After finding Blood of Dragons on Mudconnect, I was excited. I have read the first three books of the Song of Ice and Fire series. After logging on as a guest, I noticed several things. First of all, you cannot create your own character. The characters you can play have already been created by the staff. The commands to search the character database are clunky and confusing, and the included help files regarding the CDB are very long, yet somehow end up being vague. I had to ask a staff member for help, and he was not very happy about helping and made it clear that I was interrupting him. After spending an hour trying to figure out the CDB functions, I was finally able to select the character I wanted. I went through a rather lengthy application process that included several e-mails and several visits to the games website. It took me six hours to get through the application process. Then I got the response from the staff. Since I had only read the first three books and not the fourth (yet), I was denied my application. I was told that I didn't have enough knowledge of the game world to play the character I had picked and was told I was welcome to go back to the CDB and find another character. All in all, I would say that I wasted six hours.
Post a commentComment posted on Sat Jun 8 14:09:08 2013 by nthnl:
It seriously taking an hour for him to learn to work the character database and somehow being unaware of character application tiers says way more about the reviewer than the game. There's a comprehensive +help file for the database, the filters are powerful and fairly intuitive, and players new to the theme can apply for cameo roles that get you on the grid more or less instantly. That he went through the more involved application process suggests he tried for a high-tier character, which the help files are explicit in their requirement for thorough theme knowledge.
I personally played the game for only a short time, but staff and the system were virtually non-concerns and very accessible; I had way more of an issue with the cliquishness of the playerbase, though that may have changed in the time since.