TMC Reviews: 3-Kingdoms

3-Kingdoms is based around three major 'realms', Chaos, Fantasy and Science, also included is a realm for Newbies. Each of the three realms tends to stay within their own constrict (with newbie being of mix of all), and all seem to be quite thematically consistent.

With an average player count of 130 people on at a time, 3-Kingdoms (or 3-K as people call it), is never short of people to talk to. While newbies are not generally included in discussions, I found that in general, people were quite friendly and willing to help out a newbie, even when not asked. Within 3 hours of login time, I had been given the max amount allowed to deposit into the banks, seemingly randomly by a high-level player.

Everyone seemed to be having fun, with constant 'shouts' (chatter) over the mud, and various player-run games such as 'name that tune', using the 3-K 3Klient (http://www.3klient.com) to play music files.

I was quite impressed by the constant offers of help I received, and the constant mud-wide shouts of larger players helping out smaller ones, be it a small heal or a bless, it seemed a normal occurrence.

The mud world seems original, and descriptions, whilst scarce in some places, all had corresponding actions attributed to items in the room. If there was a chair in a room, I could guarantee being able to 'look at' it, and so forth. Many of the quests relied on a player typing 'look at', 'search', 'examine', or any number of available commands, which made quests a challenge while not being terribly frustrating in most cases.

Quests are required, encouraged, and forced. With 65 quests available to a player, however, it's not terribly difficult to find and complete one. It's advised at levels 1 through 4 to complete all the quests in the Newbie Realm, and I heartily endorse this. Personally, I loved the 'ecoterrorist quest' (I'd tell you what it was, but then I'd have to shoot you..), it was extremely clever and required more conscious thought than a have-at-it attitude.

3-K has no races. While I did miss having the choice of a race, I didn't find that the lack of races took anything away from the mud-- they more than made up for it in the way you can customize your character as you play (by raising stats as well as levels).

As far as classes go, while I didn't have a lot of experience in each class, the layout and structure in place was very skilled. With about 14 or 15 classes, the admin/staff have chosen enough variation that each class is not just a clone of each other with name/skill changes. Player interaction is encouraged with one having to seek a member of a specific class to join it.

3-Kingdoms is a mud that is so diverse, and so large, that it even has it's own mud-client. Players are generally nice, helpful, and rarely did i see vulgarity, and overall, each player in their own, created a pleasing environment that was easy to enjoy.

It's not difficult to level at 3-K if you like quests, monsters are quite easy to kill, experience easy to gain, quests can be somewhat complicated however.

With a randomly-timed Anarchy system (free-for-all PK, no losses in experience), you can find yourself logged in to total chaos, with deaths occurring within seconds of each other, a heart-thumping experience.

I found that the mud lacked some help files that would certainly have helped me out in some places, I spent a great deal of time wading through help help files only to find that what I wanted wasn't there. (I found my answer in the newbie school however).

3-Kingdoms is a moderately large, newbie friendly mud. With fully configurable ansi-colour, easy to understand player interfaces, and a clever quest system, I would certainly recommend it to any player starting out on their first mud, or tired of their 40th.