The Era Circa The Announcement of Bride of Son of Armageddon

The announcement came at a really weird time, because nothing was really wrong with the game. It was like 2006 and Armageddon was doing very well. Then the announcement came out of absolutely nowhere and people were floored. Reactions varied from delight to apprehension, with some commenting that it was long overdue while others were skeptical not only of the idea itself but especially of the 6-month ETA.

A new subforum was opened with submissions for Reborn, and a number of blog posts were released detailing staff's plans. I thought their ideas were a pointless sacrifice of what really made Armageddon special. We were going to lose pretty much everything related to Dark Sun and would instead get original staff-envisioned stuff like a race of humanoid cats. Basically an IP purge where everything that professional authors and game designers had produced for the Dark Sun setting was replaced with some shit a small group of random amateur MUD custodians could come up with. I mean, fair enough, Sanvean actually was an author, but there was still no way that it wasn't going to make this a more generic and forgettable setting. There's a reason Dark Sun books and gaming accessories was something people paid money for.

Right after the announcement, the game suffered the worst slump I've ever seen it go through. For a few weeks, peak population was around 20-30. People just weren't interested in a game that was going to end "soon." The enthusiasm bubble was already starting to deflate, and as the blog posts started to slow down, people began to wonder if it was even realistic to remake Armageddon completely from the engine up in six months.

As people bemoaned the loss of opportunity to play the roles they'd always dreamt of, staff promised to be more liberal with special applications. Liberal may be too lenient a word, because what they actually did was approve virtually all spec apps from anyone at all. A 1-karma player who had been around for a year tops got a psionicist. People did come back, lured in by the chance to play their fantasy concept, but what followed was the legendary tidal wave of magick oversaturation.

For those who don't know, this was about a year and a half of totally uncontrolled madness. It became obvious that Reborn wasn't happening in 6 months, and while some complained about this, most seemed to take from it a renewed interest in sending Armageddon off with a grand hurrah. The "why bother, it's gone in a few months" sensation was gone and numbers were great for a while. However, such a ridiculous proportion of the playerbase was now a non-mundane guild or fringe race (they re-opened halflings and shit) that the game felt like a joke.

You'd see daily occurences of magick bullshit in cities. The non-mundane world became so pervasive that people lost all sense of wonder and fear. There would be numerous gemmed sitting in the bar at all times, so discriminating against them felt impossible. You would encounter wild mages in the desert practically every time you went out. This was a time when someone getting whisked from his barstool by magick winds was a fairly unremarkable sight, and the Guild contained no less than three psionicists, two vampires, several ghouls and a slew of mages at the same time.

Things became so weird and goofy that eventually the staff posted a stern reminder to follow the documentation when interacting with the magickal aspects of the game. In response, someone (ahem) retorted that if players weren't following the documentation, it may be prudent to look at the three-ring circus that the game had become and seek the answer there. People rallied to this idea, leading to notable events such as the Great Karma-Off of 2008. Or maybe it was 2009. Anyway, the playerbase sort of rebelled against the staff and demanded that they start to respect the setting and provide a game that matches the lore.

Things did slowly go back to normal, but then came the Nyr era.

I mean, from the stories I heard it was pretty dumb, but, people get sentimental about the old days, you know, when you could actually do shit. That said... I didn't play during those days, during those days I was probably getting righteously PKed on Hellmoo, or, hatemoo, or even Infernomoo, it was in the early days of infernomoo, where one of my board members I'd hired and promoted up, told me about Armageddon.

I was Shitbag, I'd never RPed before aside from an awkward period spanning a few months in highschool, but I was like, this is, the nethack of MUDs, and predictably went all fanboy swoon diving into it.

At first things were great, my account notes reflect that, I was a newb, and I made horrible snowflake mistakes, but I could read my account notes and chuckle and say, well, I probably shouldn't do THAT again. But I was taken in by the world and the sheer gravity of everything. RP really, is hard to take seriously until the word "Permadeath" comes up. Then you're like, oh shit, this is, SERIOUS, and you act accordingly.

My first mistake was apping a half-giant. Seriously, this is such a hard to play role that I wouldn't mind if it were entirely phased out, except, a number of automated NPC challenges are GEARED to the assumption of their inclusion. I had fun with my half-giant role, but enter the second mistake...

I pissed off Nyr, BIG TIME. I won't say his being pissed off was unwarranted, I was a newb, not just to Armageddon, but rp in general. It would have been nice to get a stern lecture, instead of getting utterly slammed into the bone-zone, but, people didn't, make exceptions. Past that point, any time I submitted a request, half the time Nyr answered it, but Nyr at least didn't answer his own staff complaints, like Nergal. Nergal isn't the devil, but evidence indicates he did some rather feindish things after Nyr was gone. I can't prove it, but damn did some shit he pull piss me off. At the same time, this was small potatoes compared to what Halastur supposedly did to Delerak, and openly bragged about, in person.

I quickly found myself demonized, I suffered from some serious delusions of persecution, except, roughly half weren't delusions at all. I was pursued here by several Arm players who thought it'd be funny to advize me to kill myself. I found this tasteless, particularly, since some of these retarded shitheads were hounding Kronibas, a veteran with a, problematic RL history, who is actually a brilliant writer and his RP is inspiring.

I did, not think this proper human behavior, but, it happens, if it had just been me, I would have assumed that's just because I'm a weird freak, except, it wasn't.

Well, I stand corrected. Also, yeah, that was a BAD time.

I remember that when Arm 2 was announced, and they made a big deal about how it would be rolling out in six months and all current plots would start winding down, I stopped playing. Years passed...I came back in ~2008ish, suitably bemused.

Tuluk was dead during a lot of that time.

Oh, except for the Jihaen learning sorcery from a severed head.. hmm.

Nobody was sticking to the docs at all and everyone wanted magick rangz.

Spider wasn't Bhag, it was uh... reiloth? I think. Or Synthesis. One of those.

I had more fun on both sides of the Thrall plots than I have ever had before or since with Arm. The conflict between Spire and Tower (names might be wrong on bases of 'sides') was far more palpable than it was between Tuluk and Allanak. While I was not into furries (catpeople), which was Shalooonsh thing, if I recall around then, there were other aspects of a 'new world' I dug. I love exploration and Arm hasn't had a new place for me to explore or experience for the last fifteen years. So while I get why a ton of people bowed out, I was really excited and sad when my hopes of new terrain and societies (not catpeople, kthnx) were dashed.