Experiences with/Opinions on Harshlands MUD?

Short answer is, experiences may vary. It depends on where you play, what you like to play, and what your standards for RP is.

I would be hard pressed to say the RP is stella (I've seen CONSIDERABLY better), but 75% of the population I've encountered are what I'd consider 'moderately good or better'. A handful are great, but I do find I have become extremely lazy while playing, simply because sometimes it seems I'm the only one in a room writing emotes and saymotes, and occasionally, the only one reading them too since folks just don't react! There is also a very high-schoolish 'who's boinking who' under current, and there does appear to be a large amount of 'lets boink because it is fun', rather than my preferred 'it is a useful tool for progressing characters, displaying traits, and dear god they've already done that once this week, lets ftb and move onto the next topic please!'

That said, the community is buzzing (in certain parts of the world), and there is stuff happening. Staff are active (via emails, there was a discussion via their help channel earlier today regarding the fact that asking for NPC animations will never net you an animate, and suggesting off-screen via email replies), email back promptly to petitions, bug reports and so on.

The game does crash on a fairly frequent basis (I've yet to see the counter tick over a week), but staff are good about replacing lost kit, rezzing folks caught out, and it is usually for a minute or two at most.

They have recently made some huge changes to the combat code, and have an active forums with ideas for improvement, some of which are being implemented.

On the whole, I am pro HL.

That said, I'm in the process of writing descs for an Arm char because progression in HL is strictly coded. If you want to be a Sergeant, it doesn't matter if you smooch your superior, offer coin (and coin is very limited, especially at newbie levels!), or RP perfectly, you will still have to wait the requisite amount of weeks to get the points required for promotion. If you are mean to people that might hold you back from promotion, but there is very little you can do to hurry things along.

Crafting is dull, and in some of the craft sets there are not many crafts at all. Because there is not much money in circulation, PC sales are few unless you are selling armour or weaponry (woodcrafting is somewhat popular as that gives practice weapons).

The staff appear to be mostly fair, but there does also appear to be favouritism in some areas - most of this seems to be in relation to favourite religions or zones rather than specific players, but it obviously does affect specific players.

There also seems to be a fair amount of OOC drama, and I'm told there are cliques in certain parts of the gameworld. It depends where you are, who you play with, and so on.

If you have patience, and can wade through the occasional explosion of who-boinked-who, there are some gems to be had. You are not going to get epic RP from most people (most set a voice string and leave it at that), but there can be some good laughs and fun.

If you would like suggestions on where is good right now, and what religions are thriving, do send me a PM, and I'd be happy to offer advice. Bias advice, but advice I'm not altruistic, I want more capable RPers to give me a challenge so I don't get even lazier!

Wow, thanks to both of you guys. Eblade, that was a much-appreciated break-down for someone who's been eying it at a distance. It's been hard to get a real sense of what playing HL is like from the forums (To be fair, one shudders to imagine how only reading the GDB would look to an outsider!).

Where would either of you recommend to start play? I was thinking of making something very ordinary, and trying to get a feel for cultural norms, OOC expectations and conventions, and so on.

Oldtwink, do you happen to know the RL history of HL? I couldn't find it on the their forum after a cursory search.

Edit to add: Sorry, missed the part about a PM. Sending one off.

The reason the history isn't there is because the forums have moved locations a bunch of times. For now, they're on a Harn board on Lythia, since they were offered space.

As for playerbase, at this time,


From notifies, I've seen two people in my location, plus there is one in front of me.  It is extremely quiet tonight for some reason.  Normally at this time it is in the 25-30 realm.  Playerbase is small, but at least where I am, fiercely active.

As stated via PM (sorta), the game suggests starting in Tashal.  For me, that sounds like a teddy bears picnic with cliques, light sniping, and the occasional chase-the-thief if you're a guard.  It is very big city, crafter heavy.

I am bias, but Trobridge is doing well at the moment.  The town is over 50% Agrikan though, which is causing its own problems.  Followed way off in the distance by Haleans (three I see regularly, plus one extra who I haven't seen RP much, but it might be timezone related, hard to tell!), then everyone else trailing behind with one or two per faith.  It is a good time to be evil

Comeliness does affect some things, I believe it affects skills like barter, might well help with the psionic Beguile, and someone suggested it has a role to play in pregnancy (which I am dubious of considering my experience!).  It also comes into play via the compare command...



(obviously, snipping out char descriptions/names to hide the innocent ).  The COM stat comes into the second part of each of those, height and weight give the build of the person.

There are other unusual stats, such as hearing, smell/taste, touch, eyesight, and voice.  These affect things like cooking, lock picking, scan command, listen command, and singing ability.  Voice is also vital for clerics, so it is not just how pretty they sing, but also a measure of how alluring their words are, how accurately rituals are spoken, and so on, if that makes sense?

You do not have to be pretty, and for a few people COM is a dumpstat.  If you play Halean, I'd recommend keeping it high, but a Peonian or a Morgathian?  Pfft, drop it, nobody cares   Good roleplayers will react accordingly to how you look, but charisma is important (I'd also add that roleplay ability is too - I know that if someone walks in that emotes nicely, I find it hard not to drop everything to go play with them, regardless of how ugly/f-me they look!  Coming up with an IC excuse is the tricky bit, but so far it works out nicely!).

In short, COM has some affect on certain skills, and generally players should react to it, but if you're after the hawt behind doors action, you can get by with charisma, and if you don't want the behind doors action, AND have no interest in playing something that has skills that need a value for a charisma-type-measure, you can be as pretty or ugly as you desire

Depends on religion and race.

Haleans are very pro women's lib and rights.

Sarajinians/Ivinians take multiple wives, including war brides (taken by force during raids).  Women who do not take a husband and remain virgins can become Shieldmaidens - they will have to prove their worth to the menfolk though, and defend their honour.  If they want to take a husband or want to have sex, they cannot be a shieldmaiden anymore and revert back to 2nd class citizens.  ICly, Ivinian women get a lot of leeway from most characters though, since players tend to not like squashing the dreams of other players too completely

Peonians tend to favour mothering roles, but that isn't shameful.

Laranians probably fall on the male side with most knights being male. But their goddess is a female paladin and there are female pc knights.

Everyone else is indifferent or bases it on other traits like strength of arm, knowledge level or whatnot.

Class comes before gender, so slaves/freemen/citizens/patricians in Tharda, peasants/nobles in Kaldor, and Thralls & Jarin and whatever they call their warrior class in Orbaal (sorry, not part of my knowledge set!)

Thanks so much, Eblade. Between this thread and your PMs, you've done a great job of conveying pretty much everything I was wanting to know. Your time and effort are appreciated, and I'll be taking the "HL plunge" here shortly. It's really, really nice to be excited about playing in a shared fantasy universe again. I miss Arm, and the friends I made there over the years most keenly. Unfortunately the OOC environment has become toxic (or maybe it always was, but I never noticed until I was in a position to start seeing "behind the scenes"). I won't contribute to any game, volunteer or otherwise, where the hosts of said game call me "stupid" and "batshit crazy" and return for second helpings - life's too short! Here's hoping HL has a more mature approach.

gameworld and theme is cool as hell but the game itself is wack

the imm to player ratio is so small that ur constantly watched and arent even allowed to have solo fun w/o some nosy imm finding a way to question why u arent going out of ur way to find and rp with their tiny, interaction-starved pbase or otherwise manage wtf u do w/ ur own char

the hl ship sailed many years ago

Bite your tongue jcarter!