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This model works for games such as SecondLife as well, doen't it? In fact, once upon a time I played a game where you could buy credits to buy items to give you a small edge in combat. Especially played vs. player. This game has been around since the 90's and the company is still surviving so it must work. And all that with no graphics.

I play the MUD Achaea and have been doing so for about a year and a half now. During that time I've risen from a mere young adventurer to a Ministerial position in my city and a reasonably high rank in my Order.

It is so easy to see people who have never played an RPG:

• They talk l1k3 l33t haXX0rs
• They talk about things like keyboards and Internet

I don't know about other people "playing the game" but I certainly try to stay in character, at least in public. When I am "in character", the world is very real to me. The characters are very real, the people are very real and I actually look on my "alter ego" as being me.

RPGs do have a different frame of mind than first person, shoot'em up type games. I can see that a course introducing people about RPGs would be very useful whether they're D&D in "real life" or MUDs in "cyber space".

If you're interested in a text-based mmorpg, then Achaea is it. It's free too.

I don't even care if I get modded off topic for this. People have to play it. I've played enough Dragon Realms to uh... fill something really big... but Achaea is it man. Player run everything, great people, good login levels... etc... Go go...

One of the best: http://www.achaea.com/
I'm currently playing: http://www.imperian.com/
Main site with other MUDs: http://www.ironrealms.com/

... has been an anathema to them and remains so to just about every other MMORPG company in the industry.

Umm, I can, think of several that are quite happy to associate in-game goods/wealth with real world money. I'm too lazy to post all the links - google it up Mr Jacobs - you're missing some important market research. ;-)

While I still come around E2 some, I decided that if I was going to play a text-based game, I'd really play a text-based game, and found myself playing over on Achaea, where at least they admit it's a game.

And the level powers on Achaea are a lot more fun.

I have notice a few Java clients for MUDs out there, but other then that I havn't seen anything else. Of, what java based MMO do you speak?

Had you actually played this game, you would know why they value the engine at 10,000 bucks.

It's not that it's such a great engine at all, it's because of the business model they use to squeeze money out of players. They sell things called credits for real money. You can exchange these credits for the in-game stuff, such as new skills, houses, pets, special artifact items etc.

40 of those credits cost $20 and you can't really get much for 40 credits. Therefore, some people buy hundrends and some even thousands of these credits. I know of several people who spent over $1000 USD on this game, something they would never do if it was just your standard subscription model like MMORPGs use.

Fact is, IRE owners are getting hella rich with the game and so that's why the engine costs that much.

If you've played MUDs (or MMOGs) before, you've probably noticed they're mainly the same: Kill monsters in order to get 'phat lewt' that lets you kill bigger monsters that lets you get more loot that lets you kill yet bigger monsters. Seems a little repetitive and pointless doesn't it? We thought so too, so unlike other online RPGs you might be familiar with, you'll find that the traditional emphasis on bashing monsters is downplayed.

Mainly, Achaea is about the other players. Its gameplay is heavily oriented on player vs. player whether in combat, politics, or economics. Some barely participate in these larger struggles, while some rise to the top and exert great influence on world affairs. Yes, unlike most MUDs and MMOGs, we actually have world affairs. Things happen. The world changes. Development and improvement is constant.

Dawn is the definition of the term vaporware... I've been playing the "warm-up" game for about two years now, and Jeff (the admin) has recently quit talking about Dawn at all, when they were almost up to beta testing it 18 months ago.

I tend to agree, though, that some of the problem with MMOGs in general is that they place no stigma on death. You die, you respawn somewhere, you might lose some of your experience or equipment, but nothing too valuable that you can't get back relatively quickly. So people aren't afraid to piss other people off, knowing they'll get killed. This is especially acute in a RP-based MUD like Achaea, where you have almost-daily accounts of people acting like idiots because there's no such thing as perma-death.

BTW is RotW supposed to stand for Ruler of the World? Because I trademarked that back in 98.

...long political/philosophical discussions on the nature of good and evil (and this is IC and on-topic on the public message boards), working political system, emphasis on roleplay... the only downside is that most of the guilds have you jump through rather elaborate hoops just to be a member. Pkilling is only a problem if you piss people off. Here's the website... or just achaea.com 23.

Achaea, I dug it for a while. One of these days maybe I'll return, if I get bored with MMORPG for a bit.

I don't play MUD's as much as I used to, but when I played Achaea: Dreams of Divine Lands , I used ROAClient. It has a host of pretty decent features, like highlighting, triggers, and the like. I never used anything but the highlighting, but it seemed to me to be a good quality FREE Win32 MUD client.

I've always wondered why more MMOs haven't gone toward a "free subscription" model such as Achaea or Project Entropia, where the source of the company's income is buying various game items with real-life money. Maybe not enough profit involved... but you'd think you'd get more people involved that way.

Achaea and Avalon still make huge amounts of money. The problem with most MUDs isn't that they don't have a market to make money off of; it's that they don't have enough coders to produce a good product. Most MUDs these days run off of a stock codebase (SMAUG, diku, etc.) with a mostly-stock world. The MUDs with original content do well, but few of them have enough coders.

I, for one, still spend quite a bit of time (and some money, as I have a membership on) Cardea, and it's more entertaining than most other games I have at my disposal. The only reason the average MUD does poorly is that it is a low-quality product with little original content and no original gameplay.