the-pride-of-taern
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Rise and Shiny: The Pride of Taern
I have to be honest. Well, you should hope I would have to be honest each week, but let's just say that I often need to cull the many thoughts I have about some of the games I find, simply for sake of space. I try to avoid using too many general terms or categories about MMO gaming because there are always exceptions to every rule. In this case, however, I have to be very general. There is a certain subsection of MMOs that seem to come from some foreign land; they have an odd name, possibly host broken-English text on their websites (loose instead of lose is one of the earmarks), and are hard to figure out. I'm possibly the most open-minded and schooled dude you could meet when it comes to MMOs. I'm proud of that, but when I see one of these odd ducks, I cringe. I know I'm in for a week of suffering through bugs, figuring out the very basics of the game, and trying to find an ounce of fun to report on. Also (and this is the bad part), they always seem to come from places that are blond and cold. Like Norway. Or Sweden. You know, the places really great, dark death metal comes from. It turns out this game is from Poland, but that's still very cool. So when I found The Pride of Taern, I thought I was in for another week of busted English, horrible gameplay, and not an ounce of fun. At this point, however, I've had a freaking blast.
Rise and Shiny: Threshold RPG
It's the third week in a row I have decided to spend with a MUD, or multi-user-dungeon. I've explained it before, but in case you are not familiar, a MUD is a text-based MMO. That's right: you play by typing commands and exploring environments, all in text form. I started this exploration with Gemstone IV, an amazing MUD that seems to be the gold standard for MUDs. I am still playing it and finding out how amazing it is. I moved on to BatMUD, a slightly more basic MUD that offered a great client but frustrated me. Honestly though, my time with BatMUD was a little unfair and I need to revisit the game. It really has some wonderful elements. Now that I have moved on to Threshold RPG, another ancient MUD from before the time of mostly graphical MMOs, I feel as though I have finally reached an understanding as to how MUDs work and what makes them incredible adventures still to this day. Threshold is more basic than all of them so far, but that's a good thing in many ways. There's also a lot that is lacking, and several tweaks that need to be made.
