Review Submitted By: Gabocha
Author Status: Player
Started on Accursed Lands: August, 2004
Submission Date: Jun 30, 2005
TMC Listing: Accursed Lands
The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Gabocha]
and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.
When I first started playing Accursed Lands, I was quite confused.
There was no clear purpose to the game, no obvious mobs that needed
defeating, and my character got banged up pretty badly by even the
seagulls that were wandering around my starting city.
Then I realized what Accursed Lands was all about, the roleplaying.
After I'd explored my starting city for a while, a bit confused
(since the MUD I came from had a graphic map in a custom client), I
managed to find my way into the wilderness. My jaw dropped as I saw
the full color ASCII map open up and show that I was standing in the
middle of a group of islands surrounded by water for as far as I could
see.
After I swam a bit to an adjacent island, looking for something
interesting or perhaps another player to interact with, I found both.
There were some wood products that had been strewn about in a
particular area of forest that also housed a lane leading up to a
monastery.
I decided to hang around, looking at the furniture and things, when
another player walked up to me and started showing me the ropes of the
game (most likely sensing my newbieness). The transition was very
smooth, and soon enough he had taken me to the mainland, where I saw
my second city, a bustling harbor town with a great bazaar (full of
player shops).
I had a pretty smooth entry, but even for those that don't get as
lucky as I did, there are mentors available to newbies and a newbie
channel to ask basic questions about syntax and other sorts of things.
However, be warned. On AL, we take roleplay very seriously, and to
limit the amount of OOC knowledge transfer, however incidental, to
characters, there's a strict IC/OOC separation policy. In addition to
not using OOC information IC, you're expected to stay silent about IC
information when talking on channels or, hopefully, even between
friends on AIM and such.
But in any case, AL's got such a rich theme that's so fun to
discover for yourself, you'd probably be pretty angry at anyone who
ruined the suprises for you anyway.
AL's a great game with a lot of interesting things to do for
everyone. Crafters, socializers, explorers, heck, even PKers have a
lot to do in AL (a quick note about PK; it's -got- to be roleplayed,
random slaying for no reason isn't tolerated). Our skill-based
learn-it-by-trying system is one of the most realistic out there, and
with a busy team of creators we're only getting better by the day.
Come check us out!
