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[Eek-A-Mouse]

The first MUD a played. Was pretty entertaining for about a week or two, but I was sidetracked by something like EVE or Haven and Hearth (Forget which), and eventually forgot about BatMUD and stopped playing. I'm now contemplating giving it another go, but would like to here some fellow DF'ers opinions on it first  .

So, what do you think of it?
http://www.bat.org/

[Farce]

MUDs, huh?  *unrelated digression get*

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The first MUD I ever played was Achaea.  I got linked to it from some game magazine's website or something.  I was like twelve or something at the time, fresh and new to the internets, and did not know what "lol" and such meant.

I enjoyed it, but never advanced past the level 10 "suddenly your portals are limited!" barrier, as I did not know how to navigate at all.


After that I searched for more MUDs to play, and was astounded to find most of them weren't as complex.  Yahoo had a big list of 'em that I went through, though I don't know if it still does.

Eventually I decided on some other MUD called Land of Ruins.  It was my favorite, but it sorta died one day, and I don't know what happened to it.  It was never really populated as I recall though - ~10ish when I first found it, ~0-4ish the last couple times I logged into it.

I was pretty bad at it, I mostly just sat around the crossroads in town.  I kinda plateau'd around level 33 or something, whereas a friend I had it in made it up to 50, reincarnated, and then passed me again.  I think he was around 42 or 62 the last time I saw him.

[Eek-A-Mouse]

Hah. I'm brand new to MUDs, just learning about them this year. Actually, the only two I've tried so far was BatMUD and HellMOO (MOO being a type of MUD I guess? *shrug*), and BatMUD was the most enjoyable, probably because of the easier interface and neat client that comes along with the game. HellMOO does seem pretty interesting, though, and I'll probably give it another go once I work up the courage.

Wow, already off topic lol. Still looking for people's opinions on BatMUD if they've ever played, though!

[Cthulhu]

Technically Wyvern is a MUD, that was one of the first games I really enjoyed, I still occasionally play it.

There was also Achaea, which I played and liked, but I got to like level 20 and it turned into a huge grind unless you grease the wheels with money.  The PvP was also trigger-based and very lackluster.  Other than that there was a lot of really good stuff there, but the cons ruined it.

I also played Armageddon, but that was way too hardcore for me, the other players scared me so bad I couldn't roleplay.

I haven't played BatMUD, does it stalk the internet at night fighting crime?

[jnecros]

I tried Bat MUD after readin this post. I like the client, but I wish there was a better map, like an ASCII one a la Materia Magica.

I have only tried these two and Hellmoo, which is just too grotesque for my tastes. Of the three, materia is my favorite, but I have not played that much to be honest. The grindfest in MUDs kind of turns me off.

I was shocked that my character in Bat Mud could not even fight a butterfly at level one, seriously not sure how to level, and the world was confused without a large overland map. I hope somebody around here has played longer than a few hours, and can give a small review of it.

[Majestic7]

Ahh, BatMUD. I played it years ago, like 96 - 00 or something. I was still a kiddie, so grinding for experience and stuff was fun at the time. The game had a very large world, variety of guilds to join, occasional special events (like pigeons from HELL occupying the town square in the main city and killing even high level characters), crafting, possibility for characters buy, own and build their own settlements etc.... All the stuff you find from MMORPGs nowadays and more.

Higher level characters ran settlements and castles, rented rooms to other characters to safely keep their stuff in. Other characters of course tried to raid those settlements and castles to steal the stuff and murder other characters. There was a special guild for assassins. Other players could post bounties anonymously to off other player characters. Assassins would then go after the victims in a special anonymous, disguised form. If they managed to kill the target, they'd get the bounty. There were a lot of players around (for a MUD), often hundreds online at the same time.

In the end I gave the game for two reasons. First, it started getting repetitive. Grinding, grinding, grinding - or in the case of a healer, resurrecting, resurrecting, resurrecting. It was like playing a roguelike, just with more work and less fun plus it cost money during the modem days. Second, there was the social aspect that became annoying. Mainly, there were always some idiots with their pissing contests and rules were not the same for everyone. The administrators clearly favored certain people while enforced the rules to the last comma with others. In a game with unrestricted PvP save a few spots in the entire world, this was quite annoying.

Oh well, modern MMORPGs are pretty much what BatMUD was years ago, just with graphics glued on. Grind, grind, grind, join a society, do raids, PvP, grind grind grind. So I suppose if you are crazy about WoW or something, you might like BatMUD. In my case I lost my appetite for that kind of stuff years ago. I don't feel like playing anything that feels like a second job and where the most important thing is how much time you can pour in the game. (Unless you cheat and buy stuff online.)

Keep in mind I played the game like ten years ago. I have no idea what BatMUD is like these days. I'd imagine it has improved in content since, even if player base has fled to the online games with graphics.

[Eek-A-Mouse]

Yeah, I do remember BatMUD being a bit of a grind. I started out as a warrior or something of the like, so killing things were a bit easier for me than it may have been for other people who tried it when starting out as a wizard or w/e. I eventually became skilled enough to kill random npcs roaming around town, who dropped some pretty decent items. Then, as I gained more xp, I became a necro/fighter deathknightish kinda guy, which gave me access to a few spells which were pretty neat. What I liked most about this game was the immense amount of available races, most of which I haven't heard of before I played BatMUD. I believe you can only go so far with the available races, but you can then reincarnate yourself as a more advanced race (Liche, skeleton, dragonperson etc). Now thinking back to it, there was definitely grind included, hah. But it was still pretty fun, especially because of the huge map and large amount of neat content. I guess you could almost go as far as saying that its the WoW of MUDs (Even though I've never played WoW, just heard about it >.>, so I could possibly be completely wrong).

[jnecros]

Ah nice overview thanks.  Sounds like the game is not for me, yeah things must have changed somewhat, but I am not into grind to death with world pvp and drama thing.

Yep, I agree Eek-a, the races are the coolest.

[aggressio]

Found this topic when trying to find some area maps and tips to this particular game, and just had to comment:

The grinding aspect of Batmud is voluntary The game rewards nicely (very) for exploring and doing guests. So repetitive hack'n'slash isn't compulsory to get started. Perhaps if you plan to get to the alltime top ten of players

I'd say you can keep yourself busy for a loong time without even having to fight a butterfly and level up your char so it can beat up bigger monsies easily. Nowadays the game seems also to support those who don't have the time to grind in form of a reloading exp-pool which gives you a bonus for your grind if you don't play so often.

I've been on and off the game for over ten years, and since the last major update which turned the world upside down and added continents full of stuff into the game I'm as newbie as ever.

playerkilling is forbidden btw. It's possible though, and if you give a proper reason to someone it might be tolerated by the admins. I hear that player killling rules are enforced more these days. It was never very big of a problem, and lately even less so. Unless of course you try your best at annoying some highbie

The batclient has improved a lot too from the first version I saw. Now it's very graphical and stable. Has an automatic ascii map that you can zoom around and search areas. Parties can be organized in the UI etc. Triggers, scripting and plugins available and ofcourse the option to make your own. The map combined with the pathfinder plugin etc. makes moving and finding areas very easy. (It's still lacks the automapping feature of areas which zmud and cmud have though..)

muds are a dying breed perhaps in these days of 3d graphics, but as Bat was advertised: Batmud runs on the best graphics engine in the world: your imagination.

No 3D game can compete with the depth of Batmud. (atleast not yet.) The world is HUGE, the quests are a plenty. Player owned and created cities, player crafted equipment, weapons, ships, chests, potions...you name it, this game has it. It can be overwhelming at the beginning, but I'd say you should give it a chance