Why did you start playing? Why did you stay?

Keres

The title pretty much says it all. How did you come to start playing MUDs? Achaea specifically?

What about this MUD has kept you playing it?

Dunn

Friend of my little brother introduced me when I was 11 (Yes.). Many hiatuses later, I was bored between classes as a freshman in college and made Dunn. Tanris was my reason for staying because playing alongside that dude cannot be matched.

Achimrst

Hmm, I started playing a long time ago...2004 or 2005 maybe? Might have been 2006....I just remember being confused on what was going on the text thing I got but I had no idea what RP was and it was great. Of course getting myself financially established took precedence!

I learned a ton about RP over the years away and with the death of COV I am back because WoW is too easy, EVE s too griefy and I want to have fun that is creative and interesting. Not fight some all mightily powerful bad guy who wants to destroy the world all the time! Srsly! Leave the world be for a minute!

To me I stay because this game is similar in idea to EVE in that you can do almost whatever you feel like doing with consequences for your actions! Fun consequences and a true form of history you can record and interact with! Yay Achaea!

Sylvance

Accursed Lands gave me my first taste of MUDness, and from then I was hooked. Cousin told me to roll a toon on Achaea and from the very first log-in I was got. Never looked back.

Alcinae

I remember being somewhat bored of traditional graphical MMOs and games whatnot, so I tried a Wheel of Time MUD. I quit that, tried Achaea (I was around 14 at the time?) as a Shallamese Sylvan, suicided because of school and being busy. For the next few years I was on and off. I came back right around Hurricane Sandy, and I mainly stayed because

A. I'm a dumb ass.
B. The Spirit Walkers were pretty fun, and I just liked talking to others, making friends.
C. After I made HR3, was blood lined, and actually got involved in the city and shit, I knew I couldn't leave.

Jamethiel

A friend introduced me to MUDs.

I've stayed over the years because of my Order and my Family in game.

Mishgul

I was drunk and I don't know.

Aaric

I've played Discworld Mud for years, probably since around 2001. I was drawn there by some people I knew online at the time, and even though I didn't know too many people after those people wandered off, I found myself still playing due to the creativity of the (ridiculously massive) game world, the quests, and all of the wacky stuff to do.  What's not to like about being a wizard who can summon large quantities of food and alcohol using only your mind? (And that's only one of the 6 main guilds, most of which have several different specializations). It was a lot of fun, and still can be at times, though the player base is a lot smaller and more clique-ish today than it used to be, and is pretty laggy compared to Achaea or most other MUDs I've tried.

I first tried Achaea around 2007. However, I couldn't adapt to the differences between the LPMUDs I was familiar with and Achaea's rather unique system, so I ended up abandoning my character early on. I think at some point over the next few years I tried again, with the same result. Finally, watching someone play during the end of the Bal'met event and being intrigued by the story, I decided to try again - and I'm still here 5 months later, which probably sets a personal record for uninterrupted engagement in a single game. Came for the story, stayed for the RP and the friendships.

Boosteya

I was a regular at the then-still-active Kill-Everyone-Project, which I'd originally visited with friends from a community that was 'merged' into a bigger community site that bought it out (and did NOT give adequate privs to to the bought community's mods, etc..

Someone about whom I still care, but am no longer in contact with, the player of the now long-dormant Luca, guided me through good old Loom Island, and from there, it's all in a comment I made in a different thread.

Boosteya

Mishgul said:

I was drunk and I don't know.

I love your sense of humour.

Averi

This was my first video game ever. >.<

Some friends of mine were talking to me and not responding to my chats quickly, so I asked why and they were like achaea. Then I was like I am going to play too and they were like O.O

Had a 4 year hiatus but then came back again cause of stress and cause @Fanniya is awesome.  XD 

Sultani

I got hooked on some BBS RPG games after logging in to play Doom with high school friends. (Yep, getting old) I found the telnet muds a bit more immersive and played several over the years including Achaea around 2000. I came away impressed if not overwhelmed by some of the Druid guild reqs and didn't stay the first time around. Played some other muds as well as Everquest before giving Achaea another try a couple years ago. The seamlessness of the world, the history, the unique classes and skill sets..it all makes Achaea unmatched compared to other games in my opinion. It's exciting, dramatic and intimidating all at the same time..even following some of the events you don't directly participate in makes the game read like a good story.

Eld

Sultani said:

I got hooked on some BBS RPG games after logging in to play Doom with high school friends. (Yep, getting old) I found the telnet muds a bit more immersive and played several over the years including Achaea around 2000. ...

I don't think LORD really counts as an RPG....

Sultani

Eld said:

Sultani said:

I got hooked on some BBS RPG games after logging in to play Doom with high school friends. (Yep, getting old) I found the telnet muds a bit more immersive and played several over the years including Achaea around 2000. ...

I don't think LORD really counts as an RPG....

More specifically Swords of Chaos, Majormud and a couple others. Love LORD, though.

Shibumi

A friend of mine told me about MUDs three years ago. He used to play Lumen et Umbra, a popular Italian MUD. I am from the '70 and I loved old school RPGs. So I was like "How in the world I am not aware of MUDs?". I googled MUDs, found Mudconnector, and picked Achaea as it looked kind of popular (I mean, with people in it). It was love at first sight. Being able to have limitless RP opportunities, having to learn how to code (I never really finished C64 exercises on sprites), exercising English Language, finding friends, not feeling stupid for playing VG like when you are using an Xbox padr at the age of 40 (while having an housemaid cleaning your house), all of these factors keep me alive in Achaea. I tried Aardwolf but I abandoned it immediately because of the lack of RP. I am also starting to love the forum community as well, and the website is very neat and full of content. I am happy to support the business with my membership. Sapience is huge and probably I will never have the RL time to exploit everything the game has to offer, but I hope that one of my daughters will take over some day. I might put it in a will.

Linian

I played off and on for about 5 RL years over maybe seven characters. None of them stuck for more than a couple of weeks. I just wound up grinding endlessly, amazed at the setting and the player-run-everything, but got bored eventually and left. Every now and then, I'd remember Achaea with some manner of reverence and come running back to try again. This time I made Linian without much consideration of the long term, and started forming him as a scholar.

Then that magic thing happened that I think keeps most people around. The rest of the world started interacting with me. I ran into a Jester, and through that Jester I met a few dozen other people, and while most of those people probably won't even remember me, just interacting with others and exploring how wonderful being IC all the time can be, is part of what keeps me around.

The other part is I'm lore-crazy about games, and Achaea has a lot of it to explore. And Linian's dream is to archive it all in one central location so novices like me don't have a hell of a time trying to track down past events. And preferrably, perspectives from every faction on said events. Sounds crazy? Going to take a while? Good. It'll keep me around.

Hayte

I started playing cause I was trying to nail a chick who played. I stayed for the same reason.

Sarapis

Linian said:

I played off and on for about 5 RL years over maybe seven characters. None of them stuck for more than a couple of weeks. I just wound up grinding endlessly, amazed at the setting and the player-run-everything, but got bored eventually and left. Every now and then, I'd remember Achaea with some manner of reverence and come running back to try again. This time I made Linian without much consideration of the long term, and started forming him as a scholar.

Then that magic thing happened that I think keeps most people around. The rest of the world started interacting with me. I ran into a Jester, and through that Jester I met a few dozen other people, and while most of those people probably won't even remember me, just interacting with others and exploring how wonderful being IC all the time can be, is part of what keeps me around.

The other part is I'm lore-crazy about games, and Achaea has a lot of it to explore. And Linian's dream is to archive it all in one central location so novices like me don't have a hell of a time trying to track down past events. And preferrably, perspectives from every faction on said events. Sounds crazy? Going to take a while? Good. It'll keep me around.

@Linian Got a project you can start on in terms of documenting lore if you want. Msg me if interested.

Dontarion

I started playing because of TMC.  I was looking for a new MUD to play and checked out the top ones.  It's why I do things like msg Tecton It would make it that much easier to vote if you would include the URL in the world echo message.  Then viola! For atleast once it had a URL in the line but now it doesn't.  It really should.

I stay in Achaea (versus the other games) simply because of the amount of players.  Players make this game what it is and without them it would be boring to me.  Immortal events and whatnot are great, don't get me wrong, but they don't happen that often.

Nim

MUDS in general: When I was eleven or so, I really liked DBZ. I just ate up anything DBZ-related - fan fiction, fan art, and (of course) fan games. That included MUDs.

Why I started Achaea: When I was thirteen or so, a friend of me explained that there was this crazy PK-based game that included a quest where you sacrificed orphans for EXP. (Fun fact: when they told me I had to wait X months to advance in my guild, I took that as anyone who knows little-to-nothing about Achaea would take it, and promptly quit until a while later!)

Why I restarted Achaea: I'm addicted to roleplaying, and I was not getting my mandatory RP dosage.

Why I keep playing Achaea: wait, I still do!? oh... right, um... basically, whenever I log in, even if no one I know is online, there's still 50~200 other players I can go interact with. That's basically it - without you guys, I'd probably stop playing. (this does include gods, but I don't think I've ever interacted with a god or goddess that wasn't my character's patron in some way or another)

Berenene

I started playing around 2001. Back then I was in year 11 at high school, the second last year before either going into the work force or to university/TAFE/further education.  Towards the end of the year, much pressure is heaped on students in year 11 and 12 for their final exams.  So I was looking around for something that I could play that I could immerse myself in and break away from the stress of exams, become someone else who didn't have that kind of thing to worry about.  So I did a google search for online MUDs but the first one I tried was a LoTR MUD, I'm not exactly sure which one, but the learning curve was huge and the world felt very cold.

I went back to the search page and found Achaea.  I loved it straight away and I think the thing I liked the most and probably still do was that the entire world was something different and new. In the LoTR mud, all the story and lore and world etc is already there and really can't change from the source material, not that that is a bad thing, but wasn't what I was looking for at the time, where as here, whole towns can be destroyed and cease to exist, new races can be discovered, new continents can be explored, but also that the vast majority of places and interactions here are player-run and non-scripted.  It was one of the things that blew my mind that pretty much all of the organisations day-to-day operations are maintained by the players, it made me feel that the players really can have a lasting impact on the world around them.  The player base, for the most part, is more mature then other games I've played and the admins listen to, and take part in, the world as well, and it shows in the quality of the world we get to take part in.  They also don't feel like just plain old administrators of the rules of the game, sitting there just to handle complaints/questions/etc, they take part in the world as well, interact with the people here on a level consistent within the rules of the game world rather then just hovering outside it with the special buttons that will fix the current problem a player is having.

It's all of this that also not only keeps me coming back, but has also let me form friendships that span the globe, has gotten me to attend meets across the world and meet some of the best people I've ever known. Plus it's helped speed up my reading and typing ability so that's a plus.

Kenway

@Perdynmos was always completely absorbed in the game to the point hanging out with him was just me sitting there saying 'hey let's do <insert anything ever>' and him going 'mhmm...' and continuing to type furiously. In the brief moments he was separated from his laptop, he talked about it incessantly and eventually convinced me to try.

First character: Did not understand anything. I think I may have groped Romeo. Suicided.

Second character(about two months later): Messed around for a while. Got bored. Suicided.

Third character(about a year later): Got to level 62. Thought that was impressive. Thought I could fight. Was a bard. Couldn't fight.

Fourth character(another year): Got to 62 in about a quarter of the time it took on the last one. Loved the character. Was in my first house, Mojushai. Got bored/busy/made Kenway and didn't want to go back to a naked/broke/weaker/not-Runie.

Kenway. Yet another year later. Couldn't decide where to go or what faction to serve with(still can't). Started the day after the Bal'met stuff started. There are not enough adjectives to describe how awesome that made things.

Now I mostly log in to code things and fish for RP. Want to join an Order or change cities or something big exciting character-wise.

Vadimuses

A friend introduced me.

Why I stay? Apparently I'm making a lot of peoples lives better and that's a cool thing to be doing.

Azor

It was 2001, I was twelve years old, and we'd just gotten dial-up at our rural house. I was looking for a game, ANY game, that I could play using the creaky connection. Eventually I found The Mud Connector website. I tried some rather freeform RP MUDs, then Avalon (whose subscription-based monetization was a no-go for credit-cardless me), then finally Achaea. It was just so much more polished than the other MUDs I tried, and that's still true as far as I know. 

Whenever I happen to hear a dial-up connection tone sequence, I still get this ludic reward-anticipation response, it's like Pavlov's dog.

Omito

I started playing MUDs nearly 15 years ago and in that time have seen fairly large player bases dwindle to tumbleweeds on wide open ROM plains. Fed up with games with dinky player bases I stumbled into Achaea in 2011. I had to vanish due to really bad luck with computers and theft (I had a brand new macbook stolen within a week of getting it!) I think I stay because I've paid for like three months of elite and I don't want to waste my money! Oh and the game is a lot of fun too.

Achilles

I sold my baseball/basketball card collection in 1997 and bought my first PC (a Packard bell with a whopping 133hz pentium one processing chip) and heard about MUDs from my friends at lunch. After suffering a separated shoulder during football practice I decided to play MUDs while I was out. After checking out some stock muds like Arctic I stumbled upon a mud called Cardea (which used vortex, the game engine Achaea licensed to them). Got invited by Sarapis personally to come play Achaea at some point.

Played for a couple of years then quit cold turkey, before I randomly opened a ire email about 2 years ago and got sucked back in. Noob mistake, forgot to apply mass before reading.

Kresslack

Got tired of playing Pay-to-Play games like Avalon, which has a generally much smaller playerbase as well. Did a search for new MUD's and found Achaea. Haven't regreted it since.

Working full time and going to school full time didn't leave much funds left for a game like Avalon, even though I did enjoy it. 

Ruth

I was finding for a text game to play that wasn't so simplified or confusing to play. I stumbled upon Achaea, and found myself having fun. I like the fact that the requirements gave me a reason to play the game and strive towards something.

I even printed out the Achaean map thingy for finding my way around the game and wrote out my requirements on an IRL notebook so I have something to refer to when I take my tests.

After a while, I got seduced by Aetolia because I was reading Negi Magi comics and I wanted to play a vampire named Evangeline. I subsequently found an awesome RPer there and got stuck on the MUD for a while before I was eventually sucked back into Achaea because Seafaring appealed to me.

Why I stay? I made plenty of friends from Achaea and it's hard to stay away when you want to spend some time interacting with the online people you start to care about. Also, seafaring continues to appeal to me, made continuously exciting by Neraeos and rivals on the seas, both past and present, Kresslack, Kinilan, Ellodin.

Hyraeth

I am sure I told this story before but what the hey. I tried MUDs out back in 98 because a couple of good friends were in it but it was the era of telnet and I was so MUD-stoopid I kind of gave up. It's kinda hard to do stuff when you can't see what you type! So. Flash forward to December 2003. I had just submitted my MA dissertation, and had finished reading Tad Williams's Otherland, which had me hankering for a game world with the kind of depth described in the books. Also, because I'd been writing hypertext fiction since the 90s, naturally my inclination was more for text rather than graphics. So I found MudConnector, randomly clicked on a MUD (Achaea). Found out they had a client. Tried out MUD outside of telnet for the first time. Was hooked. So hooked. I didn't really do much else than be in Achaea that first week. Which freaked me out so I suicided that character. Tried to go cold turkey. Failed. Would up creating Hyraeth.

I still have fantasies that some day I get to supervise a MUD-related project. But none of my performance kids seem to be interested in doing a MUD-related project.  I did sic videogames on them last semester, though.

Halos

Okay here is my how-i-started-playing story.

Early 2002.

So I had just gotten out of Navy basic training and was away from home for the first time ever. Being new at 'A' school meant I was restricted to the barracks except for classes, working out, and drill practice. I basically had [little] to do for the first three months. There was the gym and there was the computer lab available.

This dude from the room next door was in the computer lab huddled in a corner by himself every evening. He always seemed transfixed by whatever was on the screen. Every now and then he would get super excited and type really fast. The first thought which popped into my 18-year old brain was is he sex-chatting/watching porn (obviously, Tim, why else would anyone be so excited in front of a computer screen in the lab at 10 pm)

But no, I peeked over his shoulder and he was doing something completely different. He had an online program open with rapidly scrolling text, his fingers whirring over the keys. Of course, my next thought was he's hacking the network safeguards so he can watch porn

I must have looked rather desperate because he laughed after I straight up asked him what he was doing. He explained--with a completely straight face--that he was fighting on his badass character in an online roleplaying game in a new text city which had just been created and he was totally going to become leader of it soon. 

Naturally, this was stupidest thing I had heard ever but more importantly this was the internet and where was the porn

He urged me to try the game instead. He showed me how to login and create a character, patiently walking me through the Loom trials experience and showing me this cool new city he had joined (named Mhaldor of all things).

Thinking back now I probably could have started lifting weights instead. So much free time. But MUDs really were just that interesting and were a great cure for the loneliness I was feeling at the time. I had just made a new friend and I was fascinated. 

It was pure imagination. It was escape. It was pretending to be a fantasy character while playing and chatting with people on the other side of the world who were also pretending to be fantasy characters but it was a connection. Like a live action story that never, ever ended. My novice interview was nerve-wracking but fun. I made friends IG. Later, game politics caught me up. The Church is doing this. Ashtan is doing that. Landmarking next Wednesday (which meant being logged on for hours collecting that stupid light essence for the valley or running buckets at the slaughterhouse). Codex of Light? DRAMA. OUTRAAAAGE.

So, yeah. Little did I realize that:  Restricted to base + online game + oodles of free time = addict-level tendencies

I kept playing Achaea even after I was allowed to leave base by myself. I got promoted. GOBS OF DISPOSABLE INCOME => artifacts (I'm still horrible at combat). I bought my own computer. And I kept playing. I played even after I stopped talking to my friend, who switched to Imperian, then Lusternia, then got kicked out of the service and stopped playing altogether. I kept playing after I got to my first duty station. I played between deployments. Coworkers got married and had children. I got promoted a few more times.  I changed duty stations. Came out. I met my first boyfriend (who was in the army at the time) and he asked me once what was so fun about playing on the computer for hours and why the hell didn't I want to go to the bar with him like a normal gay man on a perfectly good Friday evening after work.

I realized I had become that guy huddled in the corner typing madly while watching text flash by at breakneck speed. Shamelessly indulging in an activity which was completely inscrutable to outsiders. I encouraged him to join, but he balked and decided to go dancing instead. He's gone now. Non-Achaeans. <_<

Eventually I trained other people in my job, separated from the military, then went home and started school. I take breaks sometimes but something always pulls me back. Achaea is still here. It's kind of weird how that worked out.

tl;dr Achaea: Better than porn crack everything.

Mammon

I started playing because I had a few off-school bored days when I was twelve and I hated runescape. I found Achaea on a website that I cannot remember (It had a blue background) and Achaea was near the top (Great choice, Sarapis), so I looked at it and thought it sounded quite interesting. I made a character and get immersed very quickly with the unlimited capacity for customising your character through politics, religion, exploring, hunting, roleplay and just everything. Quit for about a year and a half after being weirded out by a creepy mudsexer.

Stayed for combat! No other game I know of comes close. The other IRE's could rival, but I'm too familiar with Achaea to try and adapt there, and the even smaller playerbases are daunting.