While I have read a handful of negative comments about Haven being a place where negativity does exists and where (new) players are sometimes hawked on by the powerful, I must say I cannot agree with this at all. While I am rather fresh to the experience of playing big MUDs, no MUD could have given me a better first experience with the platform. Every question I had was met with patience, friendly responses and a good amount of offers to DM people personally in case I had more I wanted explained to me. The game uses a Mentoring system, helping you not only find your ways around the helpfiles and game, but even setting you up with a potential first roleplaying-scene with that person.

I could go on and on about the incredible system of item-customization Haven has, really. As an avid builder and crafter in the MUDs I have played before, this alone is worthy of an Oscar nomination in my book. Not only can you create and edit your outfits whenever you please, there are various object types usable to create props -- For your home, your store, to leave behind, to hand out. Your imagination's the limit. And before I let this topic be, let me add to this that the various ways to beautify houses AND EVEN a (seemingly) unlimited amount of off-grid rooms are beyond amazing. It's easy to use, yet can make for such well-decorated locations to visit and interact with.

There was only one slight, and I stress SLIGHT, downside to the actual emoting in the game, being that I cannot use paragraph-breaks -- what I was used to. That aside, the emoting in Haven is on point. By using a seperator, I'm able to fire any regular emote of me talking and doing stuff, a 'subtle' emote describing a detail only those close to me would notice, use 'Think' to give my character's thoughts a voice, and even add a myriad of 'feelings', 'desires' and 'suffers' to my emotes that certain Archetypes in the game can pick up on. You're able to use colour in emotes to add emphasis here and there, which to me is a luxury and definitely worth of praise, while you can even emote at/with players from several rooms away. Now that's how you set up a world for Roleplaying.

Before I want to round this review up, I feel I should mention Haven's Story Running. The name betrays it: They allow players to take on the role of Story Runners, hosting anything from quick 1-on-1 random encounters to entire storyplots involving Love, Death, Demons and Drugs. There are Plots to sign up for or prepare, basically entire storylines folk can step into if they consider it interesting. There are people who merely take on the Story Runner mantle to provide Ambiance RP: Emoting out background noises, the weather, the bustling population outside, or some random patrons of the bar you were visiting.

Driving all the cars you wish you could afford or drive in real life, the ability to Fly or become a Necromancer in common-day society, to dabble in forbidden Arcane Arts or study the Occult, building a pack of Werewolves running rampant in off-world locations such as The Wilds (a place where dinosaurs still roam).. Again, the sky is the limit, and I think Haven is a great place to channel your creativity into. I have been welcomed in warmly by everyone I both met and had help me over their 'Newbie' channel, I have met various interesting characters of very different personalities, and I have had one heck of a blast just preparing things for my character or thinking of future endeavours.

HavenRPG is an amazing experience... for the first month or two.

I very much enjoyed the oppressive feeling of the dark roleplay there, the sense of mystery to just about everything. And uncovering the dark, often horrifying secrets behind the game is an experience.

Unfortunately, once you get powerful enough to put you on the radar of people who want to 'win' the game at all costs, all bets are off. For example, they have something called the mantle of the tyrant. People are protected from things like permadeath or rape, under most conditions. The mantle of the tyrant allows him to bypass those conditions, and having that sort of thing in the hands of a player who wants to win at all costs ends up as you expect.

A single player, intent on winning, has killed, mind controlled, and otherwise run off most of the game. I use the word 'run off', not run, or have any sort of power except to grief people. When he has been threatened with defeat by story (admin-controlled) characters, he has turned story off, preventing defeat by those realms. The OOC forums are rife with people 'memeing' extremely negative and toxic things about other people.

If other games are cautionary tales about what happens when staff gets too much power, let this one be a cautionary tale about what happens when the wrong sorts of players do.

How can I put this without crying... I can't. I made my account and made a character on Haven, played for about 2 days and some hours and all of a sudden out of nowhere, after people hounding me in tells and in private in character emotes to change my character to their liking which I did not... One of them in a scene where they were by the rules REQUIRED to be tranquil BROKE THOSE RULES and was AGRESSIVE even though the RULES OF THE SCENE REQUIRED them to be tranquil. I nonchalantly called them out on it with certain colorings in my post which were NOTHING compared to what kind of guidance people have done/tried on me with their griefily over the top corrective posts. All of a sudden a person I had just been thanking hours before that for allowing be to take part in the scenes abuses his adminny powers to kill off my character for being NICE compared to every other player I met. Then he/she has the audacity to proclaim to me that he/she KNOWS me somehow. Um excuse me but no you don't and I am sorry to say it but now I know WHY your mud has the LOWEST player base I have EVER seen. Goodbye and if ever I would dare to advise anyone I would say AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID.

Two years ago, was when I first joined this game.

I can't even really say that first impressions even gave a decent idea of the game. Imagine a World of Darkness campaign, but with the worst players. FishMalk VtM's, or the 'Lone Wolf'. Almost every. Single. Character.

Dark storytelling is fun. Getting constantly gimped because of code rather than RP, is not.

I'm going to start by saying that Haven has a select few good players. But that's also like saying you need to crawl the green mile to find a single flake of silver. Code works against RP, and the overt community of griefers. Usually, a game only has one of these problems.

But Haven was cursed with both.

Since the devs have unconcerned themselves with balancing, I'll be concise. The game is poorly balanced, and is lopsided in favor of code abuse, rather than roleplay. This is obvious in coding in 'Professional' (Noncombatant) focuses, but completely making it worthless to RP out. Combatants in every single sense of the word, have it made.

But only if they min-max.

Do you want to be a social character and avoid the trash-heap arms race of powergamers? Well, hope you can handle being removed from RP by combat focused ones. Excluded from plots on that basis alone. And getting antagonized by literally everything that needs to leech off of life-force. Expect little from the attacker. Because a major chunk of its antagonist playerbase seems to not know what RP is. And use code to fill it in for them.

So, what's there to do, you ask? Well, between the borderline illegal depiction of minors, on the side of the players, and the endless ooze of impervious macho men who don't kneel to the theme of horror… Not much. You can probably make a character, ERP, while you wait to be accepted into a better MUD.

If you want to have fun in Haven, take my advice. Treat it like how it wants to think RP works. A one-off experience of shallow ERP, and then tossed into the trash like a wet tissue, before moving onto something better.

I am going to have to say that overall, the game is a joke. The community is

extremely toxic. Someone thinks that using the abduct command- a command used so

that people can take your character offline and do whatever they wish with your

character- using it to take someone to a place to kill them, wait until they're

online to kill them and do that is a common courtesy. It's not. You might as

well kill them while they're offline, Z. This is a few years late, but it's

been a long time coming. They have a retarded kid rerolling on people during

antag, who they know assume is everybody that isn't part of their little wolf

pack. So what do they do? They complain about terrible roleplayers, and grief

these terrible roleplayers out of playing the game. Go to discord.com,

havenrant, and you'll see what they do. Blatantly lie to each other about

stuff. The most common liars being Torn and Jeshin. You'll get a kick out of

these two jokers. They don't actually do anything to help improve these terrible

roleplayers' way they tackle the game. Sometimes, 'you're a terrible roleplayer'

and 'you need to change your ways' ain't going to cut it. And neither is

complaining about stuff that didn't go your way. Sometimes you need to go

into detail about what you think people are doing wrong and actually HOW

they can improve it, because likely they don't even know they're doing

anything wrong. That's how some head problems work, and I'm not saying

that to be mean, because I'm autistic myself. I need people to go into

detail. The most toxic player, the staff give free karma- think of it

as upgrade points to get a more powerful character- because he's the head

storyrunner's brother. Who constantly makes a joke out of the head

storyrunner's story. So- staff... stop giving the doosh free karma

that he's going to use to ruin everybody's fun except for the people

he considers part of his little clique. Daed, buddy, you've got to stop

giving your brother so many chances. Players, give actual feedback. Go

into detail. Have FAITH that it's not the same jerk running around and

helping make it all a joke. Even if it is, he likely don't know what he's

doing, or he has exactly your problem. He doesn't have any faith. Which

is why most people act like dumb jerks. And so far, if that's the deal?

He has the right to not have any faith in any of you people.

Overall a great mud. It has full custom everything, character design, clothes, weapons, armor, you name it you can customize it. The ugameplay is awesome once you've asked enough questions to understand the basic commands you'll be working with. (This mud is different from any I've seen before, in all the best ways.) It's horror themed and they even let players become story runners, so everybody gets to help everybody have a creepy good time. Although for how much I love it, I havr to be honest so I can't ignore the negative side. Haven has apparently had some kind of 'problem player' blow through and ruin things for all newbies there. I was recently told that I was 'showing signs'. All I did was ask for help on a7 few things and some people have become cold to me. I don't even know what I did wrong. Don't let this discourage you. Haven has a good environment as long as you can separate in character from out. It's been really fun for me, and I want to keep playing. I just don't want to be considered a problem just because I asked for help. I'm not sure what else can be said.

The lore, the story- the setting is marvelous. The mechanics are as well. But that's about where it all stops. Haven's staff gives away alts of players to their friends, and the abduct command is used quite often. Meta gaming is discouraged- and yet they have a tool exactly for that. Order reading, which gives you a list of whoever you used it on, and their alts- to be fair, also their friends as well. But still. The playerbase is -incredibly- cliquish and dickish. People pass off using abduct and then waiting until you're online to execute you as 'common courtesy.' Which, by the way, people, is perma death. That's right. They think that waiting until you're online to send you to a permanent death, with no prior rp, is common courtesy. Most alarming, however, has been previously stated. The staff. Them giving away alts which leads to the game being even more cliquish.

It isn't worth it. It is very cliquey, the staff give away alts to favored players. And they do have favored characters. People can abduct. Which allows them to do whatever they want while you're offline. Including murder. Which, by the way, people, this is a perma death mud. And people -do- do it. Quite often, in fact. A lot of the player base also take advantage of when you go link dead. Not waiting for five seconds, they drag you off to wherever. And then proceed to protest, 'it wasn't my fault.' A lot of the playerbase also is 'polite' enough to not kill you until you log on, after an abduction, saying, 'I was being courteous.'

I’ve been a long time MUDder, typing away at text based games since I was thirteen. Now I’m twenty-two and I gain the most enjoyment from RP-enforced games, such as Armageddon, SoI, Inquisition, etc. I love, more than anything, shared storytelling -- which is what I believe these types of games supply; a direct link to pour your imagination into another person’s cup, watch them drink it, and view their reaction.

For a while now I’ve been disenchanted with the current line of RP MU*s. No matter where I looked I always found some glaring problem that stopped me from playing the MUD, whether it be lack of depth, or something to do with how skills were obtained. I’m a player who knows what they like and can generally sum up a MUD by if they have those factors. I love dark themes, where the code supports RP rather than grinding. That said, I also like the MUD and its staff to be light-hearted enough to know that not everything is going to be perfect, and that sometimes you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride. I love it when policy is made so issues never happen, rather than made to deal with them when they do.

Haven: Mist and Shadow to me represents all these things. It’s the MUD that, recently, I’ve really taken to calling home. The theme is dark and revolves around a town in Massachusetts called Haven, where the Gate, a link between worlds, has been open. The Gate is hardly as simple as a portal though, and affects everything in Haven with its magic. It’s drawn a large party of supernaturals (vampires, werewolves, angelborn, demonborn, faeborn, etc) into a sort of Cold War, in Haven and without, for control of the Gate. At the top there are three factions, the Hand, the Order, and the Temple -- each with different motivations and reasons for wanting control of the Gate.

A basic premise that involves a whole lot more than that; Haven really provides a role for everyone in this theme. Supernaturals are a big part of the world, but natural humans have an equal stake in it. Drug dealers, superstars, and underworld thugs all roam the streets -- along with health nuts, playboys, and general laborers. It’s all a cohesive world that’s really amazingly done by the staff, who provide great tools to the players to fill out the nooks and crannies, one of these which is storyrunning.

With storyrunning, players can basically become your traditional RP-imms. They can ghost echoes into a usually instanced scene with players, lead them through adventures, and present a variety of challenges to them. In essence, it’s exactly like being at a D&D table with your buddies, and it’s a grand time. The system is sound, with a variety of resources at the SR’s disposal.

Experience in Haven is earned by emoting, and karma -- another resource -- is earned by emoting up to a point, and then earned by other activities such as running stories, or being awarded by storyrunners. Staff members have been very hands-off in my time playing, allowing players to generally run the show with the exception of a few well-done staff monster encounters. The code really gives the players all the things they’ll need to prosper and screw each other over for gain. Factions, rather than being stale origins of conflict with nothing to do but measure each others dicks, have a variety of resources to fight each other over, with combatant characters being just as essential if not more-so than those with combat experience.

Crafting is a breeze, with a great amount of trust and customization put in the hands of the player. It’s a traditional ‘get any item and restring it to what you want’ system that’s made all the more diverse by the sheer amount of modifiers you can attach to an item, and the system of attractiveness which actually takes into account your clothing -- making clothing, and nice clothing at that, have worth rather than just present a random bit of fluff.

Combat and movement in Haven is a little more complicated than it should be, both with semi-steep learning curves. However, Haven’s only OOC channel, the newbie channel, hosts the voices of helpful players who are more than happy to answer new players’ questions. Most players are generally very helpful, and the lack of other OOC channels means that I communicate OOCly as little as possible with players, which I love. Most drama in RP games, in my opinion, comes from OOC channels and getting attached to other players in that way. While I can’t speak for other players, I’ve seen little OOC cross-over or interaction, which is always something I look for.

In summary, Haven is my new home, and I’m glad I found it. It hosts an incredible number of uniquely coded features, bears a supernatural theme while keeping itself grounded in realism, and has a great bunch of players I can just lose myself to RP in, rather than worrying about OOC bull. I’m not censored, I can be coddled if I need to be, and most of all I’m given the tools to make my story the way I want to. I’m hooked.

There’s a lot to be said about haven. It is, without doubt, one of the most robust and beautifully coded RP enforced muds available at this moment in time. The lore is rich and the combat system is in-depth, it manages to give you time to emote and manages to play out combat in a way that isn't drawn out or a eye bleeding wall of text spam. It uses a story teller system, which allows players to GM their own stories. HOWEVER, this is held back by the fact the system uses karma. Which effectively limits how powerful or revenant your character can become based purely on OOC factors. What you end up with is players becoming story tellers only for the karma, doing half-asses stories, and the player base becoming jaded, which really detracts from the passionate who are doing this for their own and other’s enjoyment. Which is a shame. The game has so much potential, but it's flattened by it’s few flaws, most glaringly is the immortals. With the sole exception of Daed, who is one of the coolest immortals I've ever had the honour of playing under, the staff constantly alters the code, lore (anyone remember the time the temple/order/hand were world wide super powers?) and game to benefit their characters and their friends characters, who seem to be the only people with the karma to play the COOL things. The game is very much their playground, and this is a point that has been beaten to death and beyond with other player reviews. If you're able to look past that - the majority community is absolutely cancerous and plays in highschool cliques that are mostly inaccessible to the outside player. If you’re able to get in the staff’s good books (be prepared for ALOT of bootlicking), able to stay beneath their radar (if you’re doing this don’t intend to play anything meaningful) and find some other people to interact with who aren’t exploiting IC information over skype, then there’s good times to be had, but that’s hard to find these days.

Avoid Haven: Mist and Shadows! The game has many incredible features that players will yearn for in other MUDS: extensive character creation, the ability to detail character descriptions, extensive histories and commands to fully flesh out a character, and the ability to customize items on the fly, along with interesting minigames (that still require work).

Yet all the good cannot wash away the glaring faults and bads found within: favoritism shown by the Staff to certain individuals they consider friends or friends of friends, the lack of impartial and fair punishments, the constant over reaching in enforcing the rules, and blatant manipulation or breaking of their own rules to benefit themselves or players in the Staff’s social circle. The abduct system too is horrible: the mechanic allows for players to codedly interfere with players while offline or afk.

The demands of some of the player base can also be off putting as well: elitism, traditionalists, snobs, know-it-alls, insufferables, and whiners run rampant in the game. Players and Staff alike will make demands of individuals they have no right to make in the first place: Staff will demand essays for rule breakers (of which the rules are ambiguous and highly subjective or completely absent) and Players will demand you meet a subjective line or standard that isn’t a part of the game or an etiquette of role play to begin with (a do as I say not as I do mentality). Or individuals will simply act petty and childish the moment they deem their sensibilities to be offended. The game also has clear issues of imbalance that are condoned by the creator which naturally creates power struggles within the game and an abuse of mechanics that Tyr himself does nothing to change until the code is obviously hoodwinked. Subsequently Tyr punishes anyone found abusing the code he failed to properly test even if the individual had not intentions of maliciously using the code to benefit them self.

The Staff also constantly runs a meta-plot that benefits their characters or revolves around their friends. Much of the antagonism in game is created for the sole benefit of Daed’s need to swing the dicks of his NCPS or PCS and nothing even remotely envisioning a tale. Daed is the overall story runner of Haven, yet seems more interested in killing, raping, and ruining others fun to push his meta-plot. He will and has abused code to free his friends OOCLY from IC actions taken against them: untieing individuals that were ICLY beat and left to be dealt with ICLY by others, killing individual’s offline ICLY for an OOC dispute, and destroying players who outwitted or out foxed his antagonists.

Discordance is considered the judicator of Haven and performs poorly in such a role: she uses irrational thinking to justify her punishments, backs up arguments with rampant fallacies, and will throw out terms like coercion to suit her needs without understanding the implication of such allegations. She is in the end vindictive and spiteful; and nothing resembling fair and impartial. Her brand of “justice” is retribution.

Punishments leveled against individual also over reach: often a rule breaker will have their privileges revoked indefinitely for the slightest of infractions, have their experience zeroed out, and permanent removals for actions they instigated due to ignoring issues, handing out unfair or extreme punishments, or making demands of a player's personal time. They are the individuals who instigate a fight and whine to a judge later when that offender assaults them.

Haven would be a great MUD if it wasn't for the Staff and the favoritism shown to friends.

Avoid it like the Black Plague. PK is not restricted- in fact, staff makes deals with their favorites to kill other characters. Lore is fantastic. The environment the playerbase and the staff set up? Not so much. OOC favoritism is common. People like to attack while you're afk, abduct(this basically means they can grab you while you're offline) and do whatever the hell they want from there. Most common is executions- which is PK. And it's perma-death, unless you want to pay to be a ghost. Even then, your options are limited. Avoid it like the second coming of the bubonic plague.

Haven:Mist and Shadow is a non consent supernatural horror themed MUD. For the most part, the game is a little tough to learn at first, for the code is a little complicated to get the hang of. However the game has many helpful Newbie Guide's and Staff that will correct a problem for you if it's needed (at least from my experience) The game it'self is quite immersive, you are placed into a small New England town that is for the most part, thematic. There is an Extended selection of Races, and Racial powers, you can be Supernatural, or plain old human, or the antagonists Abominations (hypernaturals.) I have little experience with the staff, and tend to keep them at arms length, which as long as you follow the rules you are all set. There have been many reports that the chief coder and Admin abuses his privileges, as someone who has played longer than most, I can assure anyone that these reports are mostly false. Like any other game though, there are those players that generally try to ruin the experience for others, however it is 99% avoidable. Unlike some games, this one is ROLEPLAY ENFORCED, which ~80% of players follow to the letter, so if you are looking for immersion, this might be a good choice for you. The Player relations Admin, is professional from my experience, they sort the problem out if it's required, leaving most happy with the results. The Story Admin, is a terrific writer, and is generally very friendly, and will involve anyone random player in the MetaStory, Newbie or not, and from what I've heard is willing to help.

My only suggestion, would be stay away from the Forums, because at times people do argue over stuff that hardly pertains to anything relevant. Other than that the game is a great experience, and rewarding. I do recommend this MUD, but only to Mature 18+ players. 17- should not try this game.

I've little to no propensity for sugar coating things, so compared to most reviews one will find on TMC and similar sites, it may very well read negative to the general reader. Keeping that in mind, I'd like to be very clear from the beginning, before delving into personal observations regarding what Haven does right and what Haven does wrong, in saying that in my personal and (in my opinion) fairly unbiased opinion, Haven is almost certainly the best roleplay- and story-focused MUD out there, with little to no competition. But being the best does not mean that Haven is without faults, or room for improvement, so I'd like to embark on quantifying some of the things I think that Haven does exceptionally well, the things that make it the best, as well as some of the areas that could use some improvement.

The positives... well, they're numerous. First and foremost, in terms of its design and function, Haven is an ambitious project. It aspires to provide the greatest wealth of tools for customization, conceptualization, and story crafting possible, while tethering things to the grounded reality of code, and by all accounts, it succeeds at meeting this aspiration. From things such as customizable description formatting based on body parts and the exposure allowed by equally customizable clothing, to a wealth of resources for setting your characters' offline habits, histories, et cetera, Haven allows you absolute control to create your character exactly as you envision them-- while still utilizing the firmness of coded grounding to ensure that this customization is realistic; you can customize yourself a lavishly described and opulent tuxedo, but unless the coded cost of the objects in the suit reflect its luxury, its coded effect on your character will be detrimental, and as the cost is visible to all around you, other players may take note of the clearly knockoff ten dollar Armani suit. Your description and character model on the wikipedia may be Olivia Wilde, but if your coded attractiveness score doesn't reflect the beauty you endeavor to describe, you won't be taken as seriously as the Natalie Portman whose attractiveness score does.

Tools like influence, schemes, customizable factions, storyrunner positions, plots, quests, adventures, and territory abound, creating a lore-rich setting with equally empowering tools at the players' disposal to interact with it. The sky is the limit as far as goals and ambitions go for one's characters, ultimately limited by the resources at their disposal to achieve them, and the viability and merit of the story they endeavor to achieve through the accomplishment of those selfsame goals.

Putting a finger on the aspects of the game that prove to be something of a let-down is a little difficult without having truly explored the game, and probed and tested the limits within it. As far as the negatives go, most of them have more to do with the community than with the game itself, and Haven's create-your-own-fun environment has unfortunately fostered the growth of a culture with fairly bad habits. There is a sort of glass ceiling in Haven, engendered by the scarce resource of helpful and proactive players, and more particularly the way so many have been OOCly collected into friend groups to enable and support the goals of some players, and not others, based not on what sort of character they wish to play or what manner of concepts they would like to explore but on securing themselves a risk-free place amidst an OOCly preestablished group of collected and capable roleplayers.

Ultimately, in a create-your-own-fun environment, the risk of not finding the roleplay or story you desire is prohibitive such that the number of players who are willing to risk playing outside of these established collectives for greater freedom of exploring story are too few for the organic approach to cultivate success, regardless of the merits of individual ideas and roleplay, and so proactive and creative roleplayers that don't embark from the outset with a group of likeminded friends willing to help and enable are likely to encounter immense frustration.

Haven's made great efforts to put antagonism on a pedestal and reward players for undertaking it, but in so doing has created a competitive focus on coming out on top and a general aversion for risk-taking in its playerbase, because taking risks has no rewards-- nor does coming out of a conflict for the worse. Ultimately this has created a culture wherein conflict is primarily composed of code capable players in one group picking on code incapable players in another, and antagonism has a tendency to be pre-arranged or to occur between OOC friends.

To some extent, Haven's coded systems have more resemblance to a strategy game than to a role-playing game, and are almost utterly barren of mechanics that utilize greater or lesser quantities of random number generation, which can make coded exchanges extremely predictable, but in and of itself, I don't think that this is especially a bad thing; it's just something that new players may take some time to adjust to. The learning curve on Haven is steep, but such is always going to be the case on a game that aspires to empower players to the extent that Haven does.

Haven's staff is exceptionally dedicated to the improvement and development of the game, to such an extent that I think most other games would be utterly incapable of competing in terms of sheer codebase viability. That said, there's a tendency for implementations and adjustments to come in the form of knee jerk reactions, such as implementation of simple but useful coded tools to shore up seeming weak spots, which creates a bloat of distinct tools where systemic design could likely do better with a less steep learning curve, or balance changes that tend to seem targeted at empowering or disempowering a minority of the playerbase without extensive consideration of the game as a whole and the ripple effect that such changes can sometimes engender in other areas. But again, even with these disadvantages, the sheer dedication and willingness to improve upon the codebase exercised by its staff puts it miles ahead of any would-be competitors.

Haven is, simply put, a haven, for socially-focused players or roleplayers who are attracted to casting themselves in the role of an enabler, support, or victim character. Players who are comfortable with playing antagonists are highly sought after, but the competitive and risk-averse culture in conjunction with the steep learning curve may make this a frustrating task. Likewise, proactive and ambitious creators of content and story are tremendously desirable, but without bringing friends to enable and support them, they're likely to struggle. Regardless, I can't say I've seen a game out there that offers quite as much to a dedicated roleplayer as Haven, and taken as a whole, with both the beautiful and the ugly, Haven stands head and shoulders taller than the other roleplay-focused MUDs out there.

I wouldn't recommend Haven. It has three chief issues. The first one is a lack of content. As an RP MUD everything is driven by players, but there's very few assertive people in the pbase. If you don't enjoy social roleplay, here's your first off ramp. The second one is the code. It's frustratingly intricate and you won't have a good time learning it. Very few features have been removed from what I can tell, so expect things to work in unintuitive fashion. Finally, the game's staff. The head admin is also the main coder. He's an abrasive person and updates tend to sneak in when things are inconvenient for his PC. Strange and irrational punishments are par for course, and most bug reports go unread. Don't ever expect correspondence.

If you do try Haven, you'll probably enjoy the customization and setting. It can be very fun if you avoid staff PCs and their OOC friends. Be aware that the playerbase is a mishmash and relying on pure roleplay for anything is inviting disaster there.

A friend tried for over a year to get me to play Haven. I tried briefly in 1.0 But was simply overwhelmed by how different the game was compared to what I was used to. I tried again in the early stages of 2.0, and while there was a learning curve for me, I kept with it and learned. It was worth the effort to me. The admin staff care deeply about the game, and do their best to make the players time there enjoyable. Discordance is helpful when issues arise, as is Daed. Daed himself truly helps create an environment rich in story, putting a lot of time and effort into making and playing not only lore based characters, but the ones that go bump in the night to provide rp opportunities as well. Every game has players who try to ruin it for everyone, naysayers who don't get their way. I can honestly say, not everything has gone my way, yet, majority of the player base makes it worthwhile. I highly encourage others who value deep rp and scary themes to try Haven.

I admit I was very cautious going into this mud due to past experiences with some of the the staff and playerbase. I had a few concerns going in: Abusive immortals, players not being able to voice opinions with out harsh reactions, and power gaming from the player base. However I decided the past was the past, and I am glad I gave this a shot. I really have nothing negative I can say about this game. Sure I have only been playing for a month, but I feel safe writing this review already. I have needed assistance from the immortals on several occassions, and they have responded in a very timely manner. Not only have they quickly resolved my issues, but they were very pleasant about this. I think the immortals set the tone for a game, and I think this is a very nice tone to be given. It's completely squashed any concerns I have about abuse. Furthermore the immortals seem to do their best to provide an environment for fun roleplay and they have given us an immersive world to explore. My second issue, voicing opinion with out harsh retribution, has also been quelled as I look at the forums. Sure there seems to be some tension at times, but that is to be expected when people are passionate. I can't say I have seen -anything- which would make me uncomfortable speaking my mind. It also seems to be encouraged, and again this is something that makes me happy. I admit I have not been involved much in pvp, or even the actual main plots, but people seem genuinely interested in making interesting stories. People do not seem to rush over each other in roleplay (like with emotes and such) and I have not seen any measuring contests yet. If there is any power gaming going on I have yet to see this.

Since my biggest concerns have been handled, what do I think of this game? It's pretty fun, and the way it's set up gives a ton of freedom to play what you would like. The first day of creation I was able to create any object I wanted, and character creation was FUN. Combat in this game is unique, and seemed complicated. It took me only minutes to figure out, and I like that it's more than just kill . I am able, again, to make ANY attack that I want which helps fully create a character which I envision. Really this mud seems to have a lot of bells and whistles for me to play with. What is the nutshell? Fun atmosphere, caring imm staff, and the ability to make anything I want. I am very much enjoying this game, and I appreciate what the immortals have done to make me feel welcomed.

This game is lovely in many respects. Lots of options, great playability, a fantastic playerbase (for now), and a wonderful RP admin (Daed) who puts heart and soul into developing character and story.

Unfortunately, the game owner is the sort of person who cannot handle power. He has consistently shown himself to abuse his admin and coding power to further his personal character's goals, generally by changing the rules and code specifically to wipe out characters he doesn't like, with little justification and no apology. For clarity's sake, I will state that these actions have not been taken against myself or my characters; I have simply been witness to them. Despite not being a victim myself, I find his attitude and actions completely unacceptable and unbecoming of a game owner.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game for almost three months, but with the repeated patterns of abuse from the game owner, I will no longer be spending my time and energy here, and recommend that no one else does either until the game owner grows up.