It must be the long path over the mountains, cause I spent most of my time there, or in the desert, cause once I got over the pass I didn't feel like walking much further.

Ahhh, Cyrene. That lovely little extended subdivision of Shallam.

The mass delusion that they were an independent entity was really rather cute.

/removes tongue from cheek.

Achaea: I'd rather chew my own arm off than go back there.

Imperian: A shoddy play-off of a poorly written high fantasy novel that should be euthanised quickly and painlessly.

Aetolia: "I'm dark, scary, and evil. Fear me." I think my inner child just threw up in her mouth. I played there for a bit, until I got tired of people talking OOC out in the open in front of everyone. When the discussion on e-penis came up, I packed my things and left.

Lusternia: The only place to be. ^^

I'm not sure I agree with everything expressed here, but I loved reading it, anyway.

I played Aetolia first and had a few influential characters. One, my sadist vampire, was born in the thick of the Great Coup that threw Bahir'an (the original) out of Bloodloch and into the Black Forest (now Morgun Forest). Consanguine politics were amazing back then. There was such a huge desire for secrecy and darkness, and a maintenance of the "old ways" that kept me enthralled. Everything that happened was some huge ploy for something else. After my vampire went into torpor, I had an occultist during the Ashtan vs. Haern fiasco with Ikne. It was great!

In Imperian, I was a derranged Malignist bent on the destruction of the world. I kept up the "supreme darkness" thing for a while and introduced religious sacrifices as part of the novice training program, and then got bored. Fedith left, all of my fearful sycophantic followers started showing up less and less, and Aetolia became interesting again. Now I just show up for a few hours of scariness and terrorize the current guildmembers.

I never played Achaea; my first encounter with it was as an arboreal. No one answered my questions, so I just drifted away without registering.

In retrospect, Druken is completely subdued in comparison to my other characters. All of them are arrogant and cruel, and Druken's just sort of hanging out.

That's part of the reason why I find Lusternia more appealing than Achaea too. When there's over three hundred people logged on and yet you can't find anyone to talk to, interact with, or even hunt with, the game begins feeling surprisingly lonely. With Lusternia, there's only about sixty other people online anyway and most of them are in organizations enemied to yours. So while you might be alone, you're never lonely.

Besides, in my experience, it's been much easier to have intelligent conversations in Lusternia than in Achaea. That alone is a good reason for me to stay in the former and avoid the latter.

The interesting thing is how the insult came about.

There were a good many players who basically said "Screw this, this game is ridiculous. I'm going to a place where the playerbase isn't full of egotistical morons." (Well, that's what a couple of the more hated people who came here said) So now, anybody who expresses displeasure there who isn't part of the forum/OOC-in-game-clan 'in-crowd' is told to go away. Since Lusternia is apparently the prime destination for the people that give up on the cesspit that is Achaea, the line became 'go to Lusternia.'

And with regards to the other IRE games, I have to say that Aetolia made me laugh more than anything. The world seemed like it was trying to hard to be opressively immersive and came across as just ridiculous. Imperian was too ambitious a concept without enough originality. Achaea's been downhill since autoclass (read as: The inability to hold people who act as jerks accountable and remove the supplies with which they cause problems).

TANGENT: There's a Midkemia IRE MUD?

Achaea: Blatantly OOC, but if you're looking for a place to hang out and joke with friends OOC, then there's no issue there. Seems geared more for the younger age group.

Imperian: I've had a good experience there. The forum people were nice too, albeit a bit fiery. If I ever ditched Lusternia, I would play this game.

Aetolia: haven't heard much about it, or played it for more than 5 minutes.

Lusternia: I'm still here, so it's all good

Before Lusternia was around I tried Achaea, but my "don't get addicted" instinct took hold. Last year I tried it for a day or so--I noticed a lot of blatant OOC, more than when I tried sporadically in 2001-2003. I really hate it when people discuss abilities and the numbers stuff in conversation. There are RPers, and I think they are trying to repair the MUD as a whole with the RP staff, but because of the high population I can see it being weak.

Imperian seems good. Aetolia seemed more "lonely", as in not many people around.

I do wonder sometimes why IRE has so many MUDs. It does seem to be a little bit like stretching themselves a bit thin, especially with such a niche market. TSR tried to create many campaign worlds in the 1990s and that hurt as the market didn't get bigger but players "chose a niche" and budgeted solely for that niche--in other words lines competing with other lines.

I hope it doesn't get to a point where one of them gets shut down. I can see Achaea and Lusternia surviving (simply cause they are Sarapis' and Estarra's babies and they likely have the most rank in the IRE business), but I wonder if things get stretched too thin that Aetolia or Imperian might be on the chopping block. (That's not a slam against either of them). I don't think the coming of Mikidemia will help things.

hahaha.

Actually they were an independent entity, I was a member of Cyrene wayyy back when. I played Achaea starting about...oh, 2+ years before Lusternia when the Arcanists were fairly new. The guild was much much much better when it was smaller and everyone was all serious about it and liked each other, then it/Cyrene/Achaea just got far far too huge.

My character was actually always a supporter of Mhaldor when it came to landmarking and most of my friends were from mhaldor, like watchman, ladydeath, hamon, etc. I hated Shallam and Cyrene wasn't totally connected to Shallam because we were allowed to side with Mhaldor despite being "neutral good" (much against the urging of certain Shallamites to have me kicked out).

The thing I just hated about Achaea though was all of the theft and just plain griefing. People would steal everything from you if they could, even all of your worthless stuff. I like having a closer-knit community where people (for the most part and obviously there are some exceptions) aren't out to totally ruin things for you just because they can.

There's a project that's been stuck in development for aaaages (I think they just finished implementing their election system, which is identical to everyone else's except it makes it easier for someone to manipulate an election... but I digress). Frankly I think IRE's next MUD will come out before it leaves open beta.

Right now I can only play a few hours a week.

Ironically, I choose to play Achaea in that time. It's easier to do my own thing there among the 300 people who don't interact and get out. If I came into Lusternia, I'd get involved in org stuff and the little time I have wouldn't do the game and the people in it justice.

When I get more online time, I'll be back to Lusternia.

And Dag's post on the new IRE game...what? Its up and running? O.o *hurries over to check it out*

I've written for many MUDs before. Name it, and I've written for it. Edmud.net, Firstage.net, Avalon-rpg.com, et cetera and so on. Lusternia is the ONLY place I've come across where grammar was important, RI was important (Role immersion), and you were actually supposed stay in character. These, mixed with the fact that you CAN be a rogue, albeit a bit lonely at times, really makes Lusternia welcoming. Minus the fact that Charune prances about in the nude, but what's a naked horse-man every now and then?

A few months ago, I decided to try out Achaea again as a Priest, and be a hardcore RP'er. I had fun... but it was for naught. People were all, "Bla." about the whole thing, and no one rallied to my cause of bringing back Achaea's old glory.

Another thing that I like about Lusternia is that they MAKE you conform to the, "NO F****** OOC IN PUBLIC!!!" rule, under pain of death. I like that ALOT!

No, sorry, that was just a tease.

It's funny, cause when I read it, I immediately went and checked out the website and message boards too.

Terrible tease!

What in the world makes you think Estarra has a higher rank than, say Avasyu (Imperian head)? Besides, if one of them gets shot down it might be more likely to be us, as we have the smallest population. Though that depends on how much Matt likes out concept.

And you can't assume that closing one would roll their population into the others. They may already have alts on the others, or they may just not like them. If Lusternia closed, I'd probably just play WoW, maybe Achaea now and then, but only because I have an established character. Losing an investment of a few thousand dollars would be a large deterrant to making another elsewhere.

Because two full-time producers are involved in Lusternia--Estarra and Roark's admin players. Avasyu is in charge of both Imperian and Aetolia (under whatever name that person uses in Achaea). All others involved with Aetolia/Imperian are not full producers. That's just my guess though--and I assume executive producers have some voting rights and this company isn't just Matt at Emperor and the other guys as peasants. (All I know about this is what I read on Iron Realms web site).



That's true, it's a risk. I was just wondering about the logic of expanding a known niche market rather quickly. IRE seems to expand slowly and try to diversify the MUDs as best as they can. But I also think a lot of the MUD players would rather play in some IRE MUD than move to another game, if they're looking for the same experience. It's very likely if Lusternia had to be shut down, I'd look at Imperian or Achaea to replace the experience.

I just don't want to see this company make the mistake TSR did.