I liked that part, forces you to interact with Paladins and whatnot. Mind you, that particular city is absolutely horrid for RP, but the concept behind the Wardancers is amazing. Wish we had a guild like that in Lusternia.

Personally, I'm really enjoy Earth Eternal

I wanna try that one out. It'll be completely different enough that I won't be all automatically comparing it to Lusternia and finding it lacking.

PROS:
Achaea
* Plenty of people, and people I've known for years.e
* I love the geography a hell of a lot more than Lusternia's.
* Greater class variety.(1)
* I prefer their combat system compared to our power use.
* Far greater number of organizations and people leads to more dynamic conflict.
* Easier travel, communication, and divination.(2)
* Newbie intro. (3)
* Tattoos are better than Enchantments. (4)

Lusternia
* Greater variety within "classes".
* Tradeskills not counted against your allotment of guild skills.
* Tradeskills not requiring a 100cr permit.
* Cooler skills. (5)
* Far better RP.
* Friendlier atmosphere, ingame and out.
* Excellent history.
* Frequent development of new features.
* Newton.

CONS:
Achaea
* House system, autoclass.
* Cliqueish, fragmented playerbase.
* More mature game, i.e. slower release of major features, etc.
* Much greater arti-gap.

Lusternia
* Skillchoices limited by utility (i.e. Healing let's you cure more efficiently, Hexes lets you do things you can't do any other way).
* Small playerbase. (6)
* Planar system makes geography feel cramped. (7)
* Planar system interferes with travel, communication, and divination.
* New features dilute existing ones (i.e. new guilds draining the established ones).
* More static conflict.
* Focused on group conflict instead of individual conflict.

(1) If you count Lusternia as having Guardians/Wiccans, Bards, Druids/Mages, and Warriors, we have four. If you clump together large swathes of Achaean guilds, they still come out to eight. (Occultists, Snakes, Monks, Knights, Puppetry/Vodun users, Sentinels, Groves users, Angel/Demon, Mages)

(2) Farsee is low in Vision, and requires no upkeep, unlike scry enchants. Also fewer planar/continental barriers to stop you, and no requirement to learn most of a seperate skill to fully use.

(3) Achaean newbie intro takes you around the actual world, so when you later come to that place on your own, you have a greater sense of accomplishment. "There's that goblin that almost killed me in the intro! Now I can kick his ass in revenge!"

(4) Your body doesn't decay. The six/twelve slot limit is kind of annoying, but you can easily make due. Enchantments are far, far more expensive to acquire, and jewelry decays. I've still got the same tattoos in Achaea as I had four years ago.

(5) I don't like overall skillsets very often, but individual abilities are awesome.

(6) The rest of the complaints basically take this as their base. If we had more people, the rest of the cons would fade.

(7) The planes are pretty damned empty of anything but history, and they're small. All together, our world isn't tiny, but since it's split up so damned much, it can easily feel like it. This is one of my biggest complaints.

I've played all the IRE muds, although I never got far enough into Aetolia to even comment on it.

Personally, I do love Achaea, although I think a lot of your enjoyment in the game comes from what city/org you pick. I played a Mage in Cyrene. I made a few alts in other cities...but couldn't stand the CT anywhere else. Of all the IRE games I have played, Cyrene felt the most like a home. It was perfect for my style of playing, I got along with the people there, and my House had an AMAZING advancement system. It required you to learn things, but not stupid things, and it was excessive or overly long. It was a great feeling of accomplishment when I became a full member. The things that led me away from it was the serious lack of RP, and how mind numbingly boring it was to bash. Gold was -so- hard to get, and credits were -so- expensive.

Imperian is one of the more fun games to play, though you really really have to have a taste for it. I think that it requires the least investment of credits to have fun in. In only about 3 weeks, I had bashed my way to level 75 and bought 30 credits off the market using gold I had earned only from bashing, along with an additional 20 or so I got from a contest (I didn't even win the contest, but the leader of my council, Ithaqua, gave me 20 credits because he liked my story and appreciated the participation.) Also, I ended up with a really great mentor that lavished guildfavours and councilfavours on me. On top of that, I just happened to be really good at combat there. I got involved in some really neat PK RP (something I have never done in any other IRE game). Also, a few weeks into my playing, a new area was introduced around my council and included a quest that only resets about every week or so, and if you figure out the quest you can tame a rare, white mammoth mount. I was the first person in the game to figure it out and get the mammoth.

Maybe my experiance there is a rare one, but it was a hell of a time.

Lusternia is what I'm playing right now, and although there are gameplay mechanics in Lusternia that I don't really like compared to Imperian, I enjoy it mostly because of the beautiful world, unique abilities, and AWESOME history. Possibly the best, most well thought out and interesting history of any IRE game. Also, bashing and earning gold is easier than Achaea (though not as easy as Imperian, which is LOADED with hunting grounds.) That's the one thing I'd change about Lusternia, actually. It would have 3 or 4 hunting grounds that are associated with each city/commune, and are defined by the level required to bash there.

I'm almost positive they scrapped that intro for a newer one.

I dislike the blatant OOC I see in other games, and the forum bitching. If you want to see why we ask people be nice to each other here, try out some other forums.

Bah, bastards. I liked the style, even if the intro itself was kind of meh.

Achaea was my first IRE mud to play and I played it for a long time. It was awesome at first but then started going down the tubes. I biggest problem with it are the PK rules not that I PK but you need to be a Lawyer to figure them out. Also Achaea got too OOC so I left it for Lusternia.

I did love the story behind Imperian but trying to navigate the realms wasn't as easy as Achaea or Lusternia. It didn't flow easily for me to memorize. Also in the beginning there was a problem with what was considered magick and what wasn't. Made for a rough start trying to figure out what was what.

As for Aetolia well it was always behind Achaea in terms of look and feel some small things really that I gotten used to so never really got into Aetolia. Plus at the time there were too many Vamps running around.

They scrapped the Achaean intro? Damn, I liked thatone.

By the way, fun fact "Go play Lusternia" is an insult on Achaea's forums. They use it quite often too.

It is on Imperian's as well. heh.

I could never really get into the other IRE games. I just felt too lost and alone with them. Lusternia you really start off in a group. That really helps.

On a side note I looked at the Achaea forums today. I have a new found respect for everyone here. Even those of you I may find annoying. Your all still inteligent. No seriously look at the forums. Every thread was like a car crash. You know that one person involved was smart and then crashed into an idiot. Then all you could do was watch as more idiots rammed cars into this poor person.

I tried all IRE games but found their barriers of entry too high, generally. Midkemia looks stalled, Earth Eternal looks... meh, not to my tastes, but I sort of expect new stuff coming out of them sometime. MUDs aren't exactly a growth industry but the niche is always there, and I've heard stuff lately.

Besides, there is a market for a game involving totally new concepts not borrowed from the overall fantasy gestalt. I think Matt realises this.

Historically, Lusternia has had a fairly high ratio of old Arcane Kindred members.

I liked Imperian, it was the first MUD I played. This was back when Lusternia wasn't even in open beta. I recall when it did beta, I made a character and was not impressed, resolving to come back later when they got their stuff together. And then I did, and I haven't played Imperian much at all since

I played Aetolia, briefly, but the sheer ridiculousness of the Consanguine politics at the time completely turned me off. Imperian... I've tried it four times now, and not once have I been able to make a character stick. The roleplay was interesting, but just getting around was too difficult, and it didn't hold my interest. I still play Achaea from time to time, as I have for the better part of a decade. It was my first "real" MUD, and I don't think I could ever give it up completely.

I'm also looking forward to EE, and I wish I was interest enough in Feist's books to give Midkemia a look.

I have a huge fear that I'm just going to keep comparing EE to WoW, and go play that again instead.

The first time I tried Achaea it was as a Bard in Cyrene. I generally never ventured out of the city except to bash, so I was secluded from the rest of the world. I don't know if Cyrene was absolutely wonderful compared to the rest of it, or if this was before the downhill slope. Either way, last time I tried Achaea, there were people yelling OOCly on ClassT, CT and HT, with people spamming romp and snuggle wherever you looked. And then someone was telling an IC story and went and said "Players" in the middle. And then there was all the "LOLOLOL"-ing and "ROFLMAO"-ing and-

I never noticed much of that, well, maybe the snuggliness. I left when the PK nonsense really got to annoy me.

It must be something about Cyrene, because I rarely left the city other than to bash too. I had a great time, though.