Kooneiform

It does seem like it’s getting harder to find muds that instantly impress me these days. It’s just a theory but I think most muds develop by accreting features onto the ‘outside’ of the mud, the edge that long-time players inhabit as they’ve exhausted the content on the ‘inside’. The content immediately apparent to the new player, like the look and feel of the mud, and major systems that new players interact with from the get go, don’t change that much. If no one is improving them, and they weren’t good to begin with, there’s a problem — without something or someone telling me to stick around, I’m just not likely to put time into a mud to see cool systems when most of the time the look, feel, and content is stale, not interesting, confusing, or plain ugly.

Many new muds don’t seem to offer anything new or exciting either, just retreading old ideas and not making it look very nice either.

A few muds buck the trend. In no particular order they are:

God Wars II: if I was a hardcore PvPer or achiever I would play this mud to death. It’s without question one of the most interesting and nice looking muds out there.

Legends of Karinth: lots of cool features, big world. The best ROMy ROM I’ve seen.

Aeonian Dreams: many interesting features to recommend this mud. Unfortunately the UI isn’t that great and that makes it hard to get into.

Blood Dusk: just found this mud. Highly recommend this for something different.