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Mud Theme
Ansalon is a fantasy world based on the Dragonlance series. Along with this,
role playing is a major part of the mud. Each immortal on the mud role plays as
a deity, championing various causes anywhere from healing to death. There are
also a number of races, although I must say I wish there were more. There were
only a few, fairly run of the mill classes. I was also asked to choose an
alignment of good, neutral, or evil when I started. What I found interesting is
that once in the game, the race, class, and alignment that I selected had a
greater effect on my character than just determining what skills I could get.
These three factors were very important in role playing, and in clans. Because
of my race, alignment, and class, I was limited in what clans I could be in,
adding to the genuine role playing atmosphere in the mud. One of the clans was
set up in a way that I found really beneficial to the mud, in that one of the
requirements to join the clan is to help 3 people. Don't get me wrong though,
hack and slash is still a major part of the mud. Ansalon has over 100 mortal
levels, and the characters that I saw were fairly evenly spread out in terms of
their level. There also always seemed to be at least 10-15 players on at any
time.
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Mud Atmosphere
After having played many very different types of muds right before coming to
Ansalon, I have to admit that I had temporarily forgotten and mixed up some of
the ROM commands, rendering me a true newbie in many ways. I had quite a bit of
trouble in the beginning as well, because when I recalled, I found myself in
the temple of the deity that I followed, which was in the middle of a town that
I wasn't familiar with. I had a map, but it didn't really explain how to get
back to the mudschool. While I was trying to figure this all out, there was
also the problem of dying from not knowing where to get any food or water. In
these aspects, it was a bit hard as a total newbie. But very soon an upper
level player was helping me, being very patient and helpful, answering my
questions. I was shown where to get food and water, given some equipment and
other things. This helped enormously. Other players also were quite willing to
help me. Although the actual mud itself might have been a bit tricky for a
newbie, the players more than made up for it. The players were quite nice, and
the immortals generally seemed the same. They seemed to be on very often, and
were quite visible. One thing that concerned me though is that in their wanting
to ensure that Ansalon had a nice atmosphere to it they could be rather
overbearing in some cases. It seemed, at times, that they were too quick to
determine if
someone was becoming a problem player and then eliminate them. During
character creation you can choose to either have the ability to pkill and be
pkilled, or to choose not to be able to pkill or be pkilled. However, the
immortals seemed to take pkilling as a sign of a problem player and so they
were sometimes targets for being deleted. For this reason, there is almost no
pkilling on Ansalon. The other unfortunate thing is that players who
choose to be evil tend to be more troublesome in general, so of course there
are fewer evil characters on Ansalon. This creates somewhat of an imbalance
because there are so many characters that are good. This was the one main fault
that I found in the imms, but to be fair, they are honestly and very actively
trying to ensure that Ansalon is a pleasant, family type mud.
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Mud World
I saw both original and stock areas. There were far more original areas than
stock areas, and what stock areas I saw tended to be in somewhat out of the way
places. The stock areas really didn't seem to be used much at all by the
players. This was understandably so, because the original areas were
excellently laid out, and quite well described. The places seemed to fit well
together and there was a reasonable emphasis on consistancy with the
Dragonlance theme. Besides the rooms, I also saw a ferry, which for a fee would
take you to one of a number of different cities in Ansalon. Ansalon also has
pets that you could mount and ride around the mud, and who would fight for you
as well.
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Additional Comments
Although I found the role playing rather nice, the coding of the mud is still
mainly based upon hack and slash, especially at lower levels. What I would hope
to see from Ansalon in the future is a higher level of customization of the
programming of the mud, gearing it a bit more towards role playing. This would
emphasize one of the best aspects of Ansalon.
I also found it slightly odd that there is really no story behind what you are
doing in Ansalon. When you make a new character, you are basically just told
that the world of Ansalon needs some new heroes. With the large role playing
aspect of Ansalon, I would expect some sort of general story (or perhaps
stories, based upon alignment or god).
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Summary
Due to the fact that Ansalon's immortals attempt to ensure a positive and happy
environment, and possibly go a bit overboard in doing so, Ansalon does not seem
like the ideal place for thieves or pkillers. I would have to say that they
might very well have a rather rough time. I would also have to say that those
who desire to play either strictly combat oriented muds, or strictly role
playing muds would not be all that comfortable playing Ansalon since it has
quite heavy aspects of both combat and role playing. On the other hand, those
players who enjoy both role playing and combat might very well find Ansalon a
pleasant mud to play on. Likewise newbies would also find Ansalon a rather nice
place to start their mudding experience, based upon the friendliness and
helpfulness of the player base.
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