerous children. Children "born" in the game will be raised to the age of 14, the legal age a character can be Sex Roleplayed with, and be sexually involved with their own parents, with possible children being born from that.

There are many characters who are incestual. Yes, incest is allowed. Yes, underaged characters are allowed to take part in SRP with characters 3-10+ times their age and experience. If none of this appeals to you, do NOT play here, because these topics are RAMPANT even when you're in the main recall point. That main recall point is where everyone will take their cuddling, kissing, and conversation where you will read all about it.

Many great players have left because of the behavior, insults, guilt-trips, and excuses of the staff and other players, despite those players who left having being very focused on helping this game for the better. This leaves only behind the ones who were the true focus of the problems. You will find a lot of victim blaming going on with those who have the control.

If the rank of this game ever gets up into the 20's, this may signify that it has finally changed because it truly has proven itself to its players to be able to handle more players. Either that or someone cheated to get this MUD up into the higher ranks JUST for players, without anything changing at all.

If you come here, you will get a friendly welcome and what help you might need if you can't figure it out yourself. You will quickly, within days, be able to get to the highest level, however you will soon realize there are many things that need to improve. Take my word for it, those things you will find now are not new. They have needed to be improved for YEARS, and this is because the staff are not focused upon them as being priority, and the staff are the only ones capable of changing it.

- Helpfiles are out of date and will not be updated within a reasonable amount of time after a new feature that would need a helpfile is added into the code.

- Typo's will be found in the descriptions that have not been changed. (You would think that being primarily English and text-based, they'd know the difference between sense and since, your and you're, its and it's, etc...) Fixing these are a repetitive task, however is an improvement to make a better impression on players that may see this as being part of quality on a text-based game.

- Maps in some areas will be confusing, having rooms landing over each other, when there is no purpose for it to be so confusing.

- Areas will be closed off or moved WITHOUT any roleplay, nor any warning/notice to the players. Their excuse? The specific staff who have made those areas have full control of where they go despite those areas having been there for many, many years, and older players being very used to them being where they were.

- In character laws may be RETCON'd into the game without any roleplay. It will be expected of players that this has always been part of it.

- The "safe place" of the main recall point will have numerous rules and laws. However, these aren't for everyone. These are laws of convenience for the staff to put upon the trouble-making players, and not treat every player equally who doesn't follow them. Even staff will be found to break these laws on their mortal characters.

- Not all the staff know the same things about the game. You THINK they would, having been given an immortal staff position AND a God character AND access to so many commands to do as they please to their players. There is a severe lack of communication and knowledge among them. Several of their long term players know far more, sadly more often than the staff themselves, and this is a very poor mark for a MUD to have that is roleplay focused.

- Roleplay with the staff, especially one called a "Global", will quite often be directed at their own mortal characters being in the spotlight instead of an overall general story for those involved.

- Staff feels they can do whatever they want to make it easier on themselves. EX: transferring a player without proper consent to a place where roleplay is being held in a group, instead of supporting roleplay for the character to get to the location on their own.

- Every DM that puts together their own "Global" is different in how they run their global. Though they have helpfiles, anything can change depending on who it is that's running it. Do not expect Staff#1 running a global to be the same as Staff#3 was over 6 months ago following the helpfiles or use the same ideas.

- Both staff and newbie helpers will insult each other, and other players, over OOC channel, which is stated to be playful (though this tone cannot be portrayed through text), even knowing it is against the general rules of the game with OOC channel behavior. These few simply can't seem to help themselves from this "playfulness" knowing that it's not acceptable to all, and frowned upon by other players, scaring players off of new and old or having OOC completely turned off leaving these insulting players to control the OOC channel.

- More could be added but I will stop it there...

The staff have given up on being a well-communicative, player-focused group. They are instead acting as a loyal-to-the-one-owner "friend like family" group who can care less about the needs of the players, and more so upon the constant needs of themselves. Unfortunately being on staff is often a thankless, repetitive job, and to do what is needed for the players entertainment will help to keep those players and get new players.