Review Submitted By: Alis
Author Status: Player
Started on Serenity : The Firefly MUSH: 01/27/2006
Submission Date: Jan 27, 2006
TMC Listing: Serenity : The Firefly MUSH
The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Alis]
and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.
As you can see from my start date, I did not spend much time on this
MUSH. When I first attempted to connect to this MUSH (probably
about two weeks ago), the guest program disallowed me as there could
only be one guest on at a time. I decided today to give it another
go, and they had fixed the guest program, at least. I logged on and
started looking around, asking questions, that sort of thing.
The first thing that hit me were the typos. In major thematic
files, there were completely ridiculous spelling errors: 'virse
instead of 'verse, governrients instead of governments, and so on.
The greeting I received from a member of staff (royalty, not full
staff) was prompt, but I quickly learned that few of the players or
staff took any pains to make their typing legible. Spelling errors,
grammatical inconsistencies, lacking punctuation and a total
disregard for capitalization of any kind do not generally inspire
confidence in potential players. Not this player, anyway. (I
learned later that the staffer who greeted me with such atrocious
spelling errors is, in fact, their Player Relations person.)
I started asking questions. I will admit that their staff was ready
and willing to answer them, at the very least. What I learned was
that they have no real way to show potential players (or existing
players) what kind of quality of RP happens there. There are no
groups or websites where logs of scenes can be submitted. In fact,
the MUSH has no website of any kind. Players are not required to
submit any kind of substantial background for their characters,
limiting it to, as I was told by staff, 'a few lines' - none of
which are accessible to other players. If I want to read someone
else's background, I simply can't. (I would never use OOC
information in an IC setting, but apparently the staff doesn't have
any faith in the playerbase's ability to separate the two.)
None of the players I spoke to gave me any kind of confidence in the
MUSH's quality. One of them even went on to tell me about a
DIFFERENT Firefly/Serenity-based game that would suit me better,
saying it was of a higher quality than this one. (Having looked at
both other Firefly games in the past and having a character on one
of them, I tend to agree.)
Lastly, one of their major plot points of the last two weeks closely
parallels the plot point of one of the other Firefly games, which to
me seemed irresponsible on the staff's part. When I inquired about
available FCs (clearly not any of the canon characters from the
namesake ship, as they are all staffers), no one had any answer for
me. 'I think there are some,' I was told, 'but I can't find the
information.'
If you're looking for a quality game, don't play on this one. There
are at least two other games with the same theme that have been
executed MUCH more competently. SerenityMUSH seems like a juvenile
game by comparison.
