Armageddon MUD crumples to the ground.

Considering how quick a bunch of staff quit. Probably. And that's another reason I think it'll shut down. Too many staff have left and what are they going to do recruit more leakers from the remaining playerbase that's full of cliques?

When HellMOO closed down (the first time), Gilmore took it private and invite only. Once the original wizards had gotten bored with the idea, and moved on entirely, it was re-opened to the public by the remaining immortals. That's a possibility here. Hell had the decency to release HellCore as well as a database, which lead to some forks: Hate, Inferno, that generation. Which kept some interest for the idea. I suppose Apocalypse is filling that niche now.

There could be other human players in the LLM-powered game. Personally, I would choose a fully private instance, but it's not hard to imagine a mixture of human and AI players in the world, with the AI PCs  "logging on" if they're required for plot reasons or if there isn't any human online to interact with.

In Arm's context, imagine there's a player hanging out alone at the Gaj. The AI storyteller could notice this, and instantiate a group of AI players to filter in one-by-one.  The tavern is lively, and some human players show up, so the AI players think up excuses and thin out, until it's just the human PCs and regular AI NPCs present.


A human player realizes that he needs to speak to Lord Fancypants about something, played by another human PC. He types "Contact fancypants". The AI storyteller notices that Lord Fancypants isn't online, and so instatiates Fancypants's AI aide and that AI player responds.

The Last Breath of Zalanthas

In sands where secrets lay unspun,
Where shadows thrived and darkness won,
A world built high on blood and lies
Now fades beneath corrupted skies.

From Allanak’s towers, fierce and grim,
Where power’s shadow clung to them,
To alleys slick with blood and sweat,
Where broken souls in hiding met.

Here murder walked in cloaks of night,
And betrayal hid from every sight.
But deeper still, in hidden rooms,
The whispers thickened, fed by gloom.

In Red Storm Village’s dust-strewn maze,
Amos watched through smoke and haze,
A keeper of secrets, lust, and lies,
With shadowed schemes and waiting eyes.

In secret spaces, not alone—
A darker game began to crawl,
As twisted deeds betrayed it all,
Beneath Zalanthas’ shadowed pall.

Where lust was whispered low and vile,
With sordid acts in murky style,
Players sought a hidden thrill,
Far from the public’s watching will.

And worse, the hunters cloaked in play,
Who stalked the unwary, led astray—
Predators masked in roles they wore,
Their shadows tainting Zalanthas’ core.

In this world of schemes and lies,
No demon's curse could close its eyes;
But a poison slow, from within it grew,
From those who twisted false and true.

The staff who’d crafted every dune,
Watched their dream collapse too soon,
For the world was claimed not by a fight,
But by betrayal in dead of night.

Now Zalanthas dies without a spark,
A realm left hollow, cold, and stark—
Not by blades or legends bold,
But by a sickness, base and old.

Just like it was in life, so is its death.

Would arm players want it any other way?

I'm the former staffer Urbais, aka Ammut/Kinther. Yeah, the guy who got banned from the game and made a post about it on the TMS forums a few years back due to the pixel tracking fiasco. I thought I'd put some time into the game and try to keep it on life support. That was in October 2023 I think. I staffed until mid 2024, or a few months after we opened again. My last planned animation was in the Oashi plantation this year, with a mundane and magickal aspect to it. If you know, you know. Over the years I had played off and on - I wanted to give back a bit to the community for the years I had been lucky enough to play the game.

During the shutdown leading up to Season One I put in 20 hour weeks re-writing NPC descriptions, fixing weird bugs, and collaborating on the 50 year time shift into the future. What had happened? Who were the new players on the world stage? What did we want the world plots to look like throughout the ~18 months the first season would run? It actually was really fun to be in this creative mode and help write a new chapter of the game.

After we opened, it soon became clear that the operational work of running the game is enormous. The request tool is both a blessing and a curse to this game in my opinion. Even removing several request types and adding a character limit didn't stop the constant requests coming in. People would submit requests as game questions to skirt the character report request type being removed. I tried my best to handle these requests without being a dick. Having dealt with some previous staffers and feeling like they were quick to close things or came off like an asshole, that was exactly what I didn't want. I'd write, read, and re-write my request replies so that I was supportive of our players when I could. I honestly don't like playing bad cop, so if any of you received a request that felt like I was being shitty - I'm sorry. That was never my intention. I made mistakes like anyone else. I'm human and not a machine.

I left the staff team due to IRL responsibilities overwhelming me and I simply couldn't keep up with the amount of time I had to dedicate to Armageddon. Some weeks I'd put in a minimum of 20 hours, sometimes more. Work began to pile up and I got put on a PIP. My partner commented that I was spending too much time away and I hadn't done anything romantic in months. My father needed to have me drive him to/from the dentist and my mother (who is in a nursing home) needed me to ride with her as an escort to the doctor more frequently. RL should always come first. As a staffer once told me, "it's a hobby, not a jobby."

I don't know what the state of the game is right now, because I've completely pulled away. I ran everything related to Armageddon staffing in a virtual machine which has been deleted. Whatever is happening with leaks from an internal staffer, I can only assume that they think by making things public and pulling back the veil to show what is going on that they are doing the community justice somehow. A good DM knows when to reveal things and when to keep them close to the chest. I have vented to others on Discord about my complaints noted in this post (obviously more generalized), but never shared confidential information.

Staffing this game is a mixed bag. There are amazing highs and incredible lows. Being a player on the outside, you really don't see the amount of work that goes into running this game. It takes 3-6 months to ramp up a staffer and the average tenure is 9-12 months. Burnout is real. Having been on the other side of the table, I see why the game struggles so much with staff retention. I also think it's incredibly unfair to pass the sins of the past staffers onto the current lot. Hold those that do terrible things to account, but a new staffer coming on board? Be reasonable and give them the benefit of the doubt.

I'm sure my post will be picked apart and the usual suspects here will shit on me like they do every other staffer. I honestly don't care anymore. I'm done with the game and MUDs in general these days. This will probably be my last post with the Arm community, so I'll end with -

To the staff - Shut the game down if you have to. You don't owe anyone anything and shouldn't feel obligated to keep it running just because it has been up for 30 some years. Sometimes it is better to let something you love go than hold on until it withers in your hands. You've had multiple people who joined staff just to fuck with the game over the years. Be ready to rm -rf / when you need to.

To the community - I wish you all the best in whatever game you decide to end up playing. Appreciate the good staffers of any game when you have them, because they are giving you hours of their personal time for free. That is incredibly rare these days.