Gameplay is marginally improved from stock DIKU but not by much. If you played a DIKU game in the past you'll be able to figure out how to play pretty easily. Most of the rest of the learning curve is figuring out how to roleplay in the world, which is also pretty easy, since standards are minimal. Just do things your character would do and you should be fine. There's no need to be flashy and write novel-length poses.

The question, really, is why would you want to play? The administration has 17 staff members on it as of this writing. The three Producers direct the game at the topmost level. They "oversee the direction of the world at large and help ensure the atmosphere of the game is constant", according to the website. What this translates to is they ensure nothing of significance changes within the game. There is certainly no worldwide political intrigue; ever since they closed Tuluk off and pretended it doesn't exist, there is no conflict between states. All of the Producers are programmers. They don't care about what makes the game a roleplaying game; things like story are beneath them. They're focused on repeatedly fixing their own mistakes and making sure the game doesn't crash. Then there are three Administrators, who are basically middle management. They try to lead independent spheres of the game, but often get embroiled in rules enforcement and other petty stuff that the Producers should really be handling. There are eight Storytellers, who manage individual clans within those spheres. But since they can only allow things the Administrators allow them to, and Producers give permission to Administrators to act, nothing actually happens since the staff are constantly tied up in a bureaucratic mess. The remaining three staff members are builders, who do an unspecified amount of work since very few new objects get added to the game, and staff are notoriously not fans of adding new things on behalf of players. This mismanaged bureaucracy allows staff to conduct a lot of unofficial actions, such as harassment of players and extensive cheating. Staff's mortal characters are easy to identify by how overpowered they are.

Given staff's focus on making sure nothing of significance actually happens, it's up to players to make the world exciting. What can they do, though? They can ask for permission and aid from staff, who then get to arbitrarily decide if the player's character has the resources and political pull needed to get something done. And if they can't secure that from the staff, then nothing of significance happens. Since it's so difficult to get staff to agree to help with anything, players are left to fend for themselves when it comes to plots. Interpersonal conflict between characters is high because staff have no control or sway over that, so it becomes the primary source of RP. What this ends up amounting to is independent characters trying to set up distribution channels, where hunters grind for raw goods to sell to crafters, who make finished goods to sell on the market. That's the extent of the economic cooperation and competition you'll find on this game. Then there's competition over "mates".which gets incredibly dumb. If you want an easy ride through the game, just roll a female human character and make her reasonably eye-catching. If you're lucky, a PC will scoop you up and will never betray you. If you're unlucky, one of the abusive staff members will send you a very pushy message that can range from unwanted flirting to outright harassment, as what happened recently. Just search for Armageddon on reddit.com/r/MUD and you will see the relevant posts eventually.

This game is in serious decline, and both the players and staff blame "rogue players" for posting negative reviews, claiming the reviews are falsified in an effort to drag the game's reputation through the mud, so to speak. To that I ask, what reputation? It's already very negative, to the point that the MUD community on Reddit associates the word "Armageddon" with rampant staff-led abuse endorsed by loyal veteran players. This review won't make a difference, but I'm sure someone from Armageddon will take issue with it. It doesn't matter to me, though. I quit the game before the holiday season and don't intend to return. And a lot of people are following me: the game's activity numbers have been down for the past several years while other roleplaying games are growing. The staff turn a blind eye to their own failures and the players assure one another that everything is fine. But everything is not fine. The whole thing is collapsing on top of them and they're too willfully blind to see it for themselves.