Heh. I used to do those interviews, but I -never- made them three hours long. I hated how long they took, too. I'd ask the basic questions, and figured if you couldn't get it together enough to at least mouth the right answers, you didn't deserve to be in the guild, and if you were just giving lip service to the ideals of the guild so you could be a traitor, there was no way a longer interview was going to identify that. My interviews were pretty short most of the time.

I was internal affairs secretary for the Sentinels for like 50 game years during the time of Covenant's GMship. Those were fun times, but you wouldn't BELIEVE how much crap went on. I actually had to deal with real sexual harassment and cyberstalking crap on certain levels. Bleah, was too much like work sometimes.

I played Achaea for awhile before coming here. A looong time ago. I wasn't a big fan of it. I always stuck around Cyrene and the Rune Knights or RuneKeepers or whatever they were.

I never did make it to far in that guild...

I played archaea for a while when i was younger, and then again. I basically just kept comming back, restarting and such, but kept getting put off because if you wanted to join a city or a house or whatever you had to take these mad tests or whatever that askedyou if you knew where such and such a place is and all sorts of other stupid things. The system for making money was kinda labourious and I don't mind it now that I know more than I did then, but at the same time my infernal seems kinda null in comparison to my ur'guard Orclach as a combat class.

For a while in Achaea I had some good RP people who hung arond the newbie area and we spent most of the time getting drunk and doing strange stuff, I becamwe a kinda evil bard thing devoted to Buffallo steak sandwhiches after I was asaved from starvation by one...
I had a sidekick in that, but it eventually died and I was left kinda on my own and everything seemed to be decaying in game, so I left.


Recently I came back to it, was alright, but then I was reading the forums and whatnot and found Lusternia was better for combat oriented classes and thought I'd check it out.
So far I have one charcter at level 16 and already I find the combat and skills etc alot better than those of Achaea.
My gripe is that my description is like limited to about 20 characters...
I might keep Achaea on the side I got everything up on Atlantis so there's always a character or two to log into every so often. And until I get bored, meander off, or just switch back to playing Shadowbane and get really into it again, I will dip in an out of Achaea and lusternia but I think so far that Lusternia is alot better.

In terms of originality, Lusternia is definitely the best. It's not an alternative version of Achaea. The history is still being discovered, it's all new, new characters, new skills, things like that. They have definitely gone above and beyond as far as creativity goes.

In terms of combat, things aren't very balanced. Skills like trueheal, inquisition, choke, lich, chaindrag are some of the 'big' skills that often get complained about. Estarra is so bent on being original that means for balance are overcome by needing to be creative. If you play, you'll eventually learn what I mean. Some people have a bunch of useful skills for different things. Others have one or two abilities that overbear and make up for the other crappy abilities they have, but in addition to, they're annoying and make it unbalanced. Overall, the only way to really make any changes to combat is to whine a lot. On forums, in game, during RP situations, etc. If you aren't screaming about something, you're not mad enough for it to be changed.

For roleplay, it has declined a lot recently. But it is still better than the other IRE games, and you can definitely join a place like Glom and get all the RP you want. Our Gods are active and I imagine more are coming soon. It's easy to roleplay with the custom emotes (far less confusing than the other IRE games), and you can always choose trades to be interested in to add to your character.

For questing, they're good. A lot of easy ones, but a lot of simple ones too. Completing quests gives you honours lines (something that doesn't happen often in Achaea). You don't get honors for killing big Mobs (a good thing). Some are frustrating for certain orgs (read: Celest), but for things like releasing gorgogs and closing the rift, those quests are fun and worth doing.

We're very spoiled in Lusternia. Exp loss is minimal, even if you have to pray. Theft is highly frowned upon, so making triggers isn't needed. We have different planes for accessing, so combat is pretty loose. Issues aren't used very often. For such luxuries we have a price to pay, though. Which is dealing with the regular asshats every IRE comes with, risking being jumped at any turn, risking our armour/weapons being stolen and not given back.

It is ridiculously easy to get level 100 if you're dedicated enough (just ask Revan or Yuniko or any mag who aetherbashed for 15+ high levels in a day.)

And some changes (hopefully for the best) will be going in to make being a robe-wearer easier.

Let go of the bitterness, it's over now. LET IT GO.

However, Aison is correct, for the most part.

Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention Shaddus, who went from level 60 to level 83 or something in a matter of hours.

I will not.

64-84, I believe it was.

Oh, but don't forget that Narsrim and Talkan effectively kept me AT 60-64 for almost a decade, what with constantly jumping me.

I've played Imperian religiously for the last three years. It was my first mud and used to really really enjoy it. Since Avasyu left and went to Aetolia, as Mathiu said everything went downhill and now moves at the speed of a snail-afflicted with concussion and aeon- whose been stomped on. The gods are inactive and it feels like the admin. just doesn't want to be there. There are now two many guilds thanks to professions and circles allowing cities to create guilds within which diluted the small population. Circles were meant to promote conflict but have really done nothing but shun the magick circle from entering at all and ruined any type of RP outside of good, bad, neutral.


I've been enjoying Lusternia so far, Imperian seems like it was training wheels for me and Lusternia just has more to offer in every way.

So your inability to fight/run (how the hell could you not run? Shaddus, meet Stealth), means you deserve to level up far too quickly/abuse a mistake on the Admins part (bug)? Uh-huh.

Its just levels people

Numbers, in a game

Which allows you to lower the numbers of other people

Geez

Jeeesus christ, how does anyone cope and keep their sanity in tact grinding like that in a MUD. I can't grind in a graphical MMO without being mindnumbingly annoyed/bored, 15+ levels a day, Jeeesus...

Who cares? Shut up.

Jack, you're so eloquent

Please keep this thread civil or there shall be Divine Justice raining down from the glorious havens to smite the infidels and bestow upon the wicked their just reward. Job 12:17 (new interpretation)

Job 12:17 He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools.

Edit: My favourite verse in that chapter has to be 11.

Who reads the Bible... Seriously.

Are you kidding me?

Its full of sex and violence

Good book

Having played all four of the IRE games pretty extensively at this point, I'd say Lusternia is easily leading over the rest of the games in terms of fun and accessibility, especially for those of us who have played IRE for years and years (it's weird looking back and realizing you started playing during your first year of high school, and now you're finishing your undergrad and still playing). It's a breath of fresh air compared to the other games, and not just due to the integral differences in the games themselves.

I played Achaea for a few years, and got my first taste of IRE then. I was a pretty awful fighter and spent most of my time talking and manuevering my way up political ladders, all while never really achieving anything of note. Achaea still strikes me as being the most 'solid' of the IRE games, but that may be due to leaving the combat balance relatively unchanged and supplementing the game with a host of rather useless money-sinks.

After a lull of not playing any IRE games, I played Imperian when it opened for a bit. Didn't catch my interest until I made my bard, which I loyally played for a couple of years. I spent that time getting pretty decent with combat and coding and made a lot of friends, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. That is, up until the administration decided to stop updating the game and turn it into a battle of vague promises and amazing plans for the future (the 5 year plan!). Imperian had a nasty habit of ignoring the wishes of the playerbase and not really using any input from the fighters in the game in regards to development, which resulted in a lot of people getting frustrated with the direction the game was turning. The roleplay seemed to disappear, as did overall happiness with the game, and away I went!

Aetolia was fun as well, though it never caught me as much (I guess I started playing at a bad time for roleplay/conflict). I thought reanimation was pretty nifty, I enjoyed combat as a Bloodborn/Teradrim, but never really went with it anywhere. Oh well.

I'm starting to sink my teeth into Lusternia now though, and I have to say that despite any balance issues that may result in regards to the skills and how they're developed, the mere fact that Estarra respects and listens to her playerbase makes Lusternia stand heads above any of the other games. I'm seeing things developed quickly and creatively, and it seems like there's at least -some- connection with the playerbase that allows opinions and voices to be heard. This is a very good thing that the other games never really caught on to, and hopefully it stays that way. That being said, I'm also finding that there's a lot to learn, and hopefully it'll keep me enthralled long enough to, well, get me readdicted.

Job 41:1

"Can you pull in the Elostian with a fishhook
or tie down his tongue with a rope?"

-- edit: elostian --

John 12:12

'And hearkent thou to the voice of the administrators and make not fun of Their work,
thy shalth pay homage to thy Administrators or have thy warning level increased
and have thy posts edited. Or something.'