TMC Player Reviews: Medievia

Review Submitted By: Anonymous
Author Status: Player
Started on Medievia: about a year
Submission Date: Jun 20, 2010
TMC Listing: Medievia

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

I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding this mud (no, I'm
not going to post any links to taint the review; curious readers can
go look stuff up themselves and draw their own conclusions), but I
thought new players would find it helpful to read a more /neutral/
review. In other words, I'm attempting to give something that's
neither hater-spam from disgruntled players/people who don't like the
mud (so no hate posts please!), or unequivocal praise from someone
who's played years of Med and nothing else (obviously such players
will love any MUD they've sunk so much time into, no matter how good
it actually is, and I tend to find such reviews unhelpful since those
players tend not to play other MUDs regularly). I've spent
significant amounts of time in three MUDs and tried dozens of others
off and on, so that's about where I'm coming from.

First, dispelling the hype:
1. The website says 1000s of players play, but realistically, you're
looking at about 50 players off-peak and a little over 100 on peak
times. Maybe they're referring to all the players who've ever
played, since it's their policy never to delete inactive players...
In that case, 1000+ could be true, given the age of Medievia. Med's
social scene is pretty quiet though, given the small player base,
compared to other MUDs which have bigger player bases and are
chattier.

2. Med is definitely big, but most of the millions of rooms they
advertise are admittedly a few default 'wilderness' rooms copied and
pasted over and over again. As far as unique areas go, they're about
average in number compared to other MUDs that have been around a
similar number of years. However, the areas that they DO have are
nicely rendered with ASCII maps, and many of the areas have exploring
objectives so that a solo player can have a list of things to do when
looking at an area for the first time. (I wasn't a big fan of the
time limit though, since that kinda defeats the purpose of taking your
time exploring an area.) The mobs, objects, and room descriptions are
not all that detailed or unusual, if you're into that sort of thing
(mobs don't really interact with you, objects are stock).

3. The thing that initially drew me to Med was their advertisement of
a unique 'DM' mechanism that adjusts your gameplay based on how
you're doing in the game. Basically what the DM does is send a whole
bunch of mobs your way while you're traveling, so that it's not
totally predictable going from point A to point B. Don't get me
wrong, hack n'slash can be fun, but I was hoping for something more
than just encountering more agros (e.g., I would have preferred
encountering more intelligently scripted, interactive mobs than just
getting more mobs to kill). I don't think that's a fault of Medievia
though; I think I was simply misled by the 'DungeonMaster' name
because I associated that with DM-ing in D&D (e.g., a real-life DM
would create more conflict/interest for his/her players by creating a
storyline or launching a quest, rather than just sending more waves of
stuff to kill). There wasn't any RP-ing on the MUD that I saw, so
events like that kind of feel like more mobs to kill rather than part
of a story.

Second, the good bits:
1. Newbie startup is really easy, with no races, four classes. I tend
to agree with Med's philosophy on this, that tons of classes and
races don't really add anything to mudding. Although the newbie
channel was kinda dead while I was starting out, there are experienced
players (called 'avatars') that answer questions quickly and
courteously. A big plus, considering how intimidating MUDs can be to
those of us who haven't grown up with them!

2. Dragon transportation makes traveling between areas easy
(comparable to flight masters in WoW, except you can call a dragon
anywhere); plus you don't have to memorize elaborate directions and
speedwalks just to get somewhere.

3. There's a lot of cool features coded in to support a potentially
rich clan life. As a concept, clan towns seem like a really cool idea.
There's several of them, and several active clans, but during the
time I was there and looking for a clan, it seems like some of the old
clans are no longer active (or at least I couldn't really find active
players online). I would have loved to have seen the clan features in
action that the site talks about, but I didn't see a lot of clan
activity. I think the infrastructure and potential is there, but the
active player base is not. Maybe the way to go would be to consolidate
and have fewer clans with more active players, but obviously that's
the players' judgment call, rather than anything the MUD admins can
change. I also wish there were more player-run politics (more than
just voting for two representatives who give feedback to the gods),
like some other MUDs with player-run social structures but I don't
think that detracts from the good potential features that are already
there.

4. One of the touches of realism I like is the weather and
catastrophe system. Scouting out the weather affects your gameplay
significantly; not paying attention to storms can literally kill you
(e.g., if you're in a firestorm and you're a spellcaster in the
middle of a fight). Catastrophes can affect large areas, and it also
has the effect of setting profitable prices on stores in the area so
you can trade to earn gold (the game's way of seeding money to the
player economy).

Last, I admit I'm not experienced enough of a player to figure out
whether bloodlines are a cool idea or not. Basically, you can have two
kids per fully-developed character, and kids of the next generation
get some bonuses, up to five generations. Think of this as having alts
that you can legitimately give away (or you can grind up the alts
yourself), and the more generations (up to 5), the more benefits your
original character can gain. (Compare with Granado Espada or
MapleStory's family systems for rough analogies.) I'm not aware of
whether bloodline affect gameplay in another way, and from
discussions, it seems like there's mixed feelings on whether its
effects are too easily canceled out by more easily gotten boosts
through donation equipment, but that part of the debate always seemed
silly to me, since if you're a player who's stuck around long enough
to have a five-generation bloodline, you probably are hooked enough to
the game to spend a couple hundred dollars in donation eq anyway
(which is not necessary until after reaching level 124, where all
that's left is competition with other players, when you need to face
others with donation eq to win battles and titles). I kind of got
bored of the game before reaching that point, so I never got the point
where spending $ was necessary to be competitive.

In short, there's a lot of creative new ideas added to a classic MUD
concept, but there probably needs a more active player base and/or a
more social climate to put those good ideas to actual use. In a way, I
wish Med wouldn't oversell itself so much (e.g., not advertise that
it has 1000s of players, or take credit for 'game features never
before seen' when the average Internet player who has experience with
other MUDs or MMORPGs out there will probably have seen similar
features)... because it doesn't /need/ to resort to overselling
itself or stretching out claims to stand on its own on features it
DOES have. (I also think the do you DARE enter?[!?!?!?!!!!] ad
campaign is super-cheesy :P) Overselling is just never a good idea,
because once people find out some of the claims were exaggerated or
untrue, they undervalue the actual things the game /does/ have to
offer.

Conclusion: Kind of underwhelming because of the unnecessary hype.
Several cool features, but realistically probably needs a more active
player base to work.