Hmmm. Though it's probably not what you're looking for, FiranMUX satisfies a lot of these requirements.
1. Combat in FiranMUX is timer based, so when you wield a weapon and attack, there's some time depending on your attributes before the game makes a roll for you versus your opponent and calculates out damage location and damage type. There isn't any grinding, because you don't level by using your skills codedly; you 'level' skills by spending XP, which you get from RPing with others (every week, you vote for 5 people who you had the best scenes with, and that gets turned into XP for that person), and you level attributes very rarely, through something called birthday bonuses that you have to justify based on what you've done in the past year. Instead of an HP meter, there's a damage meter, and every time you get hit you roll shock dice to see if you go unconscious, and death dice to see if you die from the hit. Dice difficulties get harder as you get more damage, so naturally it's nearly impossible to go unconscious or die with a small bruise, but very likely to die if you're already seriously injured and wounded everywhere. It doesn't have a bleeding system yet, though, so that's a downside. But you can get permanent injuries by getting past a certain injury threshold, which reduces one of your attributes. When you fight, you can also form groups and fight in formations, and generally whenever people go out hunting for dangerous animals, they always bring more than one person, in case you get knocked out and mauled by an animal. Death is permanent. Wars and conflicts and murders go the same way.
2. When you die, it's permanent. There's no reviving or respawning, since FiranMUX is about a persistent and consistent world. After you get struck by a fatal blow, what happens is one of two things. If it's a death where your body couldn't be recovered, then you're just dead. If it's a death where your body does get recovered, the admin set you to 'Dying' status, which means you'll die in a week or so, and you get time to RP out your last scenes. Very rarely do people get saved--in these cases, it's due to intervention by gods (who are played by actual players, but they also have a limit on their power, so you don't see much intervention, as expected). Characters start being playable at age 8, and the game has a 1:3 time ratio, so one year RL is three years ingame. Once you're past 40, every birthday you also make a roll based on your attributes to see whether your health stays the same, or deteriorates. If your health ever reaches 1 and you fail a roll, you'll die of old age. There are diseases in game, and it is possible to die of contagious diseases or plagues (though those tend to be pretty rare, since they're incredibly difficult to combat). And since if you die, it's permanent, there is a very well-formed and thematic guard structure, and killing someone is an act that's taken very, very seriously. You can rarely get away with it, so it's only something someone does if they're an assassin/mercenary, and are sure that the odds are on their side.
3. The majority of the characters are not fighters. While there is a military, air force, and navy, and loads of combat in the game, a lot of the meat comes from crafting. Tailoring, tanning, armoring, farming, animal husbandry, breeding dogs, architecture, carpentry, masonry, and so forth and so on (musicians, dancers, and scribes) are all ingame and make money. Talented tailors (who are skilled OOCly at making good looking clothing descriptions) earn lots of money, especially for silk items, and armorers are in high demand for making armor and repairing armor, and people need tanners to make them their leather things, locksmiths to make locks for their doors and make keys, weaponsmiths to make blades and axes, farmers to make crops for the cooks to cook and the brewers to brew, people need carpenters to build them furniture, people want masons to make sculptures or houses, and it goes on and on. There are no minigames, but one of the reason why this works is because the game's set up and structured in a way to make huge demand for customized items. Basically, the game's world is incredibly detailed and codified, and having good looking clothing and jewelry is a way to show off how rich you are or how well-dressed you are, and people just like having a lot of stuff. A lot of demand for supply.
4. Scarcity for resources--this is the one thing that FiranMUX doesn't quite have yet. Land in FiranMUX is all owned by someone, usually, and resources are only scarce in rare cases. Lumber is freely accessible at the public chopping grounds, so trees rarely run out because they replenish every season, but animals can run out. Each plot of land has a database for what kinds of animals you can find on it, and so if you keep hunting, some animal types can disappear. This tends to happen a lot for river banks and lobsters, because lobster bisque is kind of the richest possible food, and all the nobles want it for ceremonies/birthdays/parties/marriages/dinners. There is pretty much a functioning economy in FiranMUX, where you can buy things at the market or from other people, and people own stores and there's a way to advertise and put up things in the classifieds. It also works because it's hard to be a perfect jack of all trades due to XP costs. A very good miner could mine some iron, which he sells to a smelter to get it smelt up into iron ingots, and then that miner might commission an armorer to make an armor set for his brother, and now the armorer's gained money that he'll use for something else. Also, there's another currency in game called ERP, which is 'energy reserve points', and they represent labor--you'll use these up whenever you make things. I'll get into that a bit later.
5. Exploration. FiranMUX has a fixed area, but it's one of the largest of all MUXes. Lots of buildings with rooms inside, and there are also secret rooms. Even non-secret rooms can be interesting...a lot of neat things are out in the wilderness and inside the city walls, and also in the Old City (kind of a slum place). Tunnels, deserted ships, ruins, underground temples, huge trees, and caves and all sorts of things. Having the espionage skill allows you to use the search command, where you'll spend some energy to find hidden entrances in your location. There's a lot to explore, and furthermore, whenever any unique, wiz-run events come around like War Season, or any unique TPs (short for tinyplot), there's always new stuff going on and stories behind them. A lot of exploring, and a lot of learning. Some people have been on the game for years and still find new things.
6. You have to interact if you ever want to have new stuff. Any kind of finished good goes through a lot of processes to make it what it is. You have some blueberry wine? That wine was brewed by a brewer. The blueberries came from a farmer. The farmer rented land from a noble. This kind of progression is pretty much everywhere in game. A silk palla, for example, would have had to come from a tailor who could design it, and the silk came from a weaver who wove silk into cloth, and that silk came from a Clan's imports from another nation. And there's also quality levels for things. If you have a great cook who made spec (spectacular, referring to the dice success) cakes, then eating them will give you a different description. Medicines and bandages: you need a herbologist to find those herbs and make medicines, and a healer is the one who applies them to you. Better quality medicines and bandages heal you a bit more. In summary, the creation process for items is one that promotes interaction and roleplay. And yes, there often is a lot of sentimental feeling for a personal item. Some characters have armor that's been passed down through generations, and often times you'll see that someone owns some gold medals or trophies or sculptures that were presented to them after they won a contest, or a battle royale or a pentathlon. Some items are owned by royalty, and other items are historical. Nearly all of these items come from player hands.
7. Health - FiranMUX doesn't quite have what you search for here. You don't need to keep fed to stay alive. Instead, the game has something called EP, which are energy points. You need these to buy from the market, to make items, and to code-work, and fighting uses up a bit of EP for each action. Whenever you sleep, a portion of your EP goes to your ERP, so if you want to be able to do most things, you will need to keep your energy up. So eating is required, but not excessive--most games that require you to eat to stay alive either will result in you dying if you don't have the time to log in, or will have you mysteriously perfect and full when you log in, which is a little immersive-breaking, depending on the kind of game. This system is nice, in my opinion, since if you don't play the game often you won't be punished for not eating, but if you play the game then you'll need to eat, but it's not unreasonable. Hydration is in the form of alcohol--thematically people don't drink water because the water might be foul or tainted.
8. FiranMUX is set in a sort of Greco-Roman alternate world. There's no magic whatsoever (though there are artifacts that do things that come from gods), though there are some beasts that are fantastical like griffons, and one of the races ingame is apparently a 'bad guy' culture that misogynizes women and does terrible shit to their enemies (amusingly enough, the playable culture in the game also misogynizes women a good deal of time, and also discriminates a lot thematically). It's done in an interesting way, though, that'll take some getting used to for people who don't play these kinds of roleplaying games. FiranMUX is pretty damn different from other MUXes, so people tell me. A huge part of the game is built on code, so even though it's an RP game it feels a lot like a computer RPG at times, and though you can create your own characters, it's not nearly as deep as if you chose a character from the roster system. That character comes with a list of family, relationships, skills, attributes, and basically comes into existence as part of the world already. Some characters are more vital to the game's overarching plot than others, so you need to send in an application for them sometimes. It's extremely different from most games, but this is what makes it juicy.
A lot of stories make their way through this game. It has a very rich history, and I can say I've had a lot of fun and nerve-wracking times in FiranMUX, though I try not to let it suck up my time too much. The strange thing is, it's not that hard to get into if you know how to type. I never played any roleplaying-style game before FiranMUX, and I was terrible the first week, but I picked it up quickly and now it's insanely addicting sometimes. You can be a part of the guard, or the army. Each Clan has its own prejudices and styles, and there's a lot of conflict between some, and brawling is legal, so if you're a fighter type you can get in a lot of that stuff. There's gladiator games sometimes, and you can choose to play as a noble, a middle class citizen, or a commoner, or even a criminal or a thug. Crime is complex, but there's also a lot of things in it to make sure it isn't overpowered (and it isn't), so when you do pull off a good crime it feels very satisfying and adrenaline-rushy. Most people in the game are very good about keeping things IC (pretty much everyone keeps it IC), but you're allowed to talk OOC on channels as long as you don't divulge stuff, so forth and so on. IC actions = IC consequences. It's probably the biggest rule to learn when you first play the game, and after that it's a smooth ride.
Man, I can't believe I typed so much on it. I actually got introduced to it via the Bay12 thread on it, so it's kind of funny seeing me write so much about it now. Hope this is interesting.
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Topic: The MMO Of My Dreams (Read 4382 times)