The first time I tried New Worlds was in its previous Beta stage. I created an Immigrant and to be perfectly honest, it proved to be one of the more friendlier Muds to new players. I found plenty to do in order to occupy myself, including finding a bit of roleplay. However, after your character progresses out of newbie status (immigrancy), it is then advanced into being a Serf while waiting to join a guild.
This initial attempt to play was great up until I joined their Magi guild. After joining, there was nothing. I was lost and had no clue how to properly advance within the guild. There was no help offered in terms of advice. At the time, there was no set requirements for guilded members to advance within the guild itself. Not being able to figure out much of anything, I left the game and went back to my home mud.
After a couple years, I decided to try the game again. This time, I found it a bit easier to figure out in terms of character advancement. They had recently performed a player-wipe in which all the old players of the mud were deleted. I couldn't imagine the frustration that came to the players because of that. As tedious as it is to advance within the game, they had to do it once and were forced to start out from scratch again. Of course, I also understand that it was needed in order to perform a rather large change in the game.
This time around, my character joined one of its religions organizations. These organizations are supposed to offer conflict with the opposing side. It's sort of a good/evil type atmosphere with the religious roles offered. However, conflict in general is shot down before it even gets off the ground. The players are told to create their own roleplay and conflict within the game. Yet, when players create conflict with some of the other players that are favored by staff members, the staff will step in every single time. I only played the game a couple months and within that time, I had heard other players themselves complain about that very thing I eventually experienced. I was warned not to attempt conflict oriented roleplay because of staff favoritism, but I thought they simply ended up angry and bitter because they didn't get their ways. Therefore, I went ahead and attempted to start a bit of conflict roleplay myself. Note that the conflict I began had nothing to do with playerkilling.
Obviously, that was quickly stopped and I then gave up on the game as a whole. Shortly afterward, I attempted to write a player review much like this one and place it on their forums. It was deleted within an hour's time and my account banned. I pointed out the good points and bad points of the mud along with ways they could potentially improve. Obviously, they don't take too kindly for constructive input from players.
To address another issue I encountered; the game imposes move points that are referred to as SP. These are so low that new players cannot walk across their beginning town without either stopping to rest (regenerate SP), for quite a while or eating food in order to regenerate them. The consumption of food is severely limited as character's stomachs get too full to eat more rather quickly. Even at the point of guild level seven, which is the level I achieved before leaving, character movement is severely limited. Therefore, if you are a player who enjoys exploring a mud and obtaining a bit of adventure, you will find yourself hard pressed to be able to accomplish that here without dedicating hours upon hours to the attempt.
Another issue I encountered is the fact that a majority of the players who are logged into the game are afk most of the time. This leaves the impression that there are around 100 characters for your own character to roleplay with. When in truth, there might be 50 players, if that many, who are aware at any given time. The mud mechanics actually encourage a permanent login and general afkness There are certain features within the game that are timed. Initially, I thought the timed features were clocked whether you're online or not. Then, I found that if you play for say an hour one day, complete one of them, log out then come back the next day, the features are not available again. For instance, they have player bonuses for roleplay that players can give to other players who roleplay with them. These bonuses are available to be given out once every 23 to 24 hours. Note that this is logged in hours instead of a general once a day. Therefore, if you encounter decent roleplay with other players, you have to be logged in for entire days at a time in order to bonus them. There are other features just like that. The game encourages players to keep their characters logged in and afk constantly, leaving the impression of a much larger playerbase at any given time.
Anything and everything in the game requires a rather large time investment. In short, if you are a casual player, you will find yourself sorely limited here. If you wish to play an exciting game in which roleplay conflict exists on a player level without severe staff intrusions, you might as well pass this game up.
This game is more geared to those who have a ton of free time on their hands as well as stay-at-home moms who enjoy snuggle type behavior. This is about the only type of roleplay that is accepted here by the staff members. Remember, if you plan to try this game, do not attempt to roleplay a conflict oriented character. It simply is not worth your time and that type of player is not welcomed in this game.
This brings me to one more point about free games themselves. In all my wandering while trying to find a fitting mud for myself, I've found that nearly every free game I've come across is run by admin who have very little to no idea of customer service. They seem to possess the idea that if you don't like something about my game, go elsewhere. They want things their way without a thought of those who actually play the game. This could be why most of their playerbases are so small. I've personally found that the admin in muds that require some sort of payment are much more open to change that suits their players as well as general customer service as a whole. It basically boils down to, you get what you pay for.
I'd recommend this game to the unemployed or those who have absolutely nothing else to do with their lives who do not want any kind of excitement whatsoever in terms of hobby games. Play it if you want snuggly roleplay, period.
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