In way of introduction, I've been playing Buffymud for a rather long time of and on. I've always thought that it was an especially promising game because of the way it's designed and how much freedom is given to players to create their own stories. Because I believe Buffymud's best attribute is it's code, I'll mainly be addressing those features that really make this mud pop and not rather transient aspects such as the playerbase.

The main draw of Buffymud for me in the earlier years was just how much control and code support players were given to design their own characters. Demons in particular have a rather wide array of customization available to them in the form of 'buffs' they can take instead of more typical skills or spells. Things like giving your character a functional tail or wings that you could then describe independently from your main description was and is just so very appealing compared to what you find on a typical mud. This leads to tremendous diversity in the types of creatures you can create either from your own mind or based on existing fiction.

On top of this there's an additional system which is based on killing mobs within aggro areas. Techniques are obtained every other kill or so and can be used to customize you character further, regardless of race. Despite the name, they're used to unlock a number of unique abilities such as the ability to fly without wings, resist or improve your ability to cause various types of damage, and select from a number of demon buffs without requiring you to have demon as a race. This allows for concepts such as a demon who is otherwise human except for having wings or a vampire whose advanced age has granted him clawed hands.

There are a 104 different techniques and it'd be silly to go through them all, but I hope by bringing it up, some idea of just how versatile the system is becomes apparent. From what I can tell from playing, quite a number of builds are feasible so long as some idea of what those stats can do is kept in mind as well. The game has three physical stats, three magic stats, three demon stats, two stats for guns, two endurance stats, and researching which is used to look up player histories, concepts, and retrieve information on player events. Even though there are so many different attributes, players can often mix and match between as many as they like. Classes limit some options and control what skills can be purchased, but are mostly responsible for the cost of training each stat in particular. Demons and half demons are the only ones who are able to invest in the demon stats, but otherwise, any distribution is legitimate as long as it makes sense to the player. Unless you over invest in one direction, I think you'll be hard pressed to make a build which isn't at least competitive in some aspect.

Great, you can bring to life a lot of really crazy concepts with just a little imagination and effort, but what about the world, right? Besides your typical methods of RP and interacting with other players such as coded combat and emotes, there are additional ways to reach out and affect them or the world. This can be done through captures, confrontations, showdowns, a few loose commands that can be done at any time, and events. At any time when your character can be incapacitated, that is to say whenever you're beaten up or voluntarily incapacitate your character due to RP, a number of options become immediately available to whoever is looming above you. Right off the bat, if someone wants to describe some wound you obtained in the fight or inflict something new on you, they can use a command to place a line in your description describing it which lasts around an hour of play. Your captor decides to give you a few bruised ribs then drags you off to the lair of his choice. Pending rescue from a party of your friends, it's time to RP a capture.

Basically in this system, the captor decides among a handful of coded options what will best fit the successful outcome of the RP they're planning. Like a vampire, for example, might choose 'drain' to mimic the affects of feeding on you while you lay there helpless to stop them, but free to react with emotes. Once started, a timer that only the captor can see ticks down to allow a chance for you to be saved. So long as RP continues at a reasonable pace during that time, the effects are immediately applied when the timer reaches zero. This gives conflict between adversaries a more engaging and fun dimension for both parties instead of merely sending them to some other point on the grid after they've been bested in combat.

Confrontations and Showdowns are ways to make more lasting or even permanent changes to other characters. These commands convert experience and time online into the potential to do a number of things such as making those lines in people's descriptions that I spoke of earlier last substantially longer. In this way confrontations are able to approximate more dramatic, but temporary effects like broken limbs, being imprisoned, or forcing someone's alignment to change such as the microchip did for Spike in the show while Showdowns allow for more drastic options such as ensouling, maiming, or even killing someone permanently.

These are only some examples, but actions can have real consequences so long as the player is willing to put in the work to merit it. These attempts aren't without risk however because while the player is saving up enough XP and playtime to do whatever they plan, they're vulnerable to the majority of options themselves should another player catch and beat them up.

Then there are events. Basically, players are able to run their own story arcs complete with scheduled gatherings, a wide variety of global or targeted affects, and the ability to assume a storyteller position. For example, you're RPing a troubled high school student who's dabbling in the occult and think a great way to get revenge on your peers is by raising an army of undead zombies to rampage across the town. In a set of three descriptions, you lay out what should be known without effort, what should be known after research, and what should be known after investigating further. At first, everyone only has access to the first description which serves as a kind of hook to lure people into your RP. Eventually someone's bound to at least be curious and dedicate a chunk of their time to getting access to your second description. Afterward, the only way they can proceed is by RPing. This can be done either submitting logs of the RP or by asking you to oversee the RP in real time through a set of commands that essentially allow you to post text to the room the RP is occurring in without being present yourself. This allows you to describe scenes and let the other participants interact with the world or NPCs in it which are important to your event. When they're done, you need to decide if what occurred merits releasing your final description to them or if they'll need to try again. Should you decide to let them have it, they're faced with the decision of whether to come up with a solution to stop your event and then RP it out. Finally, you then decide how effective that attempt was with a percentage. Whenever the attempts add up to a hundred, your event is considered thwarted. All of this can be a rather quick process or quite lengthy depending on how complex or powerful the event is.

As with everything in the game, there are ways for players to police bad RP themselves as well. All these powerful tools come together to give the playerbase a lot to work with to create exciting and dynamic RP that is backed up by code, but there is more than I'm able to write about in such a small review.

There are player organizations that can battle for territory, player houses, customizable shops where items can be restrung and sold, and RP rooms to mimic locations that aren't accounted for on the grid.

There's also a system by which items can be altered to have adjectives added to the beginning or a line of your choosing appended to the end.

There are vehicles, a large number of different types of weapons, npc missions, custom languages, unique artifacts, and a job system so that you need to work for money instead of picking it off of mobs. There certainly isn't enough space to get into custom attacks which basically allow you to design your own skills or spells.

Even with all this unique code and freedom, I haven't addressed the administration. As many people know, great games can be absolutely ruined if they're run by overbearing or controlling individuals. Compelling as all this is, one of the greatest things about Buffymud is the philosophy that the administration has. Most of the time, you won't even realize the game has admins. They're never visible on the wholist nor do they pop up very often unless something needs fixed or there is some serious need for mediation.

That said, I've broken quite a few things in my time here and the important ones have always been promptly resolved, usually within a day of my reporting it. In the spirit of fairness, the playebase is given tools to oversee itself instead of the administration trying to constantly rule on whose point is more valid. Everyone therefore has a chance to shine or prove their character deserves something more through work and showing how imaginative they can be to their peers.

All this appeals to me so much that Buffymud is my favorite place to play and I can't think of a single game I'd rather have spent all the countless hours that I have here. If anything I've written sounds the slightest bit intriguing, stop by and explore for a bit. The playerbase is rather good about answering questions for newbies. Don't be shy.

To start with, I'm going to explain the way a Buffy MUD experience would be. First, character creation may seem quick at first, but once you get into the chargen area you realize this MUD has a lot of customization, and your description could be well written, very long, or very short.

Then you will leave the area and find yourself on the grid. The first thing that will be introduced to you is your NPC nemesis. For some players, this has been the reason they had left, but for me, the NPC nemesis is a good distracting and they are customizable enough for you to add flavor to your character, and behind the scenes showdowns that you can post as fiction on the forums. You'll also get an NPC guide, who you can also customize, who's main function is to alert you when your nemesis is doing something against you.

The grid is fairly small in comparison to most MUDs, as stated in many of the past reviews, but at the same time, it's enclosed enough that it's easy to find RP, and extensive enough where an individual can hide themselves so they can plot or get experience without being bothered too much.

Combat is automated fluidly, and certainly looks nice, though it can be a bit spammy. Donating money will give you access to customized attacks that you can make look as good as you would like. Styles run the paper/scissors/rock code mentioned in past reviews, and an intelligent player can get by, but the name of the styles are rather useless and no one has ever made an effort to RP the style names out. The magic system is brilliant, but limited, though playing a magic character can be rewarding. Most everyone in the game starts off mastering a dozen different martial art styles, which is sort of odd, but styles again are usually dismissed as something to make fighting more tactical, something I think is more of a player issue then an immortal one. Demon attributes are extensively customizable and fun, and I really enjoy it.

Many of the complaints I've noticed in the reviews are of the immortals having mortal characters. Nowadays, however, I've not seen evidence of an significant immortal interference in player plots as of late, and if the immortals do have mortal characters, they rarely make things less interesting for me, and if they do, it may be to challenge players. In fact, I wish the staff was more involved in RP, player Villains are nice, but the Buffy spirit would be captured if there were more one shot Villains then just the guests players run just to test out builds or beat up someone they OOCly don't like.

Yes, I think my biggest issue with Buffy Mud at the moment is the playerbase. While the game allows creative freedom, it would be nice to see some limit to this, at least a limit that fits the BuffyVerse better. I have seen some concepts that would make Joss Whedon weep with shame. The line between good and evil is a very thin one, which sometimes can be interesting but at best involves many 'good' people befriending or dating mass murderers. Good and evil relationships are overdone, and there is a number (albeit small) of players who use the MUD for sexual gratification when there are MUXes out there that are solely for that purpose.

A lot of bad things have been said below regarding the MUD. For this, I'm a little disappointed with many of the players. My reasoning is simple. I've met a lot of good people on this MUD. A lot of nice people, who have became friends that will last me a lifetime. BuffyMud is an adult game, with a very bleak and dark environment, but it will always be on my top MUD list.

Buffy MUD is set in the town of Sunnydale, California which happens to be centered under a hell mouth, and a whole lot of mystical energy. If you've seen the show, you know the story. You might also know that in the Television series it was destroyed. Well, they brought it back. They don't explain how, something big happened, poof. Which is sometimes the case in Buffy, so that's fine. In this game you generate your own character from a selection of races and classes, thrusting yourself into the buffy world. Okay, first I'll get the unprofessional stuff out of the way.

CHEATING: Ever since I started here it's been whispered, rumored, accused, etc that the staff abuse their positions here to make horrendously overpowered characters that rule the game. I can't confirm or deny this, but I'll tell you... What I know: In early beta phase, I witnessed the staff member 'Scarlock' trade character names with his mortal, 'Loki'. Scarlock then became a very powerful half-demon tiger warrior who abruptly smashed all opposition within days. (Including myself, and a friend who at the time were top vamps.) NOW. This doesn't mean he cheated, because being staff, he might have just understood the game better than we did and used this to his advantage.

I also saw, repeatedly, in my on/off play time here characters of the suave and successful type, well dressed, rich, etc, who suddenly swoop in and take over. These I have suspected as being Tyr, the main admin.

While the other stereotype tends to be the crude, brutish, and foul- mouthed (F this, F that! F'in F!) villain that walks about being bad and causing trouble.

These I usually suspect are Scarlock/Loki's alts. AGAIN, I don't really have proof, and in my most recent play times on the game it seems that these stereotypes have disappeared, so I also suspect the cheating has stopped (If it ever existed). But anyone who had played as long as I have, in the earlier times, will probably tell you (Read the past reviews) that there was cheating, a very annoying staff pet named Jacob (Who I think still plays), and the OOC channel being removed because people were calling them on their antics. (It has now been replaced with a different channel that you have to pay to access.) But, then again... maybe the vast majority of the player base were just all liars at that time.

Okay, now that we have the ugly out of the way, let's get to the good, and the bad.

GOOD: CUSTOM Characters: Out of almost every game I've played, Buffy MUD has the best options for customization. As a half demon, or demon you can purchase horns, skins, tails, claws, wings, defense mechanisms, offense mechanisms, and give each of them their very own brief description. It also includes 'changeto' and 'changefrom' descs, so as a half demon when you 'transform' or 'shift' between your human and demon form. You can actually write what you want people to see. Ex: Reviewer roars loudly as large demonic wings rip out of his back! This makes virtually anything possible in Buffymud (that can use Kung FU... See BAD). Zombies, Blobs, Lizard Men, Robots, Cyborgs, Any type of demon you can imagine, Hawk-men, Raven-men, The Kool-aid Guy. Whatever! You can make it here. It works.

The MENTOR System: As a newbie starting out in the MUD, you'll be hooked up with an evil, or good mentor. Depending on your alignment. This supplies you with a knowledgeable player whom you can ask questions of on your very own Mentor Channel. This even carries over to In Character assistance, granting you your very own friend and guide with very little effort on your part. It makes starting the game a lot easier, and it helps to have someone to watch your back.

BAD: The CODE: is very buggy. You'll probably notice frequent bug notes listed on the boards. Most of the features that were coded into Buffy MUD that are meant to be a plus, can actually end up being very annoying. The 'MAP' feature is broken, and only gives you a general idea of where you are, sometimes not at all. Sometimes quest mobs will give you negative exp. Certain shop items will have descriptions for something else entirely. Leaving some lairs will magically transport you to the other side of the map. You get the idea.

This wouldn't be so bad, except... they never seem to fix these issues! These have been around since I started here! YEARS ago! The only bug issues I find fixed are the really major ones, or the ones that are nagged out to an extreme. There are often crashes, but it's always quick to pick it up with an instant reboot, usually not even disconnecting you.

PLAY style: One of the biggest things that has bothered me from the start is that Health and Movement have been bunched into ONE stat, which is called 'Condition', or 'CN'. This means when you move, you lose health. You have to instead use the designated commands, 'walk', 'jog', or 'run' - the last is the same as just typing the exit direction. These paces are tedious, and you'll find a lot of players with the wings buff so they can simply fly around.

The COMBAT system is automatic, with some mid combat commands, based on a rock/paper/scissors function that relates to 'styles'. Kung fu/Aikido/Karate/ and Kick Boxing. You have to change styles as you fight to keep on top of your opponent. The problem of this from a roleplay perspective is that not every opponent in Buffy uses martial arts.

There are different demons, and entities that fight differently. But the system treats all opponents like human on human mortal combat. When you die, you're taken to the hospital, (or demon hospital) where you receive an injury timer, or 'IT', which means that you can't leave until your timer is up. If you encounter aggro mobs (carrying visible weapons and such will get you beat down by a mob of police, or demons, after some warning), or bite off more than you can chew you could end up waiting anywhere from 10 - 30 minutes. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

In an effort of realism, there is also showering, stench, clothes getting dirty, or bloody, and work out commands put into place. These all seem nice, but the little things start to annoy me after a while. There is no 'dry' command, after you shower, which means you have to wait 10 minutes for the code to dry you off. Clothes become dirty very easily when you're cutting open monsters for hours to get the next level, and eventually people don't even bother to change bloody clothes. Benching, or jogging to raise your chest or butt attribute (appears in your look as 'average' unless you devote time to it) will slowly raise it, but also slowly decline, even when you're offline. There are also jobs, with horrible code set in place, which is another way to grind for money in order to buy things. (Clothes, weapons, even skills cost money here.)

There are only a few healing spots in the game. Private apartments, your house, and the Bronze. The bronze is of course, always filled with people. But this is where the dropping off point is for staying true to the show. In the television series, you'd often see characters getting R&R in the bronze, relaxing after a hard patrol. In the game, you'll find dozens of people resting around couch areas, sitting RIGHT next to the evil they had just gotten done fighting. Boundaries are virtually non-existent. Why? Because evil characters need to heal too, and The Bronze has the highest healing rates. This forces people into unrealistic situations that only end up creating childish face offs, bullying, elitism, and all of that crap. If you're looking for quality RP here, you'll be disappointed. Especially if you're intent on experiencing the same kind of drama that you'd see in the show. The best you'll find at Buffymud are random squabbles, being abruptly shot down in the streets without warning or reason, and the idea that a perfect villain is akin to a bully.

My FINAL Word: This review doesn't even begin to cover all of the things wrong with this train wreck, in my opinion. Like, for example, ... Idle Checks that will randomly pop up to ask you a math question while you're AFK or fighting, which if you fail or don't answer in time, boots you off game.

But to be fair, I'd say if you're a hack & slash player and casual roleplayer looking for a new atmosphere, who likes to be creative with his characters, give Buffymud a try.

But if you've seen the show, are a fan, and often go looking for a 'buffy fix'...of real, meaningful RP, with plots and growth.. don't get it here. If anything, this game makes a mockery of the television show, and could even be described as one of its 'hell dimensions'....

Buffymud is set after the TV show, Sunnydale explodes, then a while later is mysteriously returned due to magical means to the way it was. So what the game comes to is good, with the roles of slayers watchers etc against evil. To be brief, there’s two different sides of the game, what you see when you’re new under 'newbie protection' and then the truth of the game once that protection leaves.

The Map The game is pretty much a single large map. There's about 50 'areas' on this map - such as 'US Army Base,' 'Jordan Cemetery' and 'The Bronze.' Most areas vary in side, but a significant number of them are 'boxes' - 40 room areas of nswe exits with ‘aggro’ NPC's wandering around. Despite the game being open for over 3 years, only a few streets (3 out of maybe 12) and perhaps 20 percent of the ‘areas’ have descriptions, everything else just room names. I feel this is just shooting itself in the foot, as one of the better things is the 'motorbike' riding code which unfortunately becomes little more than a hassle when you’re repeatedly crashing into walls because the streets suddenly come to an end without any warning. Additionally, there are also bugs where you just enter a room and are left with absolutely no exits to leave and are trapped until you’re randomly attacked and get sent to hospital.

Despite this large(ish) map there is only really a single place people can ‘hang out’. The Bronze, the bar which is one of the two areas in the game (the other being your bought home) where you can heal. Overall I’d say that from my experience that trying to rp anywhere else except from those two places is essentially a death (or at least hospitalization) sentence.

Levelling and Skills There is actual reason to leave the bar however, as your character is given random tasks to perform - missions. Completing these missions. (get this item, give it to someone, go somewhere and kill something) as well as XP for killing NPCs. This XP then goes into a pool which you can go spend on your skills. Nice, in theory. From what I have seen, however, the missions don’t really 'scale' up as you increase in level, in difficulty or in rewards, meaning that relatively early on (level 30 where the newbie cutoff is around 14-18) you become stuck with a slog to gain one additional stat point as the XP amounts to gain new skills increases.

The other major thing about levelling is supposed to be something called 'nemesis events.' Again, it’s something nice in theory, every player is assigned an NPC nemesis who about 3-4 times a day does a plot that you’re supposed to stop. However, again, the implementation is very poor. The ‘reason’ of going to stop them is supposed to be ‘double exp’ NPCs to kill thereby making it easier to level. In my experience, the NPC’s give less XP than normal ones. Aside from that, you’re basically ‘punished’ for not completing these events which range from having most of your money stolen, to making every npc in the game attack you, to a super demon attacking you, not only beating you, but then following to attack you again and again until it eventually dies. For example, a few days ago this ‘rampaging demon’ kept killing me and bouncing me from hospital ward to ward to ward - It could be funny, but it was also really quite depressing after 2 hours. To avoid all this you need to complete the event, which is random when it occurs and only actually gives you less than 30mins to do them - which includes having to go to the library, find the location where they are, travel to the area without getting too badly beat up, then actually having to explore a 40 room (undesc-ed) area looking for an entrance to the lair. A lot of work, for very little gain.

A recurring theme is needless complexity - someone mentioned in a review from near 18 months ago and would appear to have had little change. I’ll refer you to that review for the martial arts system - it hasn’t changed. A 2nd example is in ‘techniques’ - think of it as special moves, where you need to travel to an area to gain a random technique, travel back home, sell that technique to buy a ‘tech point’ to use that point to buy a technique you want and then level that technique, which is about 6 or so steps and a huge help file when you could simply just gain tech points to spend.

Races and Classes There are a 4 races to choose from (human, vampire, half-demon, demon) and a number of classes - witch, slayer (girls only), soldier, watcher etc. The classes appear to be ‘statistically’ balanced however, the maths have little resemblance to the reality. In game, true to the show, basic humans are little more than targets to all the ‘cool’ demons and vampires, with the vast majority of full humans (I think there were 3 full humans in the game that I’ve seen, including me, who weren’t female slayers), however, ‘true to the show’ or not, it does not make a particularly fun game. Additionally, in my experience, anyone who actually IS human, gets ‘sired’ at the drop of a hat - including the slayers.

Balance and gameplay The game, being based on Buffy is quite obviously split into two sides - Good versus Evil. To great misfortune, there is another term for it, from what I’ve seen, 'newbies Vs everyone else.' The players in the game ARE helpful - when you first join it - which essentially lures you into the game. Then, about level 6 the NPC’s who roam the streets (not even ‘aggro’ areas), all decide to attack you at once, resulting in hours on end of getting sent to hospital, standing up, leaving, getting sent to hospital again, standing up, leaving, getting sent to hospital again. - It was almost enough to make me quit - if I could live long enough to get to my house to actually quit out. Then, once newbie protection is over (which stops you from being attacked by PCs), the players become... less helpful and instead of being attacked by NPC’s, you get to be a punching bag for them now, all of whom are Veteran players of the game with such highly thought out reasons like, 'I felt like being randomly violent' and 'I was bored' - what is worse, is that the game rules actively encourage such things, even stating in the 'evil characters' rules that if you don’t go around doing things like that, you aren’t evil enough. Again, accurate to the show, in theory. Practically... It means that the many new players plan on quitting - I saw one go the day I posted this, or simply just ‘go evil’ which again compounds the problem on a game who’s max people online at any time is 14. This has essentially resulted in there being perhaps... 2 experienced ‘good players’ who basically keep to themselves, and a horde of newbies who try their best, but are, again, nothing more than punching bags to the evil ‘more experienced’ players and if you read one of the main game helpfiles called ‘help merit’ you will see that that is exactly how the game owner intended it.

'The reason we wanted levelling to be a factor over just like emote count, is people enjoy RPing, they don't enjoy levelling, so levelling involves an actual sacrifice of time in order to gain power.'

So, even though it tricks you into thinking that it's a rp game, it's all about who's got the best stats and if you don't, you're all but useless.

Player attitudes and RP Well, I’ve touched on it above, but it really is a major thing thing that deserves it’s own section. The definition of proper RP for most of the player base is new ways to torture people ( the same for the ‘good’ players too). Favoritism was in an earlier review, however, I didn’t see any of it now - mainly because I don’t think I saw a single visible staff member in the entire two weeks I have been playing. That is, assuming - and this actually happened in game - 'Angry pixies invade they toss Molotov acorns at you, burning you horribly' was a player run ‘event’ and not a staff member. So, overall, I would not say that there is ‘favoritism’ as such - mainly because I’ve simply never seen a staffmember, but there is most certainly elitism.

The game has, as another review said, basically done a ‘ban’ on all OOC communication in the game, but of course, all the longer term players essentially know who each other is at a glance and then act and react accordingly thereby not wanting to annoy the people they’ve played with in the past. There is also things called ‘reroll’ and recreations which help make older players' lives easier it results in if someone gains ascendance, they’re going to stay there. And as it’s more 'fun' and less 'boring' and less stressful being evil than good it again, inevitably means that the ‘balance’ of good vs evil goes all to heck.

Summary Despite the games initial appearances of openness it is ultimately still a Very insular and closed game player-wise, the primary reason I’m considering continuing to play is the presence of a small number of other new players who I’ve met that haven’t yet given up the game in spite of the game veterans.

The game does have some interesting features - the mission code which rewards exploration, the bike code, but there is also a significant sense of, well, lazyness in the games construction that can often threaten to overshadow any enjoyment one might gain from it. There is very little actual written material for you in game. - There are actually no helpfiles explaining to you what the symbols on the prompt meant. The new player ‘academy’ is about I think 4 rooms in size. To have the vaguest idea how to play the game you need to look at first the game, then website, then the forums, then ask the players (who as I said, only help you until the game starts allowing them to beat you up) and even having to look at photobucket to find your way around the game.

Overall, I would only really recommend this as a game to someone to play it in order to appreciate how good other games are.

Buffymud is set in the town of Sunnydale, California a few years after the end of the show, people who haven't seen the show shouldn't worry though, it's basically just this world, but with real supernatural forces, most of whom reside in Sunnydale. There's a back story to explain it, but you can read that in the game.

One of the first great things about this game is the amazing level of creative freedom given to the players, while you are constricted to a set of races and classes, you can completely customize your stats, as well as special abilities called techniques. You can have basically any history you choose, describe your hair, eyes, build, height, as well as a normal desc and focused descs for different parts of your body. You can also go under false names, often several at once, demons can customize their skin color as well as how their demonic attributes such as horns look. You can even create your own languages and create almost completely customized outfits. People have made characters as widely varied as robots, zombies, even dragons with ease by using this system. While it's not strictly speaking a feature I guess, it is really cool that the world is such that you can make pretty much any character that you think of, limited only by your imagination.

Something I like about the game is how much it relates to real life, you can actually make yourself in this game, just a you who moved to Sunnydale and likely uncovered some sort of supernatural powers, you can even generally talk about real life events and movies and things if you want to, but doing it all as your characters, and there's just something amusing about try to talk to a big red demon of the apocalypse about the latest Kevin Smith movie.

One of the first things you'll likely do is leveling, unlike many muds with set zones for levels on Buffymud you can patrol pretty much anywhere in the game and you'll encounter mobs walking towards you or sometimes fighting other mobs, you also constantly have missions to complete, and many people will do their missions and just kill vampires and demons and the like on the way to and from their mission. You don't level up in the traditional sense, you train one of your stats, and every five trains gives you a level, there's an amazing amount of freedom in how you want to customize your character from this system, you can make a slayer who's proficient in magic, or a witch who also knows how to use a gun and throw a mean roundhouse. Obviously a pure magic witch of the same level is going to be a lot better in magic though.

The system is capless, you can keep on leveling forever, but it does get progressively harder as you go up, so even new players can get pretty close in level to the one's who've been around a fair bit longer without too much trouble. There's also tones of other stuff you can work on, there's 45 different jobs you can take, many of which form part of long career chains you can work your way up. You can work on your fame rank, something you get from RPing, fighting players around your level or higher, and running RP plots or events, this is fairly prestigious and gives access to some cool powers. You can work on your legacy, from RPing and participating in global invasions, which will give you a cool publicly accessible list of your accomplishments. You can try and get one of the cool houses or apartments and customize them how you want them to be or buy a shop and set it up how you want it and start selling items to try to make a profit. You can also work at getting one of the powerful and unique artifacts. Then try to get a good set of techniques by leveling in aggro areas, or try to get one of the rare items only accessible to people who've killed a huge number of certain types of mobs.

Any player above level 10 can also make a circle(like clans) you can choose your own name and write a little description of the circle, once it gets big enough you get access to minions which you also can customize, you can use these to attack people, bring you drinks, or wage war to try to take control of different areas around the game, fighting often against NPC gangs or other circles.

To get artifacts you need to do dungeons which're quite a lot of fun, they're basically big mazes filled with mobs and traps, you fight your way through, dodging through traps, occasionally killing sub-bosses that might open doors for you or shut off different types of traps, till you get up to and finally defeat the end boss, earning you a relic you can save up to buy an artifact.

Each player also has an NPC nemesis, who'll occasionally send guys to attack you or start big evil rituals you have to stop etc, you get quite good experience from doing these things, so it's not really much of an annoyance, and if he's really getting on your nerves, you can always enter a special dungeon to kill him off, but be warned another nemesis is likely to come along eventually.

So between working on all of that, you'll probably want to get some RP in, Buffymud is a completely IC environment, everything you do and say, every vampire you slay or thing you wear is IC. You'll get most of your RP at the bronze, most people go there to heal between patrols and there's usually some people chatting at the bar who'll be more than happy to talk to you, get your name and start to involve you in the RP plots.

There's almost no OOC in the game at all, while that takes a little while to get used to it's actually quite nice, people focus a lot more on their character and RP instead of who's OOC friends with who, and you don't have to worry about people badmouthing you OOCly cause they don't like your character.

Plots often take the form of events, which are completely custom written plots which exist for a time before bringing about some large effect, anything from a curse to mute someone to ending the world. Everyone can see events and will get involved on both sides helping people out with them or trying to stop them.

Aside from introducing new code the immortal staff is pretty hands off, they do enforce the rules though which're pretty standard stuff like no bug abuse, and they enforce a set of RP rules, which are also pretty common sense stuff like don't RP having the power to turn people into trees with a wave of your hand, but by and large it's up to the players to generate the RP plots and make things happen.

The fact that it's completely IC does mean that pretty much anybody can attack pretty much anybody else, but there are exp penalties and the like which increase the bigger the level difference that help stop this becoming an issue.

One of the only problems with Buffymud is it can be quite daunting and hard to learn, the older players will always be happy to help you out via the newbie or mentor channels but it will take a while before you've got everything down, just because of how complex and different so much of the game is.

The other big problem is there are the occasional bad apples, and while small in number they're often disproportionately loud. This isn't anything new, there's a reason most big muds don't allow player reviews after all, and I'm sure most players have met these kinds of people before. The theory generally goes you beat me, leveled faster than me, stopped my event, stole my IC girlfriend etc therefore you are an immortal/a friend of an immortal/a distant relative of an immortal/ or some kind of hacker. I've never seen any speck of truth to any of that stuff and it's really just people being people. You really won't have to deal with it much, but if you stick around long enough you'll probably eventually get to hear a bunch of the conspiracy theories, some are kind of funny but a lot are just kind of dumb.

Feels like there's a lot more I could talk about, like how combat works and the slaying system and all, but I don't want to write a 20 page review, so you'll have to see it for yourself.

Buffymud is very challenging, it's very realistic, and it's very adult, it's unfortunately really not suited to everyone. Everyone gets beat up or has a plot thwarted occasionally though for many of us that's what makes success all the more meaningful. If you're someone who likes stuff to be easy, hates having to work for things or likes to play characters that never lose this mud probably isn't for you. Also if you can't handle RP, can't handle PK, or are someone who needs to plan out their RP a month in advance and doesn't like any deviations from the plan, it's also probably not the place for you.

If you're looking for a place that's a bit different, that'll always give you a challenge, where things almost never go to plan and with other characters that are realistic, flawed, and human, where everything people have has been earned and just about anything is possible, if not easy, this is the place for you.

I am, by no means, a MUD expert. I was asked onto BuffyMUD by a friend and was swept away by the people there.

And, I'll say this: the absolute best thing that BuffyMUD has is a helpful, creative player base, most of whom respect RP over PK or levelling and work hard to give life to the code.

Levelling is fairly easy. Besides mobs, there's also missions available and occassionally one can get an automission that will lay tons of XP upon you, allowing less combat-oriented characters a chance to level up.

The code itself is fun and has a lot of good elements to it: The races, for instance, are fun and well-balanced and while the classes are at times limiting in their construction, everyone has the ability to customize their character more or less to their liking, provided they have the sufficient XP and in-game money to afford the new skills/upgrades/whatever.

The PK system is fun and the combat quick and easy. The commands available are simple enough to understand and actually killing a character is difficult in the extreme and, in theory, quite dangerous.

The magic system is fun and utilitarian, bestowing fun abilities as well as giving magic-oriented characters some ability to stand up in a MUD that is based largely around physical beatdowns.

However, the code is not without it's problems. As noted in a previous review, social attacks (largely things to mess with people without actually hurting anyone/thing) are level-based rather than stat-based, so a character with limited knowledge of hand-to-hand combat is able to fend off the attacks of a lower-level bruiser by nature of... I don't know.

There are other problems, to be sure. But they're minor. For the most part, the MUD is twenty tons of fun. There's good people and always something to do, even if people aren't on.

However, there are two large, glaring problems. The first is that while minor suggestions are taken up, larger suggestions and requests for assistance are often met with hostility, if they are met at all by the administrators.

The second, and most important, problem is (as has been noted before) the RAMPANT AND FLAGRANT favouritism that pollutes the MUD and makes it VERY difficult to continue playing if your character wishes to make a significant difference in the gameworld at large. Offenses that are cause for character deletion for some players are laughed off for others. And while the administrators keep their mortal characters (and never mention who they are and, in fact, delete characters and ask people to leave for mentioning publicly who they are or for speculating publicly who they might be) secret, they always Always ALWAYS win. The only time any of the administration loses is to one of their own and any attempts to change this or speak out against it are slapped down with semantic wordplay and/or outright hostility.

Have I left because of an instance of this? Yes. After months of playing and having fun and stories that were sadly interrupted by the administration finally culminating in a few angry rants...

I had fun. The people are SO much fun on this MUD. It's a pity the administration doesn't care to be fun, as well.

Okay, I’ve played BuffyMUD for a long time, since about halfway through the Beta phase. Having recently given up on BuffyMUD entirely, I’d like to share why.

The grid is ridiculously small, which isn’t as much as drawback as it would seem, as you will spend almost all of your time in either the Bronze (a dues ex machine to force character interaction, since only in the Bronze and Demon Bar under it can you regenerate hit points at a reasonable rate). The pbase is also equally small, which is only a drawback in that you know that you are always playing with the same people, to the point that you recognize their new characters or alts on sight.

The “extensive tunnels” are simply a grid that follows exactly the street grid above it, contains no descriptions, and leads nowhere interesting except for three locations: the demon bar, the demon spa (where demons and vamps go after losing a fight to a mob or PC) and the demon market ( a single room shop, like all other shops in the game except for the weapons shop and the mall. The rest of the locations vary in room number, but none exceed five except the Bronze, the Mall, the Demon Bar, and the Hospital/Demon Spa. Also, mobs do not spawn in certain areas any more than on the street, so often hunting becomes a routine of “leave the Bronze, kill a vampire or two on the road, go back to the Bronze, rest, repeat”. The tunnels are absolutely as pedestrian as the streets in this manner. I would consider the overall feel of the game not “intimate” but “cramped”.

Character customization is superficial and negligible. Ethnicity and accent never come into play, except for the occasion in character joke, or walking stereotype. Stats are uniform, and available to every race and class, albeit with experience costs based on classes.

Race is basically just an RP tool, except for Demons and Half-demons, who get their own skillset of expensive, but cool skills that are dearly bought using a different cost system than the rest of the skills. But basically, there are only a few successful character builds, those most suited to combat and pk, since the game focus is as much or more on combat and pk than roleplay. The battle between good and evil is hardly epic, and is often reduced to vampires and humans throwing childish insults at each other in the Bronze. Few characters are truly good or evil, with most people preferring to play in the morally ambiguous gray area.

Such characters are only defined as being on a specific side by the presence or lack of a soul, which is coded into each race. You cannot be an evil human unless a character removes your soul.

The MUD also has a history of slayer-vampire romances and in general the atmosphere is dark and grey, with only a soul separating the good from the bad. The only time that alignment comes into play is in pk, defining who is a safe target, and sometimes even that doesn’t matter. Humans can go anywhere, do anything. So can halfies, who are essentially humans who can turn into a demon on command and remain “good”. Vampires can go anywhere, do anything, except during the day, when they take damage from sunlight. Demons are in no way limited to the tunnels, or anywhere. “Public” is defined only as the interior of certain buildings, such as the Bronze, Mall, or Hospital. The streets are not. Also, a cheap, common item on the game is an Expectency Charm, which can be bought for 15 dollars in the demon bar, which allows a demon to enter public areas with no penalty. Vampires in ‘grr’ face or half- demons in demonic form have the same restriction, but can simply use the ‘face’ command to appear completely human.

Combat is almost entirely automated, much like most MUDs. Martial Arts styles are confusing, complex, and, as the head immortal Tyr once admitted, largely random. The other combat skills are mostly automatic, except for a few that include usable syntax.

Ranged combat is strange, as you get one shot before the fight becomes melee (no matter how far away the mob is, once you hit it, it is suddenly in your face and fighting you with no transition). Claws and fangs are not abilities, but rather physical modifications that give a slight advantage in combat.

X-ray vision is in no way combat-related, like all the other skills in the Demon Mystics skillset.

Social attacks are based on level rather than stats, so that the uppercut social will only knock back a character above you in level but much weaker than you, while it will throw lower-level character into another room, regardless of their stat in relation to yours.

Head ripping is a slay power, which is to say that it does absolutely nothing in combat, but does give you a cooler option to killing vampires than simply staking them. Playerkilling is entirely unregulated. You may pk anyone you wish, so long as you have the ability to beat that person in combat. It does incur a small exp pentalty, but this is really negligible, as the cost is so small compared to exp gained from hunting.

Normal pvp combat ends when one combatant is incapacitated, leaving the victor with the choice to leave you to heal enough to walk to the Bronze, or to “slay” you, which sends you to the hospital/demon spa with an injury timer based on their level.

High level characters can give ten to twenty minute injury timers, where you are confined to a single hospital room and may not leave. Permdeath is much more off-balance. With their system, a character, who needs no RP requirement or reason at all and is never asked for one, simply contributes a certain amount of experience in return for the ability to permanently kill another character, regardless of their level or combat ability in relation to yours.

High level characters risk very little in permkilling a low- level character, except for the period during which they are generating. However, it’s easy enough to hide the fact that you are generating a showdown, so that it’s not uncommon for characters to secretly buy the right to permkill another character for no reason and succeed.

In finishing, I’d like to point out that while the playerbase is generally helpful, since Hazgarn is right and helpfiles are crap, the immortals are another story. Immortals are not only allowed to have mortal alts, but are unregulated in doing so, and their mortal alts almost always occupy the highest positions of power in the game, as well as forcing RP to move in the directions they wish it to.

The immortal Scarlock, the younger brother irl of the Main Admin Tyr, is notoriously foul-mouthed, sarcastic, and abusive to the players, reacting to criticism or even honest questions with scorn and ridicule. He has been known to harass players he doesn’t like, and his mortal alt is almost always the Villain (the top bad guy, with very nice stat bonuses) of the mud, being one of the most powerful characters in the game.

The immortal Tyr is the main administrator, and his mortal alt has a preference for taking the position of Hero (good- aligned equivalent to Villain), as well as forcing himself into the RP of others and steering it in the directions of his choosing. He’s often also one of the most powerful characters on the game. Accusations of immortal abuse abound on the game, and a large number of players have deserted the game in the last month or so because of the administration.

In short, they have been known to be immature (giving shorter penis sizes to players they don’t like, and yes, penis sizes are coded, semi-random, and unchangeable throughout the life of the character), abusive of the players, unresponsive to suggestions from the players, and everyone who plays the game tacitly recognizes the favoritism that is the hallmark of immortal/mortal interaction.

In short . . don’t waste your time. The game is extremely promising, but the administration is unfriendly to players, the code is sloppy (frequent crashes are another hallmark of the game, sometimes as many as a dozen or two per day) and the RP is not of any remarkable quality, as the mud is based extremely heavily on leveling and pk, to the exclusion of non-combat-oriented characters.

I can't honestly say my experience with MUDs is extensive. I've played on five or six, usually for the space of about an hour or two. I rarely come back a second time...

That said, I have been absolutely hooked on this game. My love is rather lengthy, so if you wish you can skip to the bottom section marked ==Summary== for pros and cons.

==Location== The arena is much smaller than that of most other MUDs, confined to the town of Sunnydale, but the local is fully and faithfully realized in the spirit of the shows on which it is based. The small scale and enforced focus on roleplay make for an intimate feel. Faces become familiar, and the sense of being part of a real world full people interacting with one another.

Not that there is any shortage of places to be. Streets several rooms long span the city, leading to interesting locations often ripped from the show itself. The Bronze, Sunnydale High, the college, The Magic Box, even the Hellmouth and the Initiative base are present and accounted for. Others include the Demon Bar, the local mall, movie theater, city features such as the courthouse, police station and hospital, restaurants, parks and--of course--cemeteries. Extensive tunnels twist and turn under the city's streets, full of danger

==Roleplay== Roleplay is mandatory. There are no tells, though players are able to communicate through cellphones.

Characters are incredibly customizable. Even within the bounds of your race, steps can be taken to make your character stand out by choosing a subrace (ethnicity, or species if you're a demon) and an accent to color your speech. Demon characters in particular are varied in appearence, able to define it almost however they please, including features such as horns, wings, claws that can be attained. Half-demons can change between human and demon forms, and can choose what their transformation will look like. Custom strings can be set for the eyes and build, and hair can be set and reset in a similar fashion to fit your character's mood. From weapons to clothing, items can be bought, altered, and adjusted to create a unique look. Clothes get dirty, or even covered in blood, so make sure you have extra outfits at home. Frequent the gym to improve your character's appearance. Get a job and earn money by mixing drinks, working as a lawyer or doctor, or even catching kittens. A housing system also exists, though real-estate prices are competitive to say the least. But everyone starts with a generic house.

Alignment is starkly polarized between good (people with souls; humans and half demons) and evil (the soulless; demons and vampires) with scarcely the narrowest margin in between. Interplay on the most basic level hinges on the battle between good and evil waged in the city's streets.

==Races and Classes== There are four races: Human, Vampire, Demon and Half-Demon. Each is played widely different, with separate rules attatched. Naturally, vampires cannot go out after dawn without suffering damage. Demons are mostly confined to the tunnels as well. Half-demons can more easily pass for human, and can roam freely. But catch any of them in public with their game face on and watch as the SWAT shows up to clean house. Each race has different classes available, with some exclusive only to that race. Only humans can be Watchers or Slayers, and only demonic characters can be Devils or Brutes.

==Combat== The combat system is based on real-life martial arts styles kickboxing, aikido, karate and kungfu. Though fighting is mostly automated, your choice of style can have a big impact on how the battle goes and who gets out alive. Once an opponent's health is dropped down, a finishing blow is needed to conclude the fight. This can be a deathblow from a weapon, or a vampire's bite, but other skills allow you to break necks, rip out hearts, or even tear your enemies heads off. There are plenty of skills to help you out during combat as well, moves to be added to your repertoire and combative socials which can be used against your fellow players. Demons and half-demons have unique skills/weapons exclusive to them, including claws and fangs, wings, and magical abilites like ice breath and x-ray vision.

==Magic== Also called Magick, but I will refrain. Various disciplines of magic exist, from General magic, to Mental (psychic abilites) and powerful Aligned spells. Many spells, like locations, come straight from the show like 'rat transformation' and the floating pencil trick. Aligned spellcasters can use an aspect to boost their power, becoming familiarly dark and veiny. Magic users are subject to withdrawals like in the show. Voodoo dolls can be made of player characters and used to cast spells on them remotely or to injure and torment with embarrasing control over socials.

==Player Killing== While player killing is allowed, it is regulated to some degree. Inter-player fighting is encouraged if a part of roleplay, but even disabling a player opponent can hold an experience penalty. Death, be it dealt by man or mob, is generally just a narrow escape. A near kill that leaves the person with a significant hospital wait and plenty to think about during. More permanent fates exist though. For a sizable amount of experiece a person can generate a showdown with another player, during which time they can be rk'd (real killed), ensouled, desouled, or sired if certain conditions are met. Characters who began as human may not stay that way...

==Summary== In the interest of making a lengthy review less long, I'll summarize my pros and cons... -Pros- *A game world built accurately in the spirit of the series. *Setting and policy lend themselves to immersive roleplay. *Combat system is easy to learn, and not difficult to master. *Character customization is extensive, detailed and full of untapped potential. *A small, but steady playerbase of colorful individuals.

-Cons- *MUD website isn't updated regularly. *The small number of players and polarized alignment system occasionally lends itself to in character cliquishness. *Helpfiles are lacking, though players are willing and able to provide help. So, what're you waiting for?

Don't let the lack of website updates fool you. This mud is very much alive, and constantly being updated. It's extremely fun, and the whole community is very social. Very cool combat system, and quick to learn as well. Although knowledge of BtVS/Angel isn't needed, it is helpful for when you're playing, especially for RP purposes. The number of players is small, but seems to be growing everyday. Very helpful, professional, and fun imms as well. I definitely recommend this mud for those who want something new and exciting, and especially recommend it to Buffyverse fans.