Review Submitted By: Ann
Author Status: Player
Started on Aardwolf: March 2009
Submission Date: Aug 22, 2012
TMC Listing: Aardwolf
The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Ann]
and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.
This is not just another promotional review; player experiences are
further in.
Aard is a very engaging mud and starts new players off with a
detailed (and interesting!) mud school. The term mud school
might remind you of old muds back in the day, but Aard has
created something really unique in familiarizing players, both
new and experienced, with some of what Aard has to offer. It's
impossible to include all of the game's peripheral activities,
though.
There is a lot more to do here than killing things. There's certainly
the standard bit - questing for more useful equipment, clans, etc.
One of the major feature is 'goals' - a puzzle in almost every area
to solve for something special. There are a ton of minigames. Some
of the more easily exlained ones are laser tag and poker. There
are also 'campaigns' where you are given a list of mobs to kill
for quest points. There are 'global quests' which act like
campaigns, but is a race across the entire mud to kill all of the
mobs first. There is also a rather unique little game called mafia
where players have to determine who the villians of the game are by
chatting. If killing you are more interested in though,
there are periods of double experience to make it even more
effective.
There are also plenty of Imm-run activities. Recently there was an
event run that related to the Olympics. There is also a game similar
to Scrabble, where players collect tiles from mobs to spell words for
prizes. Imms often have small celebrations for countries' independence
and national days, such as Canada, Austrailia, 4th of July, Estonia
and Singapore days, among others.
Aard, like many muds, offers clans but Aard does it a bit differently.
There are over 30 to choose from, both large and small, but each
offering something unique. With clans comes player-killing, but some
clans are strictly non-pk for those who would like to join a clan
without that aspect. Each clan has unique equipment that is player
made. With pk clans comes raiding, an activity where a group of clans get
together and try to break into another clan's location for the
purpose of buying equipment.
With all of these activities, Aard is definitely an interesting game
and has a lot going for it. It has its own unique code but has an
interface very similar to traditional muds so those coming directly
from muds that are not customized feel comfortable using. As great as
the game is, there is one major downfall. Over the years, mud
leadership has deteriorated. This has been shown by a general lack of
respect towards the playerbase as well as the kinds of abuses that
make muds fail:
-Theft of players' accounts: Admin changed the password of a player
and instead used the character to play. The password was also given to
other players to use.
-Distribution of players' logged private conversations to other
players
-Granting imm commands (such as snoop and the ability to see command
entries) to players
-Admin's use of players' characters to talk to other players
-General preferential treatment and rewards to friends of admin
-Picking & choosing who has to adhere to rules, especially when it
comes to botting and multiplaying.
Like other muds in the past, instead of going down because of code,
the admin will end it. As it stands, many end game players go inactive
after a time. It wouldn't surprise me if some of these stopped playing due to
these problems. Aard might be fun for a mort or two, but it's not
worth staying there for much longer.
