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[Snall]

Enthusiasm is wrong.  Lol.  W/e, your loss people.  ...well and mine cause I want more players- but at least I'm in game.

[Kagus]

Yeah, because no game could be better...even though it has been in dev longer...*shrug*

Shall I rattle off a list of games that have been in development for extraordinarily long periods of time but are inferior to similar titles released in much less time?

Remember that it's quality of development that counts, not quantity.


...oh lord, I just defended HellMOO's quality of development.  Something is dreadfully wrong here.

But the point remains that, really, nothing has been said about what this game actually is or provides.  Saying "It's better than X" is subjective opinion, and saying "It's been in development for 20 years" means it's Duke Nukem Forever.  All that's been mentioned in this thread is that the game has a cyberpunk atmosphere, is populated with a small number of players, and may or may not include a map system.

So, yeah...  Rather than saying "W/e, your loss people", you may want to actually tell us about some of the amazing features this game has, and maybe explain the depth and function of these mysterious "deeper systems"?  Try to look at it from the perspective of someone who doesn't already have a background in the game.

[Sowelu]

If I had a nickel for every MUD that was totally awesome ten years ago, but only has 1/3rd its old playerbase and isn't nearly as fun because of it, I'd have enough cash to pay people to play full-time.  The age of MUDs has passed, sadly.  It's not where the new blood is going these days, and all we have is jaded oldbies, people with their age-old friend groups, or ten-year junkies who need a fix.

Depressing, really.  But hell, the age of MUDs started its decline around fifteen years ago...as soon as every developer with an awesome idea realized they could actually pull it off and create their game, and the rate of new MUDs opening was higher than the rate of players entering the genre.  Even in 2005, new MUDs seemed to be opening faster than old ones were shutting down, but more players were leaving than were joining.

Man...back in the old days, MUDs were where it was all at.  You started life on some AOL roleplaying group, or playing Ultima (like, Ultima II, not UO or anything).  Then you found the internet, maybe in college or something, and you took it to the next level.  Maybe you had a specific fandom, like Shadowrun or W:tA or Discworld or Elfquest or Pern or furry and went poking around and presto, there's a game for it, ready and waiting.  Then you poked a couple friends and pulled them in, because these games were all shiny and new--who knew what wonders this Internet contained?

But we're jaded, now.  We have other games.  When Doom was king, you couldn't even play it over the Internet proper, it was more of a dial-to-your-foe thing.  Internet FPSes kicked it off, since now there were other games to play online.  While MU*s were more interactive than Usenet, the rise of instant messengers slowly eroded that advantage.  MMOs, browser games, these things provided a new way for students to blow hours on end online...  The new blood stopped coming in.  When a roleplayer was introduced to the Internet for the first time, MU*s weren't one of the first things they discovered anymore.  Soon, the generation of text-adventure gamers was grown up, too; they might not all have stayed, but at least they came in the door.  The old blood grew up, which didn't take them out of the community--it just reduced the number of people they could recruit; once you're older, you become set in your hobbies.  Your friends have no more time to join you in new places.

Oh yes, WoW did its part.  But MMOs simply helped slow the number of new players.  With no new players and the number of games ever-rising, though, fragmentation is what is finally killing MUDs.  The old players are too set in their ways to move to a fuller MUD, the new players are distributed too widely...no game will be as full as it was designed to be ever again, and we can't reclaim the games we had of our youth.  Like a roaring river, MUDs change from day to day...You never quite connect to the same site twice.

Do not try, in desperation, to return to the old days.  Mourn them, and accept their fate.

[Snall]

Yeah, because no game could be better...even though it has been in dev longer...*shrug*

Shall I rattle off a list of games that have been in development for extraordinarily long periods of time but are inferior to similar titles released in much less time?

Remember that it's quality of development that counts, not quantity.


...oh lord, I just defended HellMOO's quality of development.  Something is dreadfully wrong here.

But the point remains that, really, nothing has been said about what this game actually is or provides.  Saying "It's better than X" is subjective opinion, and saying "It's been in development for 20 years" means it's Duke Nukem Forever.  All that's been mentioned in this thread is that the game has a cyberpunk atmosphere, is populated with a small number of players, and may or may not include a map system.

So, yeah...  Rather than saying "W/e, your loss people", you may want to actually tell us about some of the amazing features this game has, and maybe explain the depth and function of these mysterious "deeper systems"?  Try to look at it from the perspective of someone who doesn't already have a background in the game.

Vehicle system:  Can fly/drive- repair/add armor plating- add different weapon modules/tracking/targeting systems (You can also buy normal tracking bugs to place on items- they can be found of course). Vehicle security systems. 

Cyberware/Medical:  Full medical system, can bleed out- lose specific organs and have medical system where you can be treated and a new organ added (In a CyberClinic of course) and you can live- cyberware- weapons, bone augmentation/muscle- cybersword/shotgun arms, cyberlimbs/eyes (Which can see in the dark of course)/heart, - cortex bombs- simsense rigs, blood filter, and lots more.  (People have been known to cut all the limbs off of an enemy and leave them in the wastes to die (No Complant access so they can't call for help).

Drug system, space station, black market/fixers

Apartments, security systems with different weapon mounts that can be changed (Including a SAM missile one to protect roofs from aircraft), corporate security areas/wastelands.

Matrix: Matrix system where you can deck- I'd really hate to give away the many things you can do with this but most players know anyway so: Watch other players communication, control video monitors/security doors, change security status of people in corporate zones, track banking records, and more (And a lot more I don't know how to do still..)  -Also Matrix Combat. 

Anyway- lots of other stuff *shrug*- I've been playing off an on for a decade or so and I still don't know everything. 

[cappstv]

I wonder if there is a graveyard where old games genres go to die.

[Aqizzar]

This is like, the fourth or fifth time somebody has made a thread on this forum pitching Cybersphere.  Most of the others were deleted though, because they were bots, so I'll hand it to you for being alive.

This website is the exact same, and I mean exact same, website Cybersphere had when I first found it in like 1999.  Well, sans the annoying Shockwave intro it used to have.  Is it really so hard for somebody connected with the game to go back and update things?  Or at least remove the "Under Construction" tag that's been there since the Clinton administration?  Okay, so there's a wiki now, but still, it's a little silly.

Eh, maybe I'll give it a shot this time.  The last time I tried playing Cybersphere in like 2006, the mandatory character creation tutorial was impossible to complete due to bugged combat.  I'd like to think that's been changed at least.

[Snall]

As far as I know you've always been able to @register without doing the tutorial.  Just remember the @who command so you can @page Admin if you have any problems.

[Repulsion]

  At first I was like: 'Oh cool, this look interesting!' *checks site* 'Hmm...  I dunno' *looks at weapons and armor and stuff* 'Hmmm...'

  So yeah. I dunno.

[Zorgn]

Usually I'd ignore this because you put (Better than HellMoo) in the title. But I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic cyber-whatever-you-call-it, so I'll let it slide this time and look at the site.

[HonkyPunch]

WALL OF STUFF

Not so much true. I only started playing MuD games this year. I got at least two friends into it. And I know there are others I have told of some of them that are interested.
To be fair, I could be considered an 'Oldbie' or whatever because I played one once when I was like 10, but I hated it.
So I dont think it counts.

[Pnx]

I seem to remember never trying this due to it not accepting my email.

[Eagleon]

MU*s are still alive, however ridiculously fragmented. Yeah, everyone and their uncle can host a game - you still have extraordinary stuff like Godwars 2, or RetroMUD, or HellMOO, or... you get the picture. Stuff that stands out on its own for depth of content, and still attracts oldbies from smaller MU*s. All the ROM/Circle/Godwars derivatives are mostly gone or empty, a sad waste of creative energy. Then you have the MU*s centered around communities that refuse to die, but have no other decent outlet for their gaming needs. I'd like to see an effort to bring together dead MUD/MUSH areas and content together into one chaotic morass of awesome. A multi-planar MUD. Token unique classes existing peacefully (though perhaps without balance) across domains. But that would be ridiculously hard to manage, simply because most MU* admins were immature tyrants.

It's a dying universe, but there are stars that still burn, and hope for some miracle of entropy, some genius of Multi-IF, to bring it into a new era of righteous textual heroin abuse. Please? Anyone?

[Kagus]

Well, one of the admins from HellMOO invited me to a server they've set up that's teaching MOOcode, so maybe someday...

Heh, right.  Like that's ever gonna happen.  I'm bad enough at keeping on a straight path when I don't have the crushing weight of real-life demands loaded down on me.

[Sowelu]

It's a dying universe, but there are stars that still burn, and hope for some miracle of entropy, some genius of Multi-IF, to bring it into a new era of righteous textual heroin abuse. Please? Anyone?

Ever read Wyrm?  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wyrm-Bantam-Spectra-Book-Mark/dp/0553378716  Yeah, it's pretty old and not entirely on-topic, but the rogue AI that hacked pretty much everything (suspend disbelief...SUSPEND...) managed to sneak characters onto every MU they connected to in an internally consistent way, like, oh hey it's a different MUD but I'm still my old class with my old gear.

I've actually thought about running an ARG based off that concept, with multiple independent MU*s that have a background process that quietly syncs them together, press a button in one MU* and see an effect on another.  There's already intermud chat, so in some ways, it might not even be that out of the ordinary.  Heh.

[Muz]

I've logged on to this game with a few characters, but it didn't capture my attention early on and there weren't many people online at the time, so I skipped it.