It's been five years since the last review for this game. I've been playing it for the past three of them, on and off. I'm not even going to bother with following the trend of the old reviews - in the time I've been playing, I couldn't name a single case of favoritism or bias. The staff seemed mostly professional to me, and I've never had a problem with them.

Firan's mechanics are well done, in my opinion. When you join you have the option of selecting a character from a very large roster or going through a simple generation of your own. Both of these have advantages and disadvantages - it might take some getting used to taking on a character someone else wrote, but it gives you a way to dive right in to the RP. The custom character generation is a little limited, having you pick between several options for personality and such, but I feel like you're given enough leeway once in-game to play the character you want to play.

There's a very, very heavy emphasis on RP. While there are coded combat and crafting systems, the only way to advance is through a moderated voting system - each player gets five votes a week (not counting random bonuses), and can vote for another player a single time in that week. At the end, your total votes are converted into XP. While it sounds like a system easily abused, I've never seen it happen, and it's watched closely by the staff.

The community is very friendly and welcoming, for the most part. New players are typically greeted promptly and offered as much help as they need settling in.

Being a roleplay game, the quality of the world and lore is pretty important as well. Personally, I think Firan's world is excellently fleshed out - the efforts of the players over the years have really forged an interesting story on top of a solid base provided by the staff.

So for brevity's sake, if you're interested in a solid, heavily RP-focused game, I'd say you should give Firan a shot. The worst that can happen is you won't like it.

I always use Mudconnector's reviews to assess the worthiness of games before I even play on them. Needless to say, despite all the negative reviews concerning Firan, I threw caution to the wind, went and applied for a character. Note that I followed the appropriate format, providing the administration several paragraphs on why I wanted to play the character and what I had planned for it.

I received my character (a young noble child) without any hesitation or obstacle. I had never played a young child before, and while I found the role challenging, I probably have had the most fun in a MU that I've experienced in a long time.

Then a week later I was approached by a junior wizard and asked to relinquish my character. Not because I wasn't playing out of theme. It wasn't because I committed any kind of transgression against the game. Nothing like that. It was because the administration simply made a mistake, and that due to the character's secrets, it wasn't meant for new players. I was told that I was welcome to reapply for another character, and then take this specific character as an alt. Other player's compliments were not taken into consideration, let alone the FIVE XP points that I gained just from playing him for 48 hours.

I declined for reasons I will explain below. This is quite strange considering that Firan has a system on the roster which tags a character with notes for potential applicants. Lo and behold, when I applied, this character had no notes indicating that he was only for current players.

While I was welcomed to take another character, I did not. This administration action confirms everything that people on here have said about Firan. I can only deduce that my character was tagged by a particular favorite of one of the administration, and was perhaps coveted. I was simply a casualty in their way. Or perhaps this is simply a bureaucratic snafu, in which case, Firan needs to get their bum in gear. With the amount of staff that they have on this game, not to mention player helpers coming to the right and left of me, they should have been able to personally assist me within a day or two of this, apologize profusely, and help me choose a more appropriate character.

Firan is a great game. Creative. Imaginative. And with a great bunch of players. Just a horrible administration.

Man, am I glad that i'm not the only one who has problems with this game. I played it for a little while, and while at first the staff are newbie friendly, they don't seem interested beyond that. For instance, say you pick one of the rostered characters. Sound's fine, right? Well, if you don't end up liking the character, guess what, you're SOL. They're alt policy restricts you to playing that until you get nominated for enough XP to get an alt. That's right, you need XP to get -alts-. Now, they have a chargen system, and that's a bit better, but you only get one more try with this one. Then the same thing. The staff don't care that you can't get into your character, and instead laud the perfections of their system. Even worse, there's no delete command for a custom made character, leaving you no options.

Well, i've got some advice for the staffers there. Be more newbie friendly beyond first character. Your theme is complex and can take alot of getting used to and therefore might take players a few tries to find a character they like to play. Good system, bad way of running it. Sadly, you guys have just become another RPG that falls into this category.

Maybe I didn't play long enough to check, but I had a pretty terrible experience with Firan. Figuring that everyone who'd gone 'oh look it's staff favoritism city' might in fact be wrong, I think 'hey, let's try it out'. You know. I never got into a single scene, primarily because I was rather disgusted with it within 30 minutes.

When you choose from a list of pregenned characters (Which they prefer you do,) you're given a general rundown of their personality. This is fully reasonable. You look through their umpteen billion chars, choose one that suits you. I'm rather impressed with the work done to produce them. (The char I chose had...80k of relationship backhistory, and he was a priest.)

Upon chargenning, I discovered @sheet/secrets. This is, of course, the command that shows you your character's secrets to the world. I figured it was reasonable enough that every character would have these.

And I still do! However, they don't warn you exactly how serious these secrets are. I chose a character who was generally outlined as 'pleasant overzealous-priest type fellow who has a heart of gold, really.' My secrets...talked about his sadistic nature, and how he liked to whip pagans in a very BDSM-like style, and how he had--get this, abused his little sister for daring to marry a pagan priest. And how guilty he felt about it, and how terrible he felt about it.

Oh, and he'd apparently secretly slept with almost /every single whore in the game/. It was unbelievable.

So, naturally, I rather felt like a fellow who'd driven a car off the lot only to find out that the salesman had swapped cars while I was signing the contract. So I complained. What did a /wizard/ tell me?

That it wasn't their fault I'd chosen that sort of character, and how dare I talk about my IC secrets OOCly, and that if I continued in this manner there would be repercussions.

Because I wanted to play a fairly pleasant, if overzealous, priest, and was handed a sadistic abusive whoremonger.

Thanks, Firan!

Though I find some of the comments here about Firan to be valid, I would like to counter that I think that Firan is the best Roleplaying Game I have come across. There is no need to go around killing things and there is just laid back RP. I love the roster system and I have noticed that staff has started to address the fact that their characters are getting outdated.

I do think that there is a large playerbase on the staff that get 'special treatment', I am not worried about that kind of thing, when I can make my own plots and my own fun. I think that if you are a good player, you can make your own fun, and not rely on a riot or air raid everyday that has to be staffed.

I don't know what I think about all the comments from people who have been playing for several years. I have been playing Firan for almost 2 years and I have nothing to complain about. I think that its a game that should be commended. The staff and players are wonderful, kind, and should be praised for the things that they do.

The staff on Firan take times out of their lives to volunteer to give you as 'timely' a response as they can. I think the main problem people have is that no one has a RL and they rely on staff to give them a life, forgetting that some people /do/ have lives.

I just wonder if someone who is complaining about the game has thought of all the time and effort that the creators and staff have taken to keep a game for your 'entertainment' open for free and without question. I don't think that living room policy is that bad, seeing as they are the creators and until you have your own game, you can't make those rules. Who wants someone to come in and mess up their game ideas, or insult their generosity of letting you play there?

I also have to wonder, if there are so many upset and complaining about the game, calling it stale and bland, why are they still playing? Why are they still around? Addiction. Because the game is that good. Because the staff has tried their best to make it a fun and interesting game. If you were that displeased with the game, then you would find somewhere better to play.

I mean I know I would. I have nothing but praise and good things to say about the game and their staff. I thank the staff for allowing me to have a laid back fun experience. Because that's what Firan is, a game, a fair and interesting game. And with any game comes things that might need to be improved, but I think staff is very good about listening to player suggestions. Ex. Ikonboard. Also, I think they take the time out to fix things that look to be wrong. Ex. Recent Bonus' that were discussed in Ikonboard.

It amazes me to see such bad reviews for Firan, when in reality, the game is awesome, and I would recommend the addiction to anyone looking for a reality based, fun game.

Firan at one time was a wonderful and exciting game that I would have encouraged everyone I knew to come and check out. The players were great, the staff was unbelievable and the plot was stunning. Over the past two years or so though that has begun to change and more often than not, you are dealing with constant angst, problematic plots and a very, very slow response from the staff.

I blame most of this on staff burnout which the game owners have failed to address. It's no surprise when you're dealing with 150-200 individual players a week that you would burnout over time, but the players should not be punished for that burnout. However, right now they are being punished for it. For example, a time sensitive plot may require a response from a wizard but due to them all feeling burned out it does not happen in a timely fashion and your character or someone else's character is killed/hurt/punished for something that may have been preventable had you received an answer to your question.

Their own ingame statistics ,which they publish, confirm it and show that the average response time to answer @requests (their question system) has grown from 2.5 days to over 5 days since January. On a game that relies heavily upon staff intervention due to the depth of the theme, its almost impossible to survive without timely responses.

The problem with this is that they're never too burned out to work when they feel like running a plot to have an invasion happen or have some building burn to the ground. It's very selective burnout.

Another major problem is the fact that they definitely gear the game toward the success of staff played characters or characters played by friends of people on the staff, which I suppose is their right to do as they're running the game; it's just disappointing for those not within their inner circle. I doubt this will ever be addressed and I believe most people just cope with it now. For some people these things may not be a big deal and that is fine, for others they definitely take away from the overall enjoyment of the game.

I actually concur with the prev2ious synopsis of this game. I found Firan at the beginning to be a rather refreshing roleplaying experience, and its Greco-Roman atmosphere was something that I enjoyed.

However, over the years I began to notice the flavor of the game to degrade in the sake of pleasing favored characters and adjusting plots to suit the staffs’ fancies. I too also became concerned with the growing staff base which rose from the pool of players, which I believe simply stifles roleplay, not to mention is a sign of inefficiency and unfairness (In fact, there is a joke that I made amongst my friends that it took Jesus Christ a resurrection and an ascension to sit at the right hand of the Father; however, on Firan you just need to talk to the right person).

The game boasts with pride that most vigilant of roleplaying axioms, “In Character Actions Equate In Character Consequences,” but many actions are involved through out-of-character whims, most specifically the latest decision to toll members of the common and middle castes when entering the city center proper. Not only has this decision caused many commoners hardship in not being able to go to the market to trade their goods, but it blocks roleplay in the Forum, which specifically if I have read the newsfiles correctly that an excuse to go to the Forum was to promote roleplay.

Monitoring as well as conducting tallies on sexual activity, not to mention Chief Wizard and Wizardess’ ‘living room’ philosophy after a few years was a bit draconian in my tastes. Certainly one does not need to fall in love with the creators in order to fall in love with the theme. The view in this case is that this is their game, so therefore the plot and outline within the history of the Firan Peoples must go according to this plan. In other words, players are merely characters in the Admin's ballet, so when the Admin says pirouette...you'd better pirouette. Political figures or commoners not fitting this 'dream' can find themselves locked up in the Republic Jail, exiled, stocked, or even executed by simply a few keystrokes to set out a TP.

In closing, I find that the game has swallowed the last of the summer wine-a once fine sports car which has been abused and banged to blandness.

FiranMUX does some things very, very well. There are some problems, however, and some key differences in philosophy from most MU*. Players interested in joining the game would do well to understand just what they are getting into.

On the positive side, Firan is 'newbie-friendly'. They even won an award certifying this. The reasons behind this are probably threefold: First, the helpfiles. Firan's news and helpfiles are the most complete and thorough documentation I have ever seen on any game. Secondly, the game maintains a large staff of wizards and player helpers who constantly man the Help Channel and provide friendly answers to just about any possible question (usually by referring the questioner to the already-written helpfile on the topic.) Finally, it is easy to 'jump in feet first' in the game because all characters are pre-generated with detailed backgrounds, statistics, character secrets, and most importantly, a set of relationships to other characters which provide hooks for future roleplay. The many coded systems can be a challenge for a newcomer, but with patience and the helpful assistance of players and staff, most can be learned as-you-go without difficulty.

Countering these positives are a series of systemic problems. Most obviously, the many coded systems are flawed and do not serve their apparent intent. The intent must in many cases be arbitrarily imposed by the staff. For example, the listing page advertises 'social, economic, and physical combat.' The social combat system is one of the most laughable. Coded systems of gaining and losing points are trivial in amount compared to the massive social 'hits' and 'gains' imposed by staff. It is easily observed that the best way for a character to 'climb the social ladder' is to not have a player. Characters on the roster make no mistakes, and thus do much better in a system where mistakes are penalized much more often and more heavily than good behavior is rewarded. Perhaps the most glaring proof the system is flawed is that periodically staff will go through and arbitrarily assign social 'hits' to people who have simply accrued too many points, calling them 'social climbers'. It seems useless to have a competitive system which rewards success by putting you back where you started. While the reasoning for this (to keep the middle class below the nobility) seems reasonable, the reasoning also negates the need for the system at all.

This same arbitrariness is found in the game's economic system. The advertisement to 'use your economic skills to ... deplete the city's supply of a given resource -- driving up the market, or instigating riots and strikes!' is not really possible. Food riots are sparked primarily by OOC player inactivity and neglect, rather than anyone's IC use of coded economic skills. Additionally, the most efficient way to 'make' money in the game is via an OOC means: logging on at least once every 6 hours to have your character sleep and nap, storing up 'energy reserve' points which can then be sold completely independent of the game's market. Again, the staff has on at least two recent occasions arbitrarily taken money from commoners and handed it out to the nobility (once completely arbitrarily and on another occasion citing 'building repairs'). Other arbitrary economic changes keep trying and failing to fix the system, such as making gems ten times as valuable overnight, adding 'tolls' for commoners which do little economically but suppress gathering in central locations for roleplay, and deciding that there's an iron shortage which can only really be enforced by arbitrary external rules, not code.

Physical combat is driven by character statistics, and has many flaws. One key problem is that players are allowed to raise their (IC) skills by accumulating (OOC-earned) experience points. Characters who have had active players thus have better skills than characters who are on the roster. While this seems a nice way to reward longevity with players, it unbalances the combat system. Another key problem in the combat system is that while many aspects of combat (hit/miss/how hard) are determined by character stats and a roll of the dice, combat is regulated by timers which are entirely deterministic. If your character's stats aren't as good as the other character's, he will always fight faster than you and can easily take advantage of the engaging/disengaging rules to prev2ent you from ever landing a hit.

In addition to the problems outlined with the coded systems, Firan is showing signs of 'age'. While at its inception, with a small playerbase, small roster of characters, and fresh plots, secrets, and active 'heroes' who drove the initial storyline, it was no doubt an outstanding game. Through no fault of the staff, a major event occurred in January 2003 where a player (through cheating) essentially incited a massive civil war and caused the common enemy to invade and essentially ended the story. Staff was faced with several bad choices in trying to recover the game, ultimately choosing to make much of the event a 'dream from the gods' and to advance the timescale to try to get the next generation in power. Unfortunately, this still left much of the damage from the dream event, such as the outing of many of the key characters' secret plots and intrigues, and the game has never recovered.

Also part of the 'age' problem is the large roster of characters, which easily grow out of date. While the staff makes an effort to keep these updated, there are simply too many to possibly keep up with, and these out-of-date characters present a challenge to new players, who rarely stick around to play them consistently. Active players with relationships to these characters must constantly make excuses for why they're not around. Inevitably, the 'honeymoon' period for a new character ends with some of the characters' closest relationships going back on the roster and never being consistently played again, leading to frustration. While in many cases a character 'abandoned' by most of their family would likely go with them, the practice of 'alt-hopping' is strongly frowned upon, and thus players are pressured to 'stick it out' with situations greatly lacking in potential.

Another problem of the game's age is the constantly expanding staff. Most of the best players end up joining the staff, which results in them being so overwhelmed by their staff duties that their characters, usually some of the most important feature roles on the game, become very inactive. To the staff's credit, they do spend some time trying to run plots and generate roleplay, but are more frequently overwhelmed by simply trying to monitor, some might feel, too closely.

Monitoring is one policy point where Firan differs greatly from almost every other MU* I have played: there is no expectation of privacy. Staff can, and does, spy on roleplay, allegedly to reward excellent roleplay or keep tabs on running plots. Almost everything done in the game is logged in some manner somewhere, including a staff bulletin board which records every time two characters have carnal relations.

Another key policy point players ought to be willing to abide by is the chief wizardess' 'living room' philosophy. She treats the online game as an extension of the tabletop game originally started in her living room, and players are guests there. It is poor manners to complain about your hostess, even if you walk outside to do it, and you can be banned from the game for public or private criticism of the staff. Even by posting this somewhat negative review here, I fear such a reprisal. But just as if I had people in my living room I'd probably have different standards for my old friends and new guests, there are varying standards on the game for these categories of people. There is most definitely a clique of players (staff and those few privy to the staff gossip) and those who are forever on the outside (usually the subject of the staff gossip, where negative opinions are constantly reinforced leaving little room for change). Just don't try to point that out in any forum where it can be attributed to your name.

A final policy point stemming from the living room philosophy is that of fairness to repeat victims of harassment. In any individual situation, staff strives to act fairly, but this is sometimes difficult in a 'he said/she said' situation. Most disturbing, staff has actually posted a policy where a player can be penalized for 'taking too much staff time.' Even if you have done nothing wrong, but have been wronged by a clique of several other players picking on you, making complaints about each of them puts you at risk of overusing scarce staff resources and receiving a punishment. Sometimes a player doesn't even need to actually do anything at all, but if their name comes up in an argument between two other players, it can count against them. As with complaints about staff, sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut and endure the inequity.

In summary, Firan is a large game that's easy to step into (if you don't happen to get a stale character), has many excellent roleplayers (if they're not too busy staffing), and has many coded systems (that you can pretend are balanced) to try to enhance the realism. If you are willing to give up your roleplaying privacy, your ability to complain, and don't mind the occasional arbitrary staff decisions, you might enjoy it. Personally, I would caution against getting too involved in an aging game which has lost its lustre and simply outgrown and outlived the days of its prime.

I have played on Firan for well over two years. While its coded systems can only be described as awesome that is about the best the game has to offer. I have had none, to very few, interesting plot scenes. Plot and adventures are reserved for their feature characters which leaves everyone else lacking in the fun department.

The majority of the players are considerate and nice which makes acclimating to a game of this type easy. If you are used to games where there is mostly a steady increase to your characters life, don't consider playing on Firan. The class system makes IC life very prejudiced and this seems to carry over OOCly as well, where staff are related. While at times the staff are friendly and helpful, there appears to be extreme favoritism as well. They will tell one player that things in the game do not move quickly yet they are all too quick to move 'favored' characters into position to the point of ignoring their own rulings. The game sports a very large staff, so large in fact that one is often juggled between them in the search for answers. Their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing. Half the characters on their roster are so horribly out of date that they are not worth playing. And the chances of getting definite, clear and concise help from staff in updating such a character is nil. Their thinking is that they are doing a player a 'service' by letting them write back history, which it would be if they did not constantly deny write ups that fit theme. With their roster system, it is the staff's job to keep characters updated, not the players. Their staff is largely under the idea that their interpretation of a character is the only one that is right and unwilling to discuss anything outside of their thoughts.

Overall, I have mixed thoughts on the game at large. Loving one part of it but finding a lot of room for improvement.