Library: BatMUD article 2004 spring

A translation of BatMUD -article that was published in a Finnish gaming magazine. Original was written by me, translation was done by Shardik (thanks) and final touches to translation were made by me. -Tsuran BATMUD Tagline: Only few games can offer challenge and surprises even after years of playing. This makes BatMUD an exception, the oldest players have been around over ten years. Text by: Sami Paju - Tsuran Windforce I started playing BatMUD in the spring of 2001. The beginning in a huge fantasy world was not easy. Learning to know your character and the game mechanics had to be done through an ascetic telnet window using commands entered as text. The information flood seems massive at the beginning, but playing becomes easier quickly enough, when you realize, that you don't have to read everything that appears on screen. There are many various help-commands, but the best help is received from other players, who are rather keen on helping you out with difficult questions. There is also a newbie discussion channel and newbie helper players, who are obliged to help you getting started. The game begins in the village of Pleasantville, which hosts all the mandatory services for an adventurer. The village itself is located right next to the biggest city of BatMUD, the Batcity, and there is a number of areas nearby designed for beginner adventurers. These you can explore either alone, or in groups of up to nine players. Character creation in BatMUD goes without problems. First you choose a name, then the background of the character from five options: magical, nomad, civilized, good religious and evil religious. After background you choose the race of the character, from the 31 possibilities offered in the beginning. There are six important abilities in the game: strength, dexterity, constitution, wisdom, intelligence and size. Each ability affects on how well the race is suited to any of the game's 30 different guilds. In addition to this each race has its own mini guild. The races also have special abilities, such as infrared vision or fast spell point restoration. YOU SEE SOME TREES For people accustomed to the continuously improving graphics we see today, BatMUD may cause some headache. All 'graphics' have been implemented with ASCII. Reading the text on the screen and using your own imagination helps to outline the surroundings of your character. Fortunately BatMUD has a huge 'outer world', where a small piece of the map will be shown when you move. Also some cities in BatMUD have a similar map system to help you move around. Moving in such places resembles the old versions of Nethack. The telltale 'question marks' in the outer world are a different matter, entering these you will usually just see the text describing the room and the exits that lead out from it. The areas vary from ones designed to beginners to very difficult ones, where even a group of nine experienced players might get into trouble. Some areas contain humour or references to, for example, movies and literature. Or does Smurville, the land of Wainamoinen, or a book that will send you to the world of Dragonlace when read ring a bell? Some areas also contain small quests that may reward the player with money, magical item or something else when solved. The characters advance levels in adventurer's guild by using the experience points gained from exploring areas or killing monsters. The required amount for the next level can be halved by solving a level quest. The quests get more difficult depending on the level, which they make cheaper to achieve. The first ten levels are spent in the training of the character's chosen background. The next five levels will complete the training in the guild of your chosen race, where you can start to invest experience points in learning different skills and spells, of which BatMUD lists nearly a thousand different. The skill system is percentual and the higher your percent in some skill, the more expensive it is to train it. After reaching the sixteenth level the player can join a guild of his choice, from those that are available for his background. To get properly started it is almost necessary to choose nomad as your background and join either barbarians or rangers so you can get experience points with sufficient speed, but if you are more interested in exploring than in combat, other backgrounds will work too. Especially with Invisibility spell it is rather safe and fast to explore plenty of areas, which gives you a nice amount of experience points. While your character's total experience goes up, other guilds will become more and more playable. Also combinations of multiple guilds are possible. However, the cap of 100 levels will eventually become a limiting factor. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME A large part of the bat realm is scattered with cities built by other players for themselves. You can almost always find stores, a bank, residential areas, a healing crystal and a portal, which allows you to teleport to the cities built by the coders of the game, the wizards. A newcomer's first objective is to find a place to live from one of the cities built and owned by other players. The house is important, because it serves as the storage for the players' items and usually as a starting point when the player connects to the server. When the connection is cut off by issuing the quit command, all the carried items will drop on the ground and eventually disappear. Without the storage chests acquired to the house the only way to preserve your equipment is to either cut your connection to the server or use the ld command, which will result in the same, though even then only the worn items will be saved, and everything in the inventory will be lost. Until the player finds a place to live, he is largely dependent on items received from Saint Damogran, donated to him by more experienced players. These items are free, so losing one is not a major drawback. In addition to cities of their own, players can establish secret societies. These differ in nature from bunch of friends to commercial guilds that allow you to spend experience points to improve an ability; more strength or constitution for instance. The societies may also have their own communication channels that resemble IRC quite a lot, like the other, public, channels of the game. The numerous communication channels are one reason why BatMUD is an extremely social gaming environment. After couple weeks of playing you start to add names on your friends list. Many of the players being Finnish, discussion and asking for advice can be done without stunning knowledge of English language. Also the inbuilt Finnish - English - Finnish dictionary provides assistance when collision with language barrier seems to be unavoidable. Getting to know MUD friends is easy if you visit some of the numerous meetings that gather players together all around Finland. Also smaller events are organized, such as the manse+ soccer frenzy of players from Tampere, or the floorball played in Helsinki. ENDLESS STORY There is no consistent storyline in BatMUD. On the other hand the user interface, guilds and the realm are a subject to constant development, because as old coders retire, many experienced players ascend to wizardhood themselves and continue the work. Now is an excellent time to try out BatMUD, because compared to the situation a year ago Bat is a lot more friendly for the newcomers. The player count has actually increased significantly during the past months. Over 500 players have been online at the same time during peak hours. The lack of a major plot can also cause boredom occasionally. In the end there aren't that many different challenges, unless you want to go through all the missions and mini quests that can be found in the game. Character development, however, manages to keep you hooked from year to year, and becoming a skilled player rather requires intelligence, patience and effort than just a lot of experience points and high end equipment. From time to time comes periods, when making money and experience points is not enough, and you will get bored and take a break from the game. Still you may find yourself occasionally logged on BatMUD, reading newsgroups and chatting with friends. Eventually the strangely enchanting game world will draw you back to the game after break. There is a lot to experience and new features are added to the game constantly. Even death will not be the end of an eager adventurer. The healers can raise your character from the dead. If you wish to change your race or guilds, you don't need to start over, because druids have a spell that allows you to go through a reincarnation process. The character will be created again from the beginning, but you will get most of your previously achieved experience points with you. The items saved in your house will also survive all this. BatMUD's attraction is crushing. The players who have spend hundreds of days of gametime are a proof of this. However, the attraction will not be immediate, it requires that you spend time learning the game, getting introduced. After this you feel like being free in a totally new world filled with hidden secrets, imaginative monsters and fascinating treasures. And the best thing is, that playing BatMUD is entirely free.

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Library: BatMUD article 2004 spring