More on Mudding
Well, I managed to track down the email address of my favorite immortal on the now defunct Ansalon the Original, and sent her a quick note. Don't know if the address is still valid or not, or if she checks it, but I figured it was worth it to potentially find out what happened and to take one last chance to thank her for all the work she put into it over the years.
I'm still trying to decide what to do with myself. I'm very much in the mood to MUD. And I really miss some of my favorite aspects of Ansalon. I refuse to play on the other half of the split, though. A) I want to show support for Chislev, my favorite Imm, and B) a lot of the changes they've made there are just crap and I have no interest in touching them. Especially when they've removed some of my favorite areas, and made standard newbie items too godawful powerful for any real advancement to be done at low levels anymore. When I'm killing characters at level 5 (admittedly, with help) that my old level 9 char would have needed stronger help with, something has become seriously imbalanced in the game. Of course, the fact that I can approach level 9 after just an evening or two of gameplay also seems very off to me. I've gone so far as to ritually commit suicide with my character on the other Ansalon by walking into one of the old deathtrap rooms that's been around as long as I've played on Ansalon, pre-split, before deleting him.
DiscworldMud beckons, and does hold some interest for me, but I'm not sure it's quite the right style of game for me. I've tried a few other Mud's now too, and so far nothing is clicking. I'm halfway entertaining the idea of trying to set up a small Mud myself and working to develop it into something of the same spirit that Ansalon once had, without borrowing from the premises or actual design of Ansalon. Even if nobody but myself and maybe eventually some friends plays on it, it might be good for me. Dunno yet. If I go that route, I'm going to have to do some serious thinking about whether I want to rely on the same codebase as Ansalon just because, or whether I want to look into a saner build system. (I never really cared for Ansalon's build interface, though for a while I tried to build for them. Never got far, I was a lot younger and ended up just not having time for it. Hopefully if I go this route I won't run into the same issue.)
I'm still trying to decide what to do with myself. I'm very much in the mood to MUD. And I really miss some of my favorite aspects of Ansalon. I refuse to play on the other half of the split, though. A) I want to show support for Chislev, my favorite Imm, and B) a lot of the changes they've made there are just crap and I have no interest in touching them. Especially when they've removed some of my favorite areas, and made standard newbie items too godawful powerful for any real advancement to be done at low levels anymore. When I'm killing characters at level 5 (admittedly, with help) that my old level 9 char would have needed stronger help with, something has become seriously imbalanced in the game. Of course, the fact that I can approach level 9 after just an evening or two of gameplay also seems very off to me. I've gone so far as to ritually commit suicide with my character on the other Ansalon by walking into one of the old deathtrap rooms that's been around as long as I've played on Ansalon, pre-split, before deleting him.
DiscworldMud beckons, and does hold some interest for me, but I'm not sure it's quite the right style of game for me. I've tried a few other Mud's now too, and so far nothing is clicking. I'm halfway entertaining the idea of trying to set up a small Mud myself and working to develop it into something of the same spirit that Ansalon once had, without borrowing from the premises or actual design of Ansalon. Even if nobody but myself and maybe eventually some friends plays on it, it might be good for me. Dunno yet. If I go that route, I'm going to have to do some serious thinking about whether I want to rely on the same codebase as Ansalon just because, or whether I want to look into a saner build system. (I never really cared for Ansalon's build interface, though for a while I tried to build for them. Never got far, I was a lot younger and ended up just not having time for it. Hopefully if I go this route I won't run into the same issue.)