Configuring Mushclient

by Tharius

(This is the second in a serial describing my experience with migrating from Zmud/Cmud to MushClient)

In the last article I talked about installing Mush and some basic thoughts about how I was going to lay out my characters in this new environment.  This post will go through getting some templates set up that will eventually be copied to create those characters.  I’m using a template because in fact there are very few characters I use that I need triggers specific to that character.  Almost every trigger I have I’d prefer to have on most of my characters, give or take some variations for race or class.

For those who would like a way to easily download the files and not go through the pain of doing this all by hand I will make a link available at the end of the series with a default basic configuration.

Ok, so I created a new world. This is going to be the basis of all my class specific templates, it’ll need to be tailored as I go along but I can set a bunch of stuff that I want to be the same in all of them.  These settings are under the World Properties link in the Files menu.

I fill in the world name as Realms of Despair and the address as realmsofdespair.com. Next I go down to output and up the lines in the output buffer to 20k… I like a lot of scroll back for extended afk sessions. :> While I’m on this tab I hit Auto-wrap to window size and copy selection to clipboard.

Under input->commands I change echo my input in to a pale yellow (I think it default uses grey … I’m very used to the yellow and I look for it). Let’s go ahead and enable spam protection every 19 identical commands send “spam”. As a Cmud person I’m tempted to change the speedwalking prefix from “#” to “.” but for now I’m going to simply leave it disabled. I’m sure I’ll circle back to this one, the problem is that # is not only the repeat command in Zmud but the command command … like #LOOP or #CONNECT … which I won’t be able to simulate here regardless. .5swen in Zmud would work exactly as #5swen would work here (I think). I’ll skip speedwalking for now. I’m just not sure heh. I am sure I need to turn command stacking on and may as well keep “;” since it’s pretty universal.

Down to input->keypad to check off “Escape Deletes Typing” and “Ctrl+Z goes to End of Output Window” to make it feel zMudish … which when button mashing on a run will be important … hmmm… not too sure about changing the arrow key defaults for now, so I’ll leave them until I have a reason to double check. Onward we go down to keypad. Here the 5 key is useless to me, so I want to change it to look instead of who. I’m also changing the * to stand and . to rest and 0 and / I’m going to blank out for the moment. I may revisit these since they’re not keys I’ve used in the past.

Finally I flip down to scripts … as I said when planning my layout I want to have each character have it’s own set of local variables. The kicker to it is that I need the same information from every character, but I will set that up as a trigger in the usual way instead of using the World Events… Also though I need the same information on each character, I’ll go through the same procedure to gather the information on each character. So it’s better suited to a global connection plugin. What I want to change here is that I have downloaded LuaEdit as an editor and I’m going to use that instead of the default built-in editor. If you’re not planning to do a LOT of script writing, I wouldn’t bother with that.  I’ll also click note errors to make sure my script errors don’t give me a pop up box and mess something up later but rather show up in the normal scroll. I’m going to go ahead and fill in a script prefix here too… now this is where I’m tempted to use something like “#” from Zmud since it’ll have a similar functionality … but since it’s going to let me run Lua scripting from the command line I’m going to break with habits and use “/” instead. I won’t set the external script file just yet as this is the per world (character) scripting and I’ll fill it in as I create characters if the variables don’t save with the world file (or if I need a one off trigger for a particular character).

We can close the settings up now and move on to setting up a default plug-in.  This is where the global triggers are gong to go.  We don’t have to build the triggers now, but we want the world to know about the plug-in name.  I decided to do one “Tharius’ Realms of Despair” plug in instead of a list of them that are more modular and encapsulate one function (for example equipment damage monitor).  The fact is that the latter approach makes a lot more sense, however, there are so many ways I can think of to split things off that in the interests of keeping things moving along I’ll go with a catch all Realms plug-in and will re-factor it down the road.  This is more of a programmer/distributing my triggers decision.  For the average user it shouldn’t be an issue.  Besides it’s easy to move things into their own file later on.  I plan to go ahead and make class and race plug-ins separately, we’ll come to that.

Ok, so I’ll quickly whip up an empty plug-in and add it to this world, and them I’m ready to start making the class files.  I use the plug-in wizard to create an almost empty plugin.  The only thing in it is the help alias 🙂  I’ll add to this file later on extensively.  I won’t rely on the plugin retaining state because I’m going to have the variables in the per character configurations.  I told it to include the standard Lua constants, I’m not sure if that’s the way to go, but I can remove them later if need be.  I clicked ok to get out the wizard, added the plug-in to the world and immediately noticed an error.  When I moved my directories I didn’t move the contents of the default plug-in directory to my new directory.  If you didn’t move your folders then you won’t see this error, but I did so I have to go to the hard drive and move them to my new folder.  Error went away so I went ahead and saved the world.  I chose not to use the global plug in option because I am creating everything from scratch here. If I had to add something later on down the road then I suppose I might use it.  Also there’s always the chance I won’t want it in world, like a build port or some other mud (gasp) at some point so this gives me a little more fine tuned control over things.

Ok.  From here I want to have a plug in with class specific triggers for each class.  I take my default template and make copies of it for each class (RoD-Thief, RoD-Cleric, etc).  Once I’ve got them all I opened each world, one at a time, created an empty plug in with the class name (ThariRanger, ThariDruid, ThariClassname…) saved it to the hard drive, added it to my class specific world and saved and closed the world.  I also went ahead an opened a world so I could create files for each race but I didn’t add them to any world yet because that’s something that will be far too character specific to do in any good, general way.

That’s it for today.  I made a back up of this whole structure, and will make it available in the next blog post where I start adding some basic triggers.  Right now I have 14 worlds, 1 default and 13 class specific, 1 generic RoD plug-in, 13 plug-ins for classes and 14 for races.  It seems like a lot but that’s the majority of the file creation finished.  Next comes adding characters to Mush and then trigger writing.  Stay tuned … (in not out!!)

Migrating from Zmud/Cmud to MushClient … a rambling adventure

by Tharius

So here we go, at long last, I will make the jump into the MushClient world.  This started out as a project for the guild bot characters so that they could access my databases but it’s grown. It has taken so long because I’ve been inordinately busy with life and school and also because I could not get the server configuration I wanted working (I still cannot but I will!!). Instead I’m forging ahead with my current setup but I’ll add all my functionality and transfer it at a later date.

For those who are not interested in installing and configuring MushClient very little of interest will appear in the next few blog posts.  My initial post was far too long to keep in one piece and so I’ve split it up into several steps.  You may find the discussion of triggers interesting when we get there or may wish to read for ideas on how to refresh your own client of choice’s setup.  Either way, once I’ve accomplished this it’s well past time to go back and reflect on all the guild turmoil of the last few months.

For background’s sake, I have been a long time Zmud user and recent Cmud convert. I loved Zmud back in the day, it did all I wanted it to. The mapping system draws me back time and again. I just cannot keep it stable on my Windows 7/8 systems. I purchased Cmud since it was pretty stable … until I started pushing it. Now I can crash it by rearranging the windows. There is no doubt in my mind that it has a few memory leaks or fails to do some sort of garbage collection. The problem grows the longer you use it or the more windows you open and close. I’m not even touching how often my character setting files corrupt or the fact that I can’t open character A without disconnecting character B. I’m ready for a reinstall … but I know I’ll be back to this point in a couple months. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is that Zugg is no longer developing the software. If he were then I might hang in there in optimistic faith that the bugs and glitches would get sorted out but the fact is that it’s a business and he’s not making any money at it anymore. I say that without judgement, it’s got to either be something you love or something that pays … when it’s neither it becomes a burden. I wanted to add database support to my bots and discovered I would have to pay more for Cmud pro … to do something that is available in a free Lua library that is not provided by Zugg at all.  Next I want to play with MDSP and a graphical interface similar to what KaVir or Sepharoth worked on some time ago.

I guess these things contribute to my breaking point. I read a rant about Zmud users not wanting to buy Cmud even though it was an overhaul … I am not in that category, I paid for both. I’ve used both. I’ll keep using them both for specialty tasks for the time being… but bring on MushClient by Nick Gammon.

My first experience installing Mush under Windows 7 wasn’t pretty. It turned me off Mush enough that it took an ordermate extolling it’s virtues to convince me to try again. The new 4.84 installer is MUCH better. Ignore most of the instructions on the Mushclient website, grab that installer, change your paths to point to somewhere you can find them, install that old winhelp if you like and bang, you’re up and running.  I stopped at the global preferences, rearranged a few directories, tick off the reconnect on disconnect button and I’m up and running.

Next is to set up a world.  This bit of terminology tripped me up since I think of world=mud.  Here we’re using world=character.  You can use world=mud but then you will lose the ability to enjoy the autoconnect features.  The one character, one world setup works for me and how I do my triggers.  The world file will have all the variables about the particular character and I will bring in my (for example) THIEF trigger set as a plug-in and let the triggers use the variables.  This way I can share my triggers without my variables messing anyone else up and of course all my (example) thieves will have uniform triggers but don’t have to have uniform equipment or setups, etc.  More on triggers later.

For now, how to organize things.  I only play one mud, so I don’t need a separate folder for Realms of Despair characters but do I want to lump all my characters in one folder or split them up?  My instinct is to split them up.  In Cmud I could rename the icons to things like “Tharius – Ranger” and “Lareawan – Thief” … or in time I just used seperate icons for each class so lumping them in one window was fine, I could glance about and find what I wanted but here in MushClient I’m only presented with a Windows open file dialogue.  I loathe it 🙂  Things like this go on my “it’s open source, if you hate it that much then write some code” list.  Anyway, I dislike this because I cannot dynamically rearrange my listing to suit whatever piece of information I’m trying to extract.  Usually I want them sorted by class then by name … I can accomplish that by filename but if they’re in folders I won’t be able to re-sort them quickly by last connect date … or whatever …  So at the end of the day I won’t bother with folders, and I’ll use file names like Thief – Lareawan so that I can use the Windows file explorer to sort by name or date or whatever I want … I need to go back and check off “Save world on exit” so that it will properly save the time stamps but other than that, we’re off to the races, as long as that doesn’t show up in the window title bar, we’re good.

 

(Next time, configuring the world … default setup and getting ready for a mass character import)

There and back again and again and again :)

by Tharius

It’s been a while since I made a post here, sorry to anyone who follows the blog 🙂  There has been a TON of stuff going on both on and off Realms and I have been very negligent in updating realmsofdespair.info.

When I returned to Realms I decided I would see what the RP community on Realms is doing.  By and large the answer is nothing.  I tried to start some threads and find out what had been going on from older players but by and large my efforts have been met with the response “Hold off, there’s a big quest to shuffle the story lines coming”.  So I’ve held off.  I expressed interest in becoming the Half-Elf Nation Leader (currently vacant) and earned the support of some former leaders … but again, hold off for the quest where I’ll have an opportunity to step forward.  Unfortunately I’ve held off quite some time and still haven’t seen the quest materialize.  This apparently all extends back to story lines began in the Nations Olympics around August 2012… this amounts to 5,000 Realms years?  It’s tough to maintain an interest when notes appear roughly quarterly.  The Nations were supposed to be mortal driven initiatives, yet mortal initiatives are being stifled?

With that said, there’s at least one person who, if they read this blog, is probably annoyed with what I’m saying.  I’m sorry if I offended you, but this is my outsider opinion as a player who tried to become active in RP on Realms and who still is interested in participating.  I’m demanding nothing, but asking you to consider that introducing a story line that is inconsistent with the past but is active is perhaps better than absolutely no visible activity.  As an aside I have worked hard to ensure Tharius’ story lines have deliberately made him look ignorant of the history of the Elohai nation to allow any old story thread to be resurrected and blindside him.

Well, I suppose this turned into a little bit of an RP rant, sorry everyone, I’ll wrap this up with the history of Tharius I wrote in May.  I tried to put it into an in character description of my journey on the Realms of Despair from Tharius’ point of view.  The beauty of it is that if I’ve forgotten something, it’s Tharius’ poor memory not mine and of course, leaves room for others to have differing opinions of events that occurred.

 

It has been many years since I have set quill to parchment to relate my
personal history. Perhaps it is long past due … I relate this to you, for I
suppose few remember … One day perhaps we will sit and relate more tales of
the past but for today …

I am the only child of Wayrrm and Lomyre, half-elves, undistinguished
merchants who traded simple goods from the various lands long before the
Shattering changed the face of the Realms. I spent many years cataloging the
particulars of this potion or that wand so that we could obtain more if the
demand arose. I traveled most of the lands of the Realms with them, meeting
many people of all races.

On one of our final tours I met with an old ranger, Daltorak Astoras, who told
me of his adventures and his life in Darkhaven. Enchanted with thoughts of
dragon slaying, treasures hidden away and carried forth in my hands, at 17 I
journeyed to Darkhaven myself where I learned quickly to fend for myself.

I explored the surrounding hills and forests but quickly found myself alone.
Desiring the company of others I joined the Guild of Rangers where I learned
much about the world of adventure that I had volunteered for. Many of those
names still ring in my memory … indeed many of them went on to great renown,
even answering the call to join Thoric’s immortals. I made many friends and
true, indeed in short time I took a bride and we took the name Dawnbreaker for
our own.

Others flocked to my banner, healers like Yardan the Wise, the wizard Shantir
and even those like Thavius who could steal the eyes out of your head while
you blinked and not be caught! Indeed, through Yardan I reached out for more
power and became Dragonslayer. Bitter are my memories of my departure from
the Guild, for in my blind ambition and through harsh and careless words I
offended and hurt many. I turned my back on them all and lost a wife to
neglect.

Still, though I often sought glory and riches I was often to be found aiding
those new to our land … many was the year that I spent with a Councillor’s
Badge of Honour around my neck. It was in the council headquarters I became
aware that I had fallen victim to a curse I would wish on no mortal … I fell
in love with a Goddess … She was beautiful and terrible … gentle with
innocents yet the enslaver of some of the most vicious demons I have yet
witnessed.

It pleased her to walk the Realms in mortal form from time to time and for
reasons I will never know she agreed to become my bride. The goddess Sarah
wed me to Darmha and to this day she haunts me for we were not wed long before
her immortal form fell from the Heavens and has not been seen again in these
Realms. The shade of her mortal form lingers on, beautiful and deadly, but
the light in those eyes is gone. I have long quested to discover what
transpired but that is another tale.

Shattered I withdrew into Blackraven Citadel, leaving only for adventure and
blood lust or to take part in councils to help shape our great land. Truly I
tell you that when you stare into the blackness of oblivion it stares back at
you. I threw myself into slaughter. In the lands of La Chute, where I heard
her name whispered in the stones, I endlessly traveled … and in La Chute I
fell, mortally stricken. As I fell from the mountain, wind whistling in my
hair, the screams of my comrades in my ears as they fell along side me, I felt
a cold calm I have never felt before or since… for a moment things became
still …

… and as I hit the ground, I fell through it into the cupped hands of the
Immortal Edmond. The power the crackled about him cannot be conveyed to you
now and I have no record of the words that passed between us but when I again
opened my eyes upon the Realms, it was with a holy light shining behind them
… I had ascended and joined Thoric’s immortals.

My time in the heavens was brief … the pride and ambition which had driven
me into battle after battle overrode even the clarity and joy of the heavens.
When the demon’s slavering teeth came and tore me into oblivion I hoped for
the end, yet there was no end for me. Reformed in a new body I returned to
the Citadel cold and alone.

In time I returned to my searching. I sought out others to help me invade the
land of the Ancients. Though many came for the bounty, true and close friends
joined me, the druid Turlough and the druidess Raemakion took the name
Dawnbreaker and joined my cause. Ahh, not since the early days in Darkhaven
did I revel in companionship the way I did with these druids … and slowly a
part of the darkness cracked and fell away.

In my travels, always at my side was Aurale. Though her tale is not mine to
tell, it suffice to say we were inseparable though we often disagreed. Though
we never wed, we were kindred spirits and soothed the hurts the world had
given us.

There came a day however, when we chose to part. In that parting, in that
rage, grief … I turned my back on the Realms and walked away. No more would
I seek the glory and adventure, instead, I would discover new lands but only
journey through them. Homeless … alone.

Much of what transpired would make little sense here. Indeed, much of it is
strange to me now. On another plane of existence I battled against mighty
devils and demons and within me awoke a desire to return to these lands. I
left much undone when I left these lands … and though while I have been gone
Ages have risen and fallen, over 40,000 years have passed, I still have my
youth and vigor.

My travels have changed me greatly. While I still set my own goals I no
longer crave power and adulation. The darkness gave way to a new light, long
ago. Indeed I set foot again in Darkhaven with only the urge to excel against
my own achievements. I have left the days of Dragonslaying behind me and
forsaken the ancient oath of enmity against the Inconnu. I will join those
who seek excellence, no matter where I find them.

I have spent the last 100 years learning much of how this land has changed,
wandering the pathways and roads, seeing the new villages … learning of
the wars that have ravaged the nations. I have not set foot again in La Chute
but it seems to me that before long I must go there. There are mysteries in
my past which I must solve lest they consume me. Perhaps we shall share in
these mysteries together, my friends.

My fingers cramp from holding this quill, my friends, and surely you tire of
my tale … but this is but a start. From here we write a new chapter.

Tharius Dawnbreaker, Elohai

(sealed in forest green wax, the seal a crown atop an apsen)

Duke Luther’s hunt comes to an end.

by Tharius

Well the good Duke’s hunt has come to an end.  I have to admit, I enjoyed this quest even though I would have like to have seen more people active in hunting for mobs.

As we suspected a few of the mobs were pretty inaccessible to small parties … at least one mob was past the Onyx Golem for example.  By and large though quite a few were soloable or doable in 2’s and 3’s.  A shout out to Bratac and Theldan who were relentless in their hunting and also to Riddick, Juan and Chyort who all joined me for kills here and there.

As I said in a prior post, this quest got me out into the Realms fighting mobs I haven’t fought in all my time here.  Even though I’ve used purple pouches, shields of oak and soulslayers, I have never killed Malvos (who wasn’t tagged) nor Nazir (who was) … or for that matter Jedhian (no, not tagged either) … but on my tour through Cursed Lands I hit them all.

Similarly with Sauron and his Staff of Barad-Dur … a staple item I’ve never popped before this quest.  Many of the others are mobs that I wouldn’t run because their equipment isn’t an upgrade for any of my characters … the Devil in ToE … Zaka Mede in La Chute … and so on.  All in all a great tour of the Realms … it gave me a chance to make and use an immob mage, to experiment with several different styles of running and dragged me into some of “new” areas.

Many thanks to Belkira and all who were involved in the administration and design of the quest.

… Darkfire talon falls to the ground in scraps …

by Tharius

This isn’t just an attention getter, this was my experience Sunday morning.  I decided to solo Set before I had to get ready to head out the door and figured it wouldn’t be too terribly hard to do.  That was the result of sharing the item with another character, but not repairing it before I put it away.  This is not a rant about scrapping equipment, rather I thought I’d try to point out some good habits that players should probably take up.  I’m happy add more to this list, but here’s just a few.

Scrapping happens, but it should only happen to lights and containers …

There is really no excuse to scrap an item off your character unless it’s a 1 AC item.  I know, I just scrapped a bloody DFT, but there is no excuse for it.  I use triggers that will remove gear once it reaches a low AC level.  They’re not the simplest in the world but they’re the advanced version of a simple idea.  It requires a little foresight because you have to have the AC of your items at hand from identify.  These triggers are absolute core of not scrapping equipment.  Better to die because the triggers just stripped off your weapons than to scrap them… you’re carrying other weapons anyways arent’ you?  I’m getting ahead of myself.  The first habit you should get in to is repairing immediately after you recall.  Don’t start shuffling things around or putting loot into storage – repair everything, then shuffle.  This habit would have prevented my disaster.  If you don’t have time to run to <insert cheap repair mob here>, don’t, pay full price and do the repair.  How many repairs do you have to do at the cheap mob to save the same value in coins as your gear?  If you just supplicated your corpse – repair.  In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t take long to repair if you’re trying to run back to the fight, you probably took longer forgetting to type stand the first time or running back to one of the visitation deities to gain favor.  Which brings us to …

Never leave home without enough favor to supplicate …

I would say supplicate corpse, but there’s no excuse for leaving home without at least recall favor.  There are two deities who are so easy to favor to supplicate that even if you die during a run you can spam the favor and get back on the same repop.  Some of the other deities are tougher but most will respond to bury or dig on corpses … probably more strongly at low levels than high ones.  If you have one character that gains on bury and one that gains on dig, well aren’t you just ready to go?  I have had this sort of thing bite me in the butt where I’m sitting out 3000 rounds of curse because I don’t have a remove curse potion/scroll or enough favor to supplicate.  When this happens I invariably don’t have a way to dispel magic and I’m out of recall scrolls too… nothing short of trans is getting me out of there … or recall by mdeath.

If you stay organized and stocked, you can be spontaneous with less stress …

As the king of disorganized I’ll reiterate that this advice comes from years of not doing it right.  If you are anything like me your main is packed with all sorts of miscellaneous crap scoured from all over the Realms… notes, guides… stuff that if you emptied your pack and a crash hit would probably not amount to much of a long term loss (as a famed DT’er take my word that you’ll get over it in time).  I am not saying that you can’t hoard, I’m saying don’t hoard on a character you want to leave Darkhaven with.  One of my ordermates has a very good routine that I hope to be able to emulate, one day 🙂  He’ll drop off all run loot from his characters to his main and sorts his main out when he gets near 500 weight.  I can do this for short periods of time but inevitably I end up at 998/999 and stuff piles up.  When you do this sort of thing the next step becomes easy… go restock your potions on the character you just used.  If you’ve already gone and repaired and favored well hey, your character’s pretty well ready to go back out the door.

There’s no excuse for not having the basics …

There are easy ways to do things and harder ways to do things.  The harder ways usually give you reduced weight items or higher spell level items or some advantage, but the easy way items are just fine for most situations.  You should be able to cast sanctuary, elemental shields, fly, sneak, hide and invisibility on yourself.  Get an item equipped in each wearloc to help cut down equipment damage overall (even if you dispute that the code punishes you for not having each wearloc equipped, having items in face, back and 2 ankles it’s 4 more items for the code to pick from).  Some of these are stone easy… sanctuary, fly and invisibility come off a number of simple stock items or can be brewed and bought easily.  Sneak and hide are sometimes tricky to get on a good item, but they can both be found by level 5 on basic items so that you can move between areas without being attacked.  Basic ac only items for each wearloc are easily obtained.  The basics are just that, basics.  Get them.  Upgrade them when you get the chance.

Adept the skills and spells on your character …

I’m not too bad for this one because I’ve incorporated it into my leveling so it’s not such a chore at avatar.  It is frustrating for anyone running with you to watch your skill or spell fail repeatedly and it’s slowing you down when you’re soloing.  Some skills are a pain in the butt to adept but you only usually have to do it once per character … if you use triggers and keep them it cuts down the work.  Fighting styles are a pain, find a mob that’s immune magic and wield magic weapons … the weapon skills can be easily adepted by level 10 if you poke around for different weapon types.  If you’re stuck on something, send me a tell … some of the answers are good quest training … go adept cook and practice for Destre to let the sausage maker out.

It’s taken no time at all to make this a long post… I’ve intentionally left off run etiquette because it deserves it’s own post.  I hear “I’m bored” a lot and you discover later that the same person is also unprepared.  If you can make some of these things habits you’ll remove some of your obstacles to excellence.

I’m of to adept writing short notes, clearly I’m not yet proficient …. 🙂

Duke Luther should hire a standing army!

by Tharius

Belkira’s current quest has achieved one miracle already… it has got me off my butt to kill mobs I otherwise never would have.

There are a number of mobs on this quest that can be soloed or multi-soloed, which in today’s Realms is really necessary… trying to get the mass to go roaming in a number of different ways even for 2 or 3 avatar mobs is a little difficult but not impossible but for questing it’s nice to get out and stretch my legs without having to get everyone together.

So why are these mobs things I would never kill?  Well simple, their gear isn’t important enough to notice for most of my characters.  I know that sounds elitist, but most of the gear so far has been new avatar quality and I’m not a new avatar.  Even my new avatars aren’t new avatars.  In fact, when I was a new avatar most of this gear was plucked from donation and stuffed on my characters… So in fact over the years I’ve never got off my butt and killed these mobs on my own before and I’m having a blast doing it.

Each of the mobs is a little different and requires a different strategy, some of them hit quite hard and some of them are in scary areas … no recall, no supplicate, next door to DTs … you know, scary … areas that I’d normally avoid given my history as a DT magnet.

I chose to do this on a ranger (because I want to) and thus far I’ve burned up quite a large number of tank sets, a ton of heals, mana potions and a steadily increasing supply of repair gold … yet, I’m quite happy to do so!  It’s been a couple of forevers since I’ve enjoyed mkill this much and I rather imagine after this I’ll be re-energized to do something completely different like return to the item database, area building or … well the list of things to do grows faster than I can cross things off.

I hope you’re enjoying the quest too!  Kudos to Belkira, this is a lot more fun than tele-scanning but I wouldn’t want to do it every week 🙂

Who let the dogs out?

by Tharius

Duh, Kinux or Ceirana or Petrograd or Belkira or someone else!  Who care who let it out!  Let’s kill it!

So of course Gorog’s Watchdog made it’s reappearance last Friday as part of a player appreciation drive following the RoDpocalypse.  We saw two kills last week but it took until Saturday afternoon to get enough people together.  Tonight everyone was ready and rearing to go, the first dog kill went as clean as any I’ve seen.  The second dog kill went a little rough for me personally, don’t know if the tank died or something else happened, but I ended up tanking and it doesn’t take long for 2k hp to disappear.

CR’d and ran back, quaffing manas and heals enough to get sanc cast and jump back into the fight before I get locked out of it, in plenty of time to see Orvald pop a pair of Goroggles!  Way to go and congrats, you luck so-and-so!  Lucky?  No I guess that honour goes to Jealle who popped her second pair of Goroggles in a week.  In a twisted, bitter, totally fake rage I hope you enjoy them you rasafrasasuchandsuch.  Kidding of course, if I had that kind of luck I’d tapdance all the way to recall :>

Kudos also go out to Eisengrim and his dog biscuit quest earlier in the day, I added a few new areas to my automapped zones running out to find biscuits but I wonder if the eat zombie backpack; scan all strategy isn’t a bad way to do these sorts of quests.  Word is, 800 zombie candies did the trick.  Just remember to keep sanc and fly on at all times and be prepared to recall if you get attacked 🙂

 

All that’s old is new again …

by Tharius

I reflect a bit on my recollection of being a new player, indeed I have blogged about it a bit.  The goal of this recollection is to try to keep myself open to the experience that new players are having with Realms so that I can try to keep useful ideas floating to the surface for new player attraction and retention.

I think it’s important to separate them because getting people in the door means nothing if we can’t keep them and keeping 100% of a very low attraction does little to help the overall situation.  Of course both attraction and retention are two-fold, attracting new players versus re-enticing older players and retaining new players versus retaining the existing player base.

Attraction is a matter of advertising I think.  Traditionally I’ve felt the best method of advertising is word of mouth.  If your friend plays and helps you get up to speed then you’re likely to give it a go.  This is how I was recruited into the Realms of Despair by Daltorak so many years ago.  For this to be effective as a primary strategy there needs to be a critical mass of players and at present I believe we are probably below that threshold but it’s still a very good way of introducing new players.  Are you involved in role playing website?  Are there people there who might enjoy Realms RP?  Perhaps you have some friends who are big fans of retro gaming, does their interest extend into text based games?

We certainly need to get the word out among the people who are already interested in muds as well, that is why voting on The Mud Connector and Top Mud Sites is so very important.  We’ve languished around 25th for some time and recently we’ve beaten our way back into the top 20, but that’s not good enough.  I think that we’ll need to keep pushing for the top 10 before this will become a good source of new players, but again every little bit helps.

There has been a great deal of posting happening on the Facebook Realms of Despair group.  I think this is lighting a bit of a fire under some old players to come back in and check things out again.  An important question is why did they leave originally?  I think that topic could fill a few blog posts, but I do think it’s important that we listen to them.  Not everything can be addressed but perhaps things that didn’t make sense 5 or 8 years ago would make sense now.

So what about retention?  It used to be that the first stopping place of a true new player would be a guild.  I always thought that leaving them on their own until level 15 or even 20 was a little tough.  It’s the first little while when you need the most help.  Of course when channels were active and there were lots of NC online that helped to balance things quite a lot.  I am hopeful that the new guild builds will give a good home to new players again.  I also hope that the entry level is set somewhere to maximize the feeling of belonging and help.

New players are quite welcome in Arete but it is certainly not the order’s goal to replace guilds as a first stop for new players.  Not only do guilds offer a place that is more specialized towards learning a particular class but in principle there would be more people of similar level who you can join in leveling.  Nonetheless I think a sense of community and home for new players is important in helping with retention.  Everyone who answers questions or even says hello on channels is helping that sense of community.

I’ve seen a great deal of comments about “don’t level too fast” or “enjoy the adventure” but the fact is that when you don’t have an avatar, your goal is to get an avatar.  Your whole climb up the ladder is about entering the land of yellow spam and never having to eat, drink or sleep again. *eg*  I agree that there are a lot of interesting areas out for lower level players but I don’t think they get visited unless there’s a reason to go there.  If a new player is told there’s a piece of equipment that will help their leveling they’ll go there.  Unfortunately like Diablo, by the time you can get the equipment sometimes you no longer need it.  Still everyone’s going to do things differently.  The introduction of lowbie quests have been fairly well done I think there’s room to keep growing along these lines.

What about avatar engagement?  The classic problem.  There is no end game for Realms… the goals are what you set for yourself.  In an age of many players online, you have your choice of runs to attend to help you dress an army of characters.  This is something every player, new and old, can contribute to improving.  It is frustrating trying to get a critical mass of players together to go topple the next mob.  A system that scales mobs attacks and defenses by the number of characters in a room or an area could help this.  Any mob that is a tank switcher would need hardly any modification to it’s attack style and any mob that locks onto a single tank while the hitters beat it to death is probably due for an upgrade anyway.  So now a single player could reasonably go fight a wider range of mobiles.  It shouldn’t be easy.  You should be able to be insane and go one on one with Danbala and have a shot to win.  It shouldn’t be easy.  It should be a bit easier with multiple people to encourage the social aspect.  Hey can’t we just take multi checks off things and get to the same place?  Maybe.  Multi checks do help restrain some of the really over the top behavior that we’ve seen over the years and by keeping things solo we still support the idea that a new player has an equal shot at things.  Yes, better equipment will help a veteran, but that’s the privilege that you earn for playing.  The Falcon’s Quest is something I think is extremely well done, it gives something that is genuinely worthwhile to your character.  More things like this would help.

Fully automated quest system?  No… I think that’s overreaching, the quest council does a good job being creative.  Let’s untie their hands and give them a little more ability to give out cool prizes.  Glory is helpful but unique quest prizes are very nice too.

One of the biggest comments I’ve heard is that our areas are static and that stifles the ability of players to feel like they’re interacting with the game.  This is true and valid, from my point of view.  There is little interaction between areas because of the structure of objects and area files.  You have to be trusted to a certain level before you can figure out the numbers to use to make areas interact with one another and you create couplings that can break if one area changes out of lock step with the other.  With modern source control these text files can easily be tracked and dependencies maintained.

I say more interactivity and some source code help in allowing minor edits to an area.  When working on the Guild of Spirit I realized how stupid it is that the garden will be lush and green even when Realms tells me it’s snowing.  I would have to write another room with the winter description and a program to silently trans everything and everyone in the room to the winter room and then open and close passages so the exits would still work.  It’s quite doable.  I may even try to put some of this sort of thing into an area.  Who would want to do this for more than a few rooms however?  I think a high level of interactivity with some sort of overarching story within Realms can help.

 

Oh well, this is getting long in the tooth.  I’d love to hear from anyone reading this with your ideas on how we can make Realms better.

 

Here, There and Everywhere

by Tharius

It has been a little while since I popped in here to leave a few words, and I thought I’d share what’s been going on.

As many will already know June 13 brought the RoDpocalypse… the couple of weeks of downtime when the server decided to go for a permanent coffee break.  It started with a few updates, a force quit by Conran and apparently the server just couldn’t take it any more, went out for cigarettes and never came back.  I will say that bringing up an alternate port was a good idea, I’m not a huge fan of Helter Skelter mode but it certainly got some people interested in player killing (PKill), so huzzah, and allowed the rest of us to stay in touch at least.  I will express my thanks to everyone who worked hard to bring the game back up, especially to Thoric (Derek Snider) who has been keeping the lights on for almost 20 years.

The RoDpocalypse had little affect on me personally, as I was renovating and painting our new rental house and honestly had very, very little time for any online activities.  I did lose 2 level 2 rerollers, good stats but nothing I can’t roll again 🙂  The biggest disappointment … no birthday cake!  Ah well, maybe next year.

So that’s a little of it… the other part is that I have been hanging out on another SMAUG mud … yes, I’ve been unfaithful… but it’s not what you think!  I’ve been over on Zistrosk’s port helping to get the Guild of Spirit built.  The guild merge has been coming for a long time and I think one of the problems that’s been stalling it is too many people starting and quitting over personality conflicts.  That’s just an opinion, I haven’t been around this since the beginning so I can only comment on the little I’ve seen.  GoS also suffers from the fact that some of the guilds that are merging into it are, in this author’s opinion, the most inactive guilds on RoD.  I have observed that at least one of the guilds that could have really chipped in and made this area something special chose to simply oppose the entire merge idea.  It’s too bad because their headquarters was one of the nicer written headquarters and their input would have been valuable.  Notwithstanding, I’ve worked as much as possible to incorporate them into this new guild and I really hope they participate, but I won’t hold my breath.

I’m excited about the guild merge, I think it’s a good thing.  I will say I’m impressed with the new Guild of Nature, kudos to Zistrosk, Elendure and all the others who worked on it.  If there was a guild I was going to be critical of, this would be it, having been long time members of both Guild of Rangers and Guild of Druids.  I think it has a new feel to it but does work to incorporate a fair amount from the old guilds without feeling cut and pasted.