Well here is an idea and has been discussed allready in some manner, but here
we go.

As I were reading news posts about not being able to do money / exp whatever
it made me ponder, dangers about exploring, why?
As a result of my thinking the one thing crossed my mind. We don\'t really
have a descriptions of our places, we sure do have maps.
Nowadays there are a lot of database based search engines, but we don\'t
really have a system by our own. In this kinda environment which is one of the
biggest online based game with very large diversity of different kind of
quests,
equipments, areas, you call it. Now it is only based on your on exploration /
questions.

Here is the idea in a nutshell.
If I am going to travel in a real life, I most likely like to know what is in
the place I am heading at. What I would like to know about the place I am
heading at would nice to know if there is:

Example
--------------------------------------------------------
Quest (Yes/NO, if yes link to explanation)
Monster Size
Area map (Drawn / Ascii)
Location
Recommendation level
Basic value of the monsters / how many.
--------------------------------------------------------
Those are the basics I am interested at most of the time. Also equipments what
those monsters inside carry.
(These are here just to list of things that could shown up, or not to shown
up, depends what we want to show)

You could take look up on database whatever the area consists of, maybe with
some sorting options for various stuff.

Value of the system what I see for it:
More information
Push for exploring new areas with basic info
More clearer info about the game contents
--------------------------------------------------------

I didn\'t go to more detailed level because it is really up to what could be
there to be shown and how the User Interface could be implemented, and maybe
this could be taken a real consideration.

Truly your.
Handless

No, that\'s not what I am proposing. I am just proposing a simple web based
database or somesuch which would show generally what kind of areas we have in
this game. Maybe there could be a simple map and some other information of the
area. Now we kinda lack this kind of a information. We see \"Q\" at map, but no
other info.

I am not asking any walkthroughs for places.
Why I am asking this is that many people don\'t even have a clue about
quests/areas where they are located.

Wouldn\'t this atleast wake mortals want to go to place when they have atleast
some info before entering?

I know that walkthrougs are illegal, but what I don\'t know is that what can be
shown and what not.

I for one support this idea.
I\'m sure this doesn\'t come as a shock to anyone but currently it takes way
too much time to even get to know the basics of the game, that is, compared to
other options you have these days.
I don\'t know who exactly it would hurt if there was information available on
areas, and heck, even equipment?
If you want to figure out everything by yourself, you would still have that
option, but if you like to \"plan ahead\", you could do that.

I don\'t mean you should get information about every single piece of equipment
in the game,
or detailed maps of areas or ANY information on quests except perhaps which
area they\'re located in.
So a slightly \"tuned down\" version of thottbot for batmud, in my opinion,
could only help newbies such as me, get into the game so to speak
and not get frustrated to use hours on end finding out which areas are good to
go to
and which would be a complete suicide.

Just my two cents,
Ave

P.S. Sorry for bad formatting of the post, posting from the web so can\'t
preview the post beforehand.

Well, I've put something like this at http://batshoppe.servegame.org
To avoid spoiling the game too much, room and monster locations are at
a cost, as are maps. But monster and equipment info is free. The problem
is that no-one knows this page exists as there is no link to it on the
BatMUD website (it's been proposed there, but updates havent happened
in a year.)

However, the area info that Handless proposed should be included in
the wonderful map-pages we have, namely Jeskko's, Ggr's and Ooga's.
Just as long as it's helpful and vague enough

Umm, make maps available on www.bat.org for all areas, but only show them when
you are logged into the website, and only show the rooms that your character
has visited

And as a sidenote, if you look at the \"Game info\"- section on webpage, there
is nothing about the areas of batmud.