TMC Player Reviews: Ancient Mists

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

I have to agree with everything above. Some people might recognize my
name. I was building on Aabsolom when Raxx and Beth first started
taking over rp and got promoted to code and build. In that format, on
that mud, I was discouraged by the cliques I saw forming, the 
tightknit group of friends that spanned race, clan, and roleplay, 
very unrealistically.

I have missed that mud so much I have made a number of characters on
AM, with different names, trying to recapture the fun I once had as
player, not involved in the staffing, and have been discouraged to see
more of the same. Real life friends defending and supporting each
other, and, depressingly, almost the exact roleplay I was involved in
4 years ago. They have a huge number of rpnotes posted, and reading
them, I am amazed to see the same people playing the same role,
self-involved stories. As a new character, I never managed to
penetrate the roleplay or make any friends, besides cursory
greetings.

The mud is impenetrable to new players and revolves around the same
clique it used to. I hate being negative, but I saw the new review,
and got fired up reading it. I posted the first review here, too,
under the name Kanin, a while ago.

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

Eloquent, well-planned, and pointed. Also completely ridiculous and
more than a little pathetic. Who writes a review for a MUD from which
the -last- time he was banned was almost 6 months ago?

Every MUD I've ever played or worked with has its problem players
that seem to make it their life's goal to irritate, harass, and
otherwise antagonize the staff and other players. On Ancient Mists his
name is Malachite. He insists on breaking the rules and basically
anything else he can do to make a complete tool out of himself.
Malachite is not just your average village troublemaker though, he has
to be special...he has been nuked and/or banned on at least three
different occasions I can remember off the top of my head. Twice since
I joined the staff about 3 years ago. Still, he insists on coming
back... with a different IP if he must.

Now let me be clear, Malachite can be an excellent roleplayer... the
MUD's admin, other members of the staff, and I have all told him on
multiple occasions that his RP is entertaining, often refreshing, and
always interesting. He roleplays a dark, evil character with a
personality that makes -me- want to actually meet him so I can hit him
in the face... and the fact that he is able to evoke that much
response to a fictional character attests to his aptitude. His OOC
conduct, however, is none of the above. It was and nearly always has
been just disgusting... any of our female players could offer some of
the explanation of this - choose any of them, their responses will
likely be the same. He has been given several 'second' chances,
because as I said before, he can be an excellent roleplayer. We as
staff keep falling into the same trap of considering the wonderful
asset to the game he -could- be, if only he cleaned up his act OOC...
surely he'll have changed by now, right? And he keeps proving us
wrong. He insists on causing strife; he can't live without it. He is
also one of the worst examples I have ever encountered of ability to
separate his character from himself... he can't tolerate things not
working out for his character, so of course it must be all the fault
of the staff that has it in for him personally. Just one example of
many.

But enough about Malachite himself. I also want to address his actual
comments, because we all know that anyone can be right sometimes.
Unfortunately for him, this is unsurprisingly not one of them.

1) Clans - The clan system was at its peak on the MUD years ago, and
gradually tapered off as we lost some of the MUD's best and most
active RPers. Since then the staff has been trying to do what it can
to bring them back. There are currently two 'active' clans, but real
life continues to limit the time that most of their members can put
into activities. We would be happy to instate a third or even more
clans, but have received no other petitions at this time.

2) PK - We are listed as a PK-restricted MUD. We allow and in many
ways even encourage PK, but require that it be the result of
legitimate RP interaction between characters. It is the belief here
that PK certainly has its place in the game, but that place is as a
means to further roleplay, not as the end itself. You can disagree
(and Malachite, for one, does... incidentally, I believe one of the
times he has found himself nuked was a result of repeated violations
of this) with this approach, but that is the system under which we
operate... and I for one think it works well. Now Malachite has
twisted this into frowning on PK because of a specific in-game
occurrence that he, again, has falsely written off to staff
'favoritism'. One character, played by an older player who knows the
game very well and does pretty well for himself, decided a while back
to embark on an RP-line whereby he announced that Midgaard, a city
central to the game world, was to be under his protection... this
sounds grand and like a bit of a stretch for a player, but all this
meant was that if you killed somebody within the walls of Midgaard, he
would kill you. Malachite and other shortsighted players immediately
took this as being in actual support of peace... failing to notice
that it has more than doubled the number of actual PK battles fought
on the MUD since. More than doubled because, as I understand was this
player's intention from the beginning, of course telling people
they're 'not allowed' to kill other characters in a certain place
is the quickest way to guarantee that more will do so anyway... and
then of course there's the ensuing battle for violating the
'peace'.

3) Churches - This little bit about 'pet players' being the only
ones allowed in churches is again a bit ludicrous. Between the 5
deities with churches, we have 14 characters currently on the combined
rosters. This is again Malachite rationalizing his own consequences by
blaming it on us. His character was not allowed back in churches after
he was ousted from at least two for varying reasons... that was before
I was staff, I'm afraid I can't speak more to the specifics involved
there.

4) Rp Flags - It has never in my opinion been particularly difficult
to earn one of these. Most new players who want to can accomplish it
within a couple of weeks, once they've had a chance to think about
who they want their characters to be and where they want them to go.
All that's required is an imaginative description, a player history,
and a little bit of visible effort to play the character with some
consistency. Once earned, only three rpflags have to my knowledge ever
been revoked. One was a simple matter of a clan leader who was
inactive for a good while, and the rpflag is the mechanism we have in
place for approving clan membership... she earned hers back with a
short time of consistent activity and RP, and was soon back in the
clan as though nothing had happened. Another was for massive violation
of common sense... somebody summoned an 'invincible army of dragons'
from some 'other world' in response to some roleplay that he didn't
particularly care for. He too, eventually got his flag back and was
soon thereafter involved in a clan. The third, surprisingly enough,
was Malachite. That was tied up with the issues I've mentioned before
and he's the only one whose flag was never reinstated. He was nuked
and banned before he could get it back.

5) Names - Is this really a bone of contention Mal? Yes, we have a
naming policy that went into effect a few years back. It prohibits use
of names from known and recognizable characters from other works of
fiction, use of real words, etc. This is a fairly standard policy, and
is in place for a variety of reasons - among them the desire to avoid
having characters whose names bring with them preconceived notions of
personality, history, etc. The 'exception' Malachite speaks of is
not for any 'certain' players, but was put in when the naming policy
was decided upon... it simply states that characters that were created
before the policy was put into effect are grandfathered in. At the
time it was felt that the discontinuity that would rise from asking
existing players (and thus, their characters) to change their names
would be counter-productive, and cause more problems than it was
worth. This having been years ago, most players for whom this
exemption would apply have long since moved on. Only a handful of
players are still here from before the policy, and of them only one or
two had a name that would now be considered unallowable.

6) Favorites - This is always the fun one... it's impossible for a
member of the staff on any game to successfully refute claims of
favoritism. That's probably why it's thrown around so much by
malcontents. In any event, I can only try. Yes, there are several
players - particularly some of those who have been around the longest
- who are friends OOC with members of staff. Because these players
tend to be the ones with long-running characters, they also tend to be
the ones involved in much of the wider-scale rp; their characters have
been around for years, they've become the movers-and-shakers. It's
sometimes hard for other players - especially new ones - to integrate
themselves into ongoing RP that has backstory and nuances they don't
immediately understand. We all try to compensate for this by being
ready and willing to answer questions, etc. But more to the point,
there is absolutely no immortal 'sponsorship' of rp from certain
players or lack thereof for others. This staff tries harder than any
other group of staff members I've seen to stay away from any sort of
special exceptions or treatment... I saw that as a player, and it was
one of the things that made me proudest to be asked to join this group
of dedicated individuals a few years ago.

I really don't know how many more ways I can say this - Malachite is
just plain wrong here... it's completely off-base statements and
attempts like this to cast himself as the martyr that has turned him
into a running joke with even players who've only vaguely heard about
his history with the MUD secondhand. Mal, it's been made
unequivocally clear you are not welcome on the MUD anymore. You've
had your second, third, fourth, and probably even fifth chances. It's
time to find new rules to disregard and whine about, a new staff to
harass, and a new community to sabatoge.

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

Bitterness is so petty. Your obsession with AM is truly amazing. You
have come back time and time again, been given chance after chance and
waste it due to your own temper and maliciousness. You speak of wasted
potential, I agree. If you weren't so caught up in being the black
sheep and attempting to prove these crackpot theories you would have
been a great person to play with Mala. I was going to go through and
refute your 'review' point by point, but the sad fact is it's not
worth the time or effort.

You were nuked for the second time last year, yet just now you decide
to finally write a scathing review of the place. You omit important
details and circumstances to paint yourself as doing a service to the
reader when in fact you are just doing what you always do.. lashing
out in a destructive manner towards those who kept giving you those
chances.

I've played here for a long long time now. I've had my own issues
with the place but that was more about the people than the mud itself.
The mud has always been extremely newbie-friendly and it rewards time
and effort spent on your character. There is no fast path to power
here nor a quick sense of 'beating the game.' Instead there's an
involving world full of depth and potential for those willing to take
the time to explore and push at it's boundaries.

The staff has been reasonable and courteous beyond human limits. The
only harsh words or dark humor directed towards players has been after
extreme provocation and lack of respect is displayed by that player.
Churches are flourishing and in the time since you have left we've
had a good half dozen new players not only arrive but make themselves
known in the world and contribute.

Let it go Mala, your personal vendetta against Raxx and the rest of
the staff is just small and childish. AM is a fantastic mud that has
kept me active and playing for probably more than is good for me, but
I've enjoyed it immensely. Even if I do occasionally get stabbed
through the heart by a vindictive drow god for plotting against him,
it's all in good fun.

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

1. About Pk IC, when Malachite attacked my then in game wife Akasha,
I went after him. Nothing was said and he being a slippery devil, he
managed to keep out of my reach until i got bored and left him alone.

A second time was when Ratz attacked and killed my then ic wife,
Akasha. I being the short tempered little dragon went and killed Ratz
and was set upon by his ooc friend Tieran who was an imm of the mud at
the time. Not long afterwards we deleted our character when i met my
RL wife because the same imm would take EVERYTHING we did OOC as IC
even to the point of gobal ic channel accusing me of cheating on my IC
wife. Even though we did everything to show that it was ooc she then
said on chat all the socials are IC. Mind you, having a 2500lbs dragon
bouncing on a 90lbs drow's lap is very much ic.

RP flags. The number of times I've seen the flag taken away because
of OOC problems is numerous. Also, the number of times rp flags were
denied in unfavourable rememberance of their past characters. Example:
Strykarien(forgot how to spell his name) had his rpflags removed
several times because of ooc differences with the mud. Of course they
were returned, but ooc SHOULD NOT affect the rp flag, so is used to
control a player's action. This was not the only example i could
think of but was one that was done repeatedly. Pilate, if i remember,
had his removed and was thrown in jail going up against raxx, but had
it later returned. Basically rp flags are nothing but tools for the
imm to control a player's action whether they be ic or ooc.

Imm Favouritism. ROFL. Godlike church spells that not only gave
resistance to everything, godlike sanctuary, spells doing godlike
damage. Of course favouritism doesn't exist, ROFL. Example: Maykacha
fighting Caytiera, Mayk was at least 50 levels above and only 1 remort
below Caytiera. Cayt was doing 2k+ damage vs Maykacha with blizzard,
since drows are resistance to cold....Mith barely hit 1800+ vs Dh, a
red dragon that's vulnerable to cold. Dh didn't have sanc on and was
double pained while Maykacha at the time of the fight didn't have
sanc, but was not double pained. The other funny thing was all of
Maykacha's spells were stripped, even the ones that couldn't be
scanceled or dispelled.....but i agree no favouritism exists. I tried
very hard to disprove that Cayt had help, but couldn't do it. Dh was
my level and only a few morts below, and my breath weapon killed him
outright; did around 9k+ damage to someone not vulnerable or
resistance to lightning. I fought a fellow blue dragon and did about
6k+ with lightning since he was resistance to lightning. I fought
Caytiera and guess what...only about 5-6k damage to someone not
vulnerable or resistance to lightning. This was done with no spells
that affected resistance verus lightning and sanc was cancelled on all
parties. The funny thing was out of those 3 examples, Dh was the only
one my level, the other 2 were about 100 levels below me.

But besides from that some of the imm's favourites have godlike
weapons, presumably won from a quest. Hmm, a level 1 dagger with 254
average damage, +1000 hp, mana...the final level 200 weapon of a level
2 tier isn't even that good, close to it but without the hp and mana
boost. No favouritism there....ROFL.

Beware not playing for a week may constitute as being not active
enough and your character may be deleted. Especially if the imms want
a good reason to be rid of you. After being deleted for lack of play
for being absent for all of a week, we remade months later to chat
with our friends and see how things were. Strangely enough these new
characters were never deleted even after 6 months of not logging in,
perhaps a new character is not as much of a threat as a T2 full mort.

Naming......Malysse was not accepted becauseafter 3 weeks of play
they finally deemed the name unacceptable. Enough said.

Although I do not always agree with Malachite and many times have
strongly disagree with what he believes, I can see and have seen the
things he has complained about.

The mud is truly a nice place to play. I wish i could say the same
about ALL the imms....sad....since it is a truly special place for my
RL wife and myself. That being said some of the Imms do go out of
their way to make this place special.

 Mithandria Soren 
Playful, demonic dragonling

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

Regardless of who the reviewer is, the review seems very accurate to
what I've seen. Regardless of immaturity or obsession, he seems
insightful.

Obsession is pathetic. I haven't tried a new character on AM in a
very long time. I got tired of logging onto an empty mud with 10 new
rpnotes, reading that so-and-so met this goddess or that goddess and
had pointless conversation. Seen but not heard... heard by some... a
raven flew overhead... this is practically a forum for writers, with
stagnant game mechanics.

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

Since my return 2 years ago, I haven't seen you Ged, nor you Mith.
Your information is outdated (extremely) and irrelevant. Memory blurs
facts over time. I've seen most (but certainly not all) the church
spells in action. I've seen every single Darkness spell (Caytiera's
church) in action and know their effects. You are way off base and
just don't realize it because you were blinded by the heat of what
was going on at the time. There's nothing god-like about them (OOC,
as far as the mechanics go). They are nice, they give you an advantage
for being in a church, but it's not the overwhelming landslide you
make it sound.

The rest of your facts are also inaccurate due to being off the mud
for two years. The game is far from empty, roleplay is far from mere
notes for a write's workshop. Get over your old dislikes and let the
past go. AM is a great place to mud now and if you don't want to come
back and don't care about it now, why bother trying to support
someone who is a known biased troublemaker?

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

Ok, I came into Ancient Mists in 07 at the behest of an older player.
I think M's review is overly harsh and not objective at all.
I've been mudding since 1993, and I've seen good and bad. Here's
what I consider a fair critique:

First the bad: The mud is insular. The wizstaff and older players
have been together so long, it has a clique feel at times. The RP is
tough, the RP requirements to get full functionality out of the game
are tougher, but really this isn't anything to whine about. Finally,
there are no firm policies on whether you're watched/monitored by an
inviso-Wiz so I feel people act differently... it's the
Schrodinger's Cat question, and since they're watching the actions
and outcomes are different. For example, in my opinion M acted out
more knowing every move was watched. That might not even make
sense, but it's my opinion.

The good: The mud is easy to understand. There are discrete goals
(finish your 200 levels and get to the next mort). There are fun
little quests to rack up quest points and get better gear, slowly from
remort to remort. Players can get involved with areas, the wiz staff
plays as near-equals in the RP, and people will help you A LOT if you
ask.

The better: All RP hatreds and dislikes are put aside to actually
help people get through difficult portions of leveling and other
parts of the mud (i.e., getting stuck without your gear). That's
because they're actually nice people. If you don't let the RP stuff
get to YOU, you can actually have fun.

I also personally like, unlike other places I've played, that you
can RP if you want (and earn the right), that you can play ALONE if
you want, and that no one goes around stealing kills and stuff.

All around, it's a mud that deserves a bigger playerbase. It would
probably be even better if it had such.