Review Submitted By: Meursault
Author Status: Player
Started on Awakened Worlds: October 2006
Submission Date: Feb 10, 2008
TMC Listing: Awakened Worlds
The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Meursault]
and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.
Throughout the past 8 years or so, I'd played Awake or its
derivatives off and on. Although never for any given length of time,
until September or October of 2006 when I started again and got
hooked.
The codebase is exceptionally well done, with a system that's almost
perfectly matched to canon Shadowrun. For the most part, players are
helpful and engage in interesting and well-performed roleplay, which
was I think, the main reason that I was hooked to the game.
I went from having little to no experience with the MUD and having
only a general understanding of the concepts of canon Shadowrun rules
to having an intricate knowledge of both. After a few months of
playing I became a newbie helper. A position designed, as you may
guess, to help newbies with my experience and knowledge of the MUD,
and awhile after that, I received the position of questor so that I
could encourage RP on the MUD.
Awakened Worlds is a fantastic MUD environment, that has kept me
vastly entertained for the past year and a half. Most of the players
are wonderful, as is the majority of the staff.
On the downside, one will likely experience problems with entrenched
older players. Due to changes in the code such as the reduction in the
economy, elimination of many bugs, changes in equipment availability,
lowering of skill caps, etc. older players have obtained a profound
advantage that newer players will have difficulty matching.
Furthermore, some older players have become so entrenched that they
are nearly immune to the rules that the immortals are supposed to
enforce. Often one will encounter a double-standard being in play in
any dispute between an older and newer player, and sometimes older
players will perform blatantly illegal actions without receiving
punishment. After winding up on the wrong end of an older player/newer
player dispute, that began via OOC harassment through code
exploitation, I lost most of my interest in the MUD.
Despite all of the redeeming factors in its rewarding RP, intricate
code base, and for the most part fantastic playerbase, I can't bring
myself to persist in playing on a MUD where the rules do not apply
equally to everybody. I hope that I've done the MUD justice with a
fair and honest review, and hope that those things that are wrong
change for the better.
-- Meursault
