When I was a Newbie...

Kyttin

There was none of this WALK TO Shit, you either learned your directions via nexus, or you where smarter than me for4 years and found out that Mudlet has a mapper.


@Bluef I started it for you.

Tharvis

I got zapped by Thoth for insinuating Vellis used his butterflies for questionable actions.

Achimrst

Shit, when I was a newbie. I did everything wrong, I got out of the starter zone ok after killing all the little gnomes. I was in Hashan and Poergh was being mean to everyone as a serpent at that time robbing anyone in sight and than killing them, I like to think I was her favorite. I TRIED to be an explorer and found a bunch of Valnurana shrines and died to mountain lions constantly trying to get to the Aalen because I thought it would be cool to do as a lvl 20 who mostly hunted rats after Lodi. After losing like several levels from things like bleeding and stuff, I finally found Tasur'ke where I hunted until about level 50 because I couldn't figure out how to fish. Poergh pwn'd Hashan sometime after that and I was like eff this crap and quit. Being a newbie was fun! Oh! Forgot to add that while ratting in Ashtan I punched a kid and got braziered to the trial room or whatever and enemied. And I have irrationally hated Ashtan for it ever since, that and Poergh of course.

Edit: Oh! I FORGOT THE BEST PART! I read the announce after I figured out how to use the News and read about RIVALRY and of course like a noob I rivaled Poergh and she immediately accepted and killed me several times for it it was so great.

Deladan

I got killed a lot... and there was BBT train. I remember Cain sniping me out several times while I was in Hashan and Cooper killing me damn near ever time I left. I was using Alclient at the time.

Amarillys

The targetting was messed up when I was newbie and it was super easy to hit the wrong things. I.E. I totally smacked a guard with smite and died. Three times. Because he wouldn't drop it and he was at the entrance to Cyrene. The targetting on HTML5 has been fixed since.

Evvi

As a young, female siren I got eyed by a denizen in a city. I punched him and proceeded to get killed by ten guards. Fun times.

Edit: Female siren, as opposed to male siren /facepalm

Suladan

I used telnet as there was no fancy HTML5 client and didn't know about Mudlet. Typing out all those curing commands (definitely no server side curing system back then) was crazy and watching people who must've had svo was awe-inspiring.

Herenicus

Lorielan

When I was a newbie, I tried to do Creation a favour and put a stop to that human nonsense before it got started. Just imagine where you'd all be now if I'd succeeded, no Bal'met for one.

Sena

I used the old Java client (way before Nexus, which was way before the Flash client, which was before the HTML5 client we have now; probably forgetting another client somewhere in there).

It could technically have triggers, but they were so slow that all I had was a set of name highlights, and I would turn triggers on, check qw (would take a couple seconds because of the triggers), then turn them back off, since the game was unplayably slow with them on. I had to switch to a different client (Mushclient at first) just to use a simple tarot inscribing script.

Kyttin said:

There was none of this WALK TO Shit, you either learned your directions via nexus, or you where smarter than me for4 years and found out that Mudlet has a mapper.

You were still spoiled, back in my day we didn't have fancy in-game maps, we had to reference external player-created maps like this and these.

zMUD and other clients had mapping (there was no Mudlet yet), but it was cumbersome, and most people had to make their own maps (sharing map files wasn't very common) by walking through every area and getting it all set up and arranged properly.

Kyttin

Sena said:

I used the old Java client (way before Nexus, which was way before the Flash client, which was before the HTML5 client we have now; probably forgetting another client somewhere in there).

It could technically have triggers, but they were so slow that all I had was a set of name highlights, and I would turn triggers on, check qw (would take a couple seconds because of the triggers), then turn them back off, since the game was unplayably slow with them on. I had to switch to a different client (Mushclient at first) just to use a simple tarot inscribing script.

Kyttin said:

There was none of this WALK TO Shit, you either learned your directions via nexus, or you where smarter than me for4 years and found out that Mudlet has a mapper.

You were still spoiled, back in my day we didn't have fancy in-game maps, we had to reference external player-created maps like this and these.

I didn't have a map either! 4 years I played the game with no MAP command, or anytihng like that. I literally have to MEMORIZE my path from Ashtan-Hashan, which to this day, I still know like the back of my hand. THANK GODS lol

Kresslack

Simpler times...

http://www.achaea.com/tag/telnet

Seth

When I was a newbie, there were these things called Guilds!
Oh, and @Jhui‌ was a forestal...how times have changed.

Atalkez

I joined Mark at level 50 thinking I was going to dominate people.

@Tanris @Sohl and @Jarrel ate me for lunch every other hour. We had dates on the Archway like they knew I was an impressionable young Ashtani-to-be.

My kdr thanks them for making it ugly as Flair

Bluef

When I was a newbie... There were Guilds.

When I was a newbie... Roleplay was king. PvP was somewhat secondary in the day to day of things and almost always connected to the aforementioned RP. 

When I was a newbie... Flair was called Fluffy by everyone close to him.

When I was a newbie... Shamans could still obliterate, but they also had to PREPARE BLIGHT WITH <affliction> five separate times before every single, full combo. 

When I was a newbie... There were still Outcasts in the realm.

When I was a newbie... I never had mindseye/deafness up and so I didn't miss out any of the cool RP shouting that went on. 

When I was a newbie... People were always running to a ram's horn to shout at each other.

When I was a newbie... They were called orphans, not urchins.

When I was a newbie... You could still gamble lessons.

When I was a newbie... The only ship-type vessels you could hop aboard were ferries.

When I was a newbie.... Makali had just been 'born' IC.

When I was a newbie... Arcadia, Mysia and Rheodad were the outskirts of civilization.

Klendathu

Ring binders with printed maps. Fun times. I say fun, I mean shit.

Kresslack

When you could use falcons to find people at sea, and hunt them down based on the chop patterns around them, or steal their ammo and equipment off the deck right under their nose. Remember being all the way over by Tapoa and leading Zulah and company to Delphinus up near Ilyrean to board him. He was so thrilled he tried to enemy me to Eleusis right after they held him up by his ankles and shook free a good amount of herbs and whatever else would fall out.

Ruth

I printed my maps too, and used it to travel around the world.

I printed my guild requirements and learned HELP CURES and HELP HEALINGLIST by hard. (Thx, Paladins, for all your numerous defense curing tests.)

I wrote down the quests I learned into a book. 

I tried to code a system on Nexus when I was 12. It was semi-successful.

I thought it was cool that my IG family had an OOC family website.

I multiplayed really hard. One of my characters got sent to TIME.  

I got so into Achaea that I was writing Achaea-based stories for my English homework in school (10 to 12 years old). Those were usually one-word themed compositions. I scored pretty well too. 

I thought PK was really fun in the arena... Then I got into PK out of the arena. That gave me the first combat jitters.

I manually counted how much my rats would be worth and always aimed for the black rats.

I wandered into Maim's mansion when I finished my novice intro (the Azdun dungeon one) and thought the goldfish in the bowl was very cool. I then proceeded to kick Maim.

Kandra

There were no dragons, or mounts.
Bound credits were called neocredits, and could only be converted to lessons.
Logosian Gauntlets were 4000 credits.
Dying hurt a lot more. A. Lot. More.
There was no xp bonus from less-hunted denizens or out-of-the-way areas, but...
Voting for Achaea got you a 10% xp bonus every day.
Landmarks were things you walked away from. Quickly. Very bloody quickly.

Nexes

Snub didn't exist, Rams horns didn't exist, you lost class if you were booted from your guild, didn't get your third class skill until a full member, alignment was a thing, dying really sucked, sylvans didn't exist, fishing didn't exist (I think), bloodroot was super expensive.

Kresslack

Ruth said:

I thought PK was really fun in the arena... Then I got into PK out of the arena. That gave me the first combat jitters.

Ah, the days of entering into a challenge outside of the arena and trying to manually enter combat commands while your heart beat at like 300+ bpm.

Ruth

Speaking of bloodroot, I think my favourite shop when I was a newbie was still that one along Fish Street in Shallam with a parrot at the shop front.

And I thought entering the Paladins Guildhall was the coolest thing ever: through the pool of water!

I remember when taking turns to watch the candles in Handel's choir room thing was an RP duty that you have to take up as a Paladin/Priest. If you needed to take off, you had to find a replacement before you did.

Kresslack

Occultists were in Mhaldor, and the Congregation even had custom decks which featured a shifting chimera and balzaadens on them. Also, when decks were non-decay and trading/selling rare decks was really popular.

Krypton

The Chrysalis Basilica was a crater.

Nim

I quit the first day because they wanted me to wait like six months just to go up one rank, and that was just the first rank. It was even longer after that.

I also didn't know that months were actually days.

Sena

There were no targeted emotes/tmotes, so when roleplaying with more than one other person you had to either use third-person, or use second-person and hope the other people know who your pronouns are referring to. Some people had very strong opinions about which you should use with them.

Vials only held 60 sips/applications (50 if the refiller wasn't trans), instead of 200. You couldn't pour vials into other vials either.

For a couple years, you could change your screenwidth but screenwidth 0 wasn't an option. If you wrote scripts for other people or wanted to share a script with a friend, you often had to modify every trigger pattern to account for the lines breaking in different places.

There were no beds or ships, and most mudsex happened in semi-public areas (the wilderness or Bopalopia were among the most private options a lot of the time, and the Crystal Leaf Inn was a wretched hive of scum and villainy), making it hard to avoid stumbling across it at some point.

There weren't monthly promotions, there were only credit sales 2-3 times a year (always one around Christmas), so a lot of people had to wait months for the optimal time to buy credits.

Roleplay standards were a lot more lax. You could get a pink, sunglasses-wearing gorilla approved as a pet, emoting on CT and other public channels was normal, blatantly OOC mottoes and titles were a daily sight.

Instead of the current classlead system, each class had a single person (the classlead), or no person as was often the case for some classes, in charge of all proposals for their class. It was very haphazard and unpredictable, with some classes taking years to get anything done (Sylvan classleads were suspected to be just an urban legend). The classleads weren't always entirely competent when it came to combat balance either.

North of Thera (it wasn't New Thera yet) was a popular (though somewhat dangerous because of the frequent fights) place to hang out.

Public news was entertaining.

Ashtan had priests and paladins (not many, but there were a few).

When I started playing, rifts had just been implemented. Before that, people used pocketbelts to hold herbs and such, and some people continued to juggle several pocketbelts to get around the rift capacity limits.

You could only convert 30 credits to lessons per RL day. That's nearly a month for tri-trans, even if you buy hundreds of credits immediately.

We didn't have a fancy paperless NDS system, crafters had to carry around piles of designs and schematics to craft from.


And we liked it, it built character.

Kyttin

Sena said:

There were no targeted emotes/tmotes, so when roleplaying with more than one other person you had to either use third-person, or use second-person and hope the other people know who your pronouns are referring to. Some people had very strong opinions about which you should use with them.

Vials only held 60 sips/applications (50 if the refiller wasn't trans), instead of 200. You couldn't pour vials into other vials either.

For a couple years, you could change your screenwidth but screenwidth 0 wasn't an option. If you wrote scripts for other people or wanted to share a script with a friend, you often had to modify every trigger pattern to account for the lines breaking in different places.

There were no beds or ships, and most mudsex happened in semi-public areas (the wilderness or Bopalopia were among the most private options a lot of the time, and the Crystal Leaf Inn was a wretched hive of scum and villainy), making it hard to avoid stumbling across it at some point.

There weren't monthly promotions, there were only credit sales 2-3 times a year (always one around Christmas), so a lot of people had to wait months for the optimal time to buy credits.

Roleplay standards were a lot more lax. You could get a pink, sunglasses-wearing gorilla approved as a pet, emoting on CT and other public channels was normal, blatantly OOC mottoes and titles were a daily sight.

Instead of the current classlead system, each class had a single person (the classlead), or no person as was often the case for some classes, in charge of all proposals for their class. It was very haphazard and unpredictable, with some classes taking years to get anything done (Sylvan classleads were suspected to be just an urban legend). The classleads weren't always entirely competent when it came to combat balance either.

North of Thera (it wasn't New Thera yet) was a popular (though somewhat dangerous because of the frequent fights) place to hang out.

Public news was entertaining.

Ashtan had priests and paladins (not many, but there were a few).

When I started playing, rifts had just been implemented. Before that, people used pocketbelts to hold herbs and such, and some people continued to juggle several pocketbelts to get around the rift capacity limits.

You could only convert 30 credits to lessons per RL day. That's nearly a month for tri-trans, even if you buy hundreds of credits immediately.

We didn't have a fancy paperless NDS system, crafters had to carry around piles of designs and schematics to craft from.


And we liked it, it built character.

Don't forget the going up hill, in the snow, twice a day.

Kei

Oh very well.

When I was a newbie...

... dying was an instant 10% of your level xp loss, and praying another 40%.
... the maximum level was 75.
... anyone could shout, from anywhere, at anytime, with no cost at all.
... if you were in the top 10 xp rankings you got a special shouting voice.
... there were no other rankings but xp.
... "What's a Hashan?" was never asked by anyone, not even as a joke.
... Hashan didn't exist as a player city yet.
... Guilded Occultists still had Necromancy.
... we had Death's Heart.
... and @Aurora had just learned how not to crash into giant black holes named Abbadon.

Aurora

You know what they say about females and driving...

Kresslack

Krypton

- Druids (and Sentinels) could kill everybody in their Grove using Grove Annihilate.

- You could do this:

"Bitchnuts!" you profane.

- Shamans could pour tequila down your puppet's throat and intoxicate you to death.