TMC Player Reviews: Kingdoms of the Lost

Review Submitted By: Sylke
Author Status: Player
Started on Kingdoms of the Lost: September 2003
Submission Date: Sep 19, 2003
TMC Listing: Kingdoms of the Lost

The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Sylke] and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.

This mud has some very interesting features, the quest tokens that 
you can use to buy quest equipment or create custom gear, the 
socketgems and moxes that can be added to equipment to increase their
stats, runestones with specific attribute bonuses etc, and runic 
equipment that levels with you.  There is also a decent remort system
using tiered classes, and race evolution when you max out your stats.

There are also quite a number of special weapon flags that can result
in awesome weapons.  The only problem is that if you are starting as
a new player, you are never going to catch up to the power of the
people running around with full sets of custom equipment. And against
them in a pkill situation, you have no chance.

The mud has a small player base, which is dominated by one group of 
extremely well equiped people who all seem to owe allegiance to each
other, so unless you want to jump on their bandwagon or just avoid 
them all together, you are at a disadvantage as a new player.

Some of the players will call this 'roleplaying', but it is a thin 
excuse for some to be able to bully and murder new players they have
a disagreement with.

Some of the other drawbacks in the mud:
The mobs of the realm are also not 'intelligent.' You can attack,  
flee, come back and most mobs don't remember you.  

Items become 'owned' by a character, which prev2ents you from giving
them to somebody else or auctioning them off.  This is only for 
runic equipment, but in the end when all the equipment you want to
end up having is runic, it results in characters not being able to 
lose any equipment.  This means that even if you are able to pkill
one of the super-equiped people, they lose nothing but some gold,
quest tokens, and stat points that they can easily regain.  In my
opinion this really takes away from the fun of pkill, which is 
competition between people and occurs where you are at risk of losing
something you had to work hard to get.  In KOTL, there is no risk.

Another drawback is the inability to get things identified except by
mage classes. This makes it very hard for new players of other
classes to try and figure out what equipment they should keep. It 
also ends up again benefitting the older players giving them even 
more advantage since they have most likely created a mage just for
identifying items as an alternate character, or have made a mage class
their main character (this seems to be the dominant class, since 
mages can 'gate' to mobs, which allows for easy questing and the
accumulation of quest tokens to buy quest/custom eq).

In the end this is an enjoyable mud for some of its unique features,
but I found it lose it's luster quite quickly because of the lack of
a good player base with balanced sides in pk.  Most people sit around
questing for the majority of time once they have gathered a decent 
set of eq.

The best thing that could happen to this mud would be a reset of the 
player files to level the playing field, otherwise I don't see the 
player base growing because it is already dominated by a group of
super equiped players.

Sylke

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Comment Submitted By: Chalgyr
Author Status: Staff member
Started on Kingdoms of the Lost: From the beginning ;)
Submission Date: Sep 27, 2003

(The following review comment is the opinion of the comment's author [Chalgyr] and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff).

Well, I am pleased that some of the points were ones of fondness for 
what we're trying to do, but there's a few very good points that I 
think Sylke did make, and a few that I think are perhaps misinformed,
and others that, in my opinion, are probably wrong.

First of all, I agree that the mobs need 'smart' code to prev2ent 
hit/run/re-hit tactics, and it's one we're planning to put in.  Also
mobs who identify for a fee is another that I simply haven't gotten 
to yet (hides behind our BETA listing for these ones as of now) :O)

The mage being predominant class was interesting to hear, because for 
months straight now, I've been hearing how weak mages and priests 
are, as opposed to fighters and rogues.  I am actually pleased to 
hear someone complimenting the usefulness of a mage, by delving into 
some aspects of their ability other than fireball and lightning bolt, 
and pointing out some of their non-combat uses.

The owned equipment is, unfortunately, quite limiting.  We didn't 
implement this to keep people from making profit, so much as cut down
on cheating.  For about a period of 4 straight weeks, when we 
implemented new skills and areas, a good 15% or so of the pbase 
(which admittedly isn't huge, but does average 30+ a night and has 
gone over 50 on several occasions) was handing eq to friends to give 
to alts, and so on, basically breaking the rules at whim.  We caught 
some, but not all, I'm sure.  So the ownership code was suggested to 
me by quite a few of our players, to keep that from happening anymore.
It's unfortunate that a piece of code has to limit player flexibility,
but it's made the game considerably more fair for the players who 
don't cheat.

Yes, the 'veteran' players are the strongest no doubt, but I think 
people would find it humorous that we've been open as BETA for more 
than two years, and our 2 strongest characters created over the 
summer, only a few months or so ago (Sye and Khaman).  These two 
players showed an interest and dedication towards being the best, 
and they got it.  Khaman recieved not a single item from a departing 
player, and became our first player to reach level 175.  I've seen 
similar arguements from players that it's 'unfair' to them that the 
players who have more hours available to play their characters should 
be stronger than themselves.  To me, the people who put the time in 
will always come out ahead in competition.  I think a playerwipe 
would be irresponsible at this junction, and would likely cost us a 
healthy part of our playerbase.  By adhering to the logic listed for
doing a pwipe, we would have to do one every few months, in order to 
keep the balance of play 'even' for anyone new who comes along, but 
even then, I think that would be selling new players short, as I 
think back to the accomplishments of Khaman, Sye and others.

If the risk and playerkill are the primary things you are looking for 
in a MUD, I admit KotL might not be quite right for you.  Those are 
features commonly sought in GodWars and other PK-heavy MUDs.  The 
focus of KotL however, is roleplay and adventuring, as well as
character development.  If you have to put a week or two of your 
life into getting a custom weapon, I would be very disapointed as a 
player to lose that weapon in combat shortly after, which is why we 
have claim and owner code to prev2ent these sorts of things.  Of 
course it's a matter of preference across the board, but more often 
than not, these are areas that I have received compliments for 
usually, by our players.

Just the same, I hope you stick it out and continue to play and build 
up, as other newer players have in the past, and enjoy yourself.

- Chal