Review Submitted By: Dark Lord of My Apartment
Author Status: Player
Started on CyberSphere: 2003
Submission Date: Sep 12, 2003
TMC Listing: CyberSphere
The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Dark Lord of My Apartment]
and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.
Cybersphere is the best cyberpunk MUD I have ever found.
It's worth being clear on that because while I’m going to do some
complaining about it, and while I didn’t find it fun enough to keep
playing, I also maintain that if you want to try some cyberpunk
MUDing, you should check out Cybersphere.
What’s right with it:
Firstly, Cybersphere definitely has a cyberpunk feel to
it. The city of New Carthage (and the surrounding areas, insofar as
I have seen them) is very well described and very atmospheric. PCs
are required to fit in with this setting. Your name and description
must be appropriate and you must submit a character history before
being approved to play. When I made a mistake in my biography, so
that it didn’t quite fit in with the setting, an immortal politely
complimented me on the history and pointed out my mistake, asking
that I fix it up and resubmit. I call that classy and good for
roleplaying.
There are lots of skills to take, plenty of which have to
do with combat and most of which don’t. That strikes me as very
appropriate for the setting.
I met quite a number of people who were interesting in
roleplaying with me and who played their parts very well. I really
enjoyed some of the scenes I got to play. I also met quite a few
people who were only too willing to go out of their way to help
orient the newbie.
Lastly, newbies get a few days of grace before anyone can
pkill them, provided that they themselves don’t try to attack or
steal from anyone, including the mobs.
What’s wrong with it:
There are too many players on Cybersphere who just want to
kill other PCs for no good reason. Even while I was new enough to
have my few days of protection, some other players tried very hard
to get me to attack them so that they could waste me. Yeah, I know
life is cheap in the future, but you have to put a lot of work into
a Cybersphere character, including writing up a history, so getting
wasted for no reason is no fun.
Speaking of death, death comes very easily in Cybersphere.
Just wandering around can get you killed very easily –
whether by mobs you can’t escape or by traps you can’t avoid. You
have to put too much work into a Cybersphere character to have them
killed off so easily. You *can* pay to have clones available, but
it costs significant amounts of money each time, and if you take the
cheap version, your stats will deteriorate.
It isn’t clear what a Cybersphere PC is supposed to be doing
and you don’t get much guidance. You start the game with no
money and no equipment. If you can find a helpful PC, they may tell
you how to get some money from the bank and how to get work
delivering packages. By these means, you can pick up a little basic
equipment. Delivering packages is fun at first, but it gets old. I
kept waiting for my employers to ask me to whack somebody (or do
anything else) but they never did. There is an unemployment office
but, so I was told, it serves no purpose. I couldn’t even prey on
the mobs. The ones I found were either (a) drone citizens or desert
lizards who had nothing worth taking or (b) gangsters who were all
too tough for an (equipped) inexperienced samurai. Also, if you
ever hit a member of a gang, every other member of the gang will
attack you on sight from then on. To be fair, it is clear that the
administrators are running all kinds of interesting plots for
established characters, but that didn’t really help me any.
So do I recommend it? I recommend *trying* it, if you
like cyberpunk. The atmosphere is good, there are some good
roleplayers, there are some interesting plots going on that maybe
you can become a part of, and I haven’t found anything better in the
genre.
