Avalon and MUD's

Multi User Domains flourished in the early days of the internet. All you needed was Telnet and a modem (even my 14.6k modem did the trick). A friend of mine was doing a computer science degree in Carlow and introduced me to his favourite which I think was called New Eden. At the time with him in Carlow and myself in Dublin it was a handy way to communicate. He and his class were big into them, mostly as something to do during class rather than listen to lecturers, but they were not much more than a means to an end for me, the game itself did not hold my interest. If a purely text based game is to survive against the visual candy of 'standard' games (even the kind of visuals from back then) it needs to offer a compelling narrative. Therein lies the problem. I confess I am a fan of the fantasy genre of literature, but it is very much a love / hate relationship. Most fantasy novels are published because they are fantasy, rather than because they are any good. Finding a genuinely good fantasy novel is a difficult task. Unfortunately, finding bad fantasy is incredibly easy and the MUD's were no exception. I should mention that my friend loves bad fantasy, perhaps thats why he played so much more than I did, and why I stopped playing long before he did.

Apparently not a lot has changed in the past 10 or 12 years. I managed about 40 minutes of Avalon before giving up. Its not that I am not willing to give different types of games a chance (I spent many happy hours playing text games on my C64 in the 80's). Its not that I dont like social games (after three years of playing World of Warcraft, the social part of the game is why I keep coming back). Its that they are just plain badly written. 40 minutes of running through fantasy cliché's and being patronised by Gandalf the Grey clones is enough for me thanks. The size of the game worlds may have changed, the usability of the game may have changed but the core problem that plagued these games in the mid-nineties is still there.

The butchery of any-mythology'll-do was still there. The 'wise' old men with beards stating the obvious instead of actually being wise were still theres. The stream of messages telling me how rich in history the land 'fill in name of fantasy land here' was still there.

Other details:
City of Birth: SpringDale
Academy / School: No idea? I dont recall that the academy had a name
Quests complete: Finding a poster, Visiting a temple.

=)