remembering #armageddonmud (hey it's me moontug)

Hah! This guy tugs the strings of my heart. I remember you! I miss those days a lot. I remember ALA, of course Clegane and his characters, I met him at Dcon '01 I think. I was such a noob back then but to me the way I remember it is a better game then it is today. Everything had a harsher feel to it and it was there wasn't this "work of art" mentality that people love to banter on about on the gdb. It was just a game we were all partaking in. The #armageddonmud channel was pretty cool and yeah nessalin popped in a lot to say hey or whatnot. Halaster started coming and I think the great thing about the IRC channel was at first they tried banning it (and me) and I remember distinctly being transferred in game to the moon Jihae (which is real blood of course) and being talked to by no less than 3 staff if I recall it was sanvean, halaster and one other (I think tenebrius?). Anyway they told me to shut the channel down and I refused of course cause I didn't care about anything anymore.

There's a lot that went on with that channel though and I eventually passed on the ownership to Eatten Back to Life because he genuinely cared for the channel and the game whereas I was just a burnt out disgruntled little kid that wanted to see the world burn. So I left at that time and never really went back except anonymously after San perm banned me.

Moontug I remember you submitting a log called "It's In My Pocket" which I think is one of the greatest logs on the site right now. That kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore nowadays. The RP situation to me around the game as a whole is just stagnate and dying as it is flooded with new players and all the old vets have left. The staff have such a "hands off" approach that they refuse to do anything in game lest they step on some other staffers toes or some such. Unfortunate but the games golden years are far behind us. I'm glad you're here posting.

Yeah lulz, I never really got into the swing of the gdb after it was upgraded from the all-on-one-page format. Forums in general have moved on and left me behind I think (and yet here I am:). I.e. with visited links colored purple it was super easy to tell if there were new posts at a glance. The new subforum layout made me have to click/back/click/back and look at dates (this is what I mean by disintegrated) and I ended up participating a lot less. I guess there must be an RSS option so it's probably just a stupidity thing on my part.

Delerak, that's interesting that they tried to shut the channel down (and that you said no and there was no consequence?) ... the thing about IRC though is they could see our IP addresses and in many cases (mine for example) could correlate the chatters to their characters. Probably a good thing from their perspective. They couldn't directly moderate the channel or private messages between players but I think they realized that it was one of the more benign forms of OOC communication going on...

I guess this forum is something else, because many of the participants are anonymized, but I don't think I'd accuse most participants of any ill will toward the game. Sharing of hidden game mechanics is a bannable offense, but I have to admit that discovering there was some depth to the game mechanics (imagined or real -- e.g., 'cooloff' times between skill gains) was one of my baby steps toward learning to do realistic RP. Like foot decals on the floor (the successful introduction of subguilds is proof that players respond well to roles that are supported by a coded backbone). For example, the distinction between vs. non-human and vs. human combat makes perfect sense and if you knew about it, you would feel more comfortable in making the Zalanthan equivalent to a lion tamer. I would hesitate to assume roles that didn't have some kind of coded support ("oh hey I'm a strongman... er I mean I just look strong but can't even wield a sword", or imagine if your ostensible lion tamer were accidentally killed by a kitten).

Thanks for the compliment re: "it's in my pocket". Fun times! I liked that scene too, it was a cool interaction between code and RP which I guess is what an RPI is all about. That character got slaughtered by soldiers later on while being arrested, but he obviously deserved it.

Also I think I'm far too ugly to be a model. I think it was just a nice picture. Computer nerd is working out though.

I wanted to ask here, but maybe there's another thread someone can post me to. What ever happened to Halaster? And Bhagharva too? Did they retire? Something I read made me think they were removed from staff for some reason...

Sorry to hear that about Clegane. I never heard that about him so you probably interacted with him more recently than I did. Part of me hopes he's still playing, noble or not (and that he is still his smug, condescending self).

You are probably right that IRC got to be cliquish and snobbish and that people were twofaced. But it's really interesting to me how a channel that started out as a minor rebellion against the game ended up as a meeting point for the game's future staff: Varak (?), Samoa, etc. They were considering me for staff at one point too (I don't remember if I applied for this or they just floated the idea by me, but I think it is the latter). I'm sure Mansa could have made staff too if he wanted.

Regarding those staff departures -- I guess I'll stay curious. Maybe they just stepped down, maybe they burnt out on Arm 2.0 ... if anyone knows I'd love to hear.

Far as I know Hal/Bhag were protected by the then rulers of the mud (sanvean, nessalin, tenebrius?). Things tend to change when over half the pbase at the time was outrated over all their antics once it all went public. Regardless of whether they were removed or removed themselves, those 2 names will probably never be seen on the game again.

Hmm. Around the time I left Halaster had a lot of positive mindshare. He could write well and seemed to have consistently good grammar. HRPT was synonymously highly recommended playing time and Halaster-RPT. So I would be surprised if he hadn't just quietly retired (or changed his name).

The staff controlled avatars is a funny thing as I think about it more. To my own surprise, I now think I would have been excited if Luir came back, for example, and got up to similar nonsense. Clearly Luir would have to be played by a staff member, but you could speculate about his intentions based on existing history. In this case, I'd feel comfortable that whatever was coming about would be a decisive extension of the Dragon lore. If Luir killed you, you'd probably have some guess as to why and it would be cool.

But some apparently spurious sequence of events in which some unlucky (and, let's be frank, less-liked) players are used as punching bags by a randomly suped-up staff-controlled sorc -- that's uncool. I'm sure said staff member could cite some grand design and hidden plot as a perfectly valid excuse, but I imagine they're called "Storytellers" for a reason.