Achaea Switches To Anarchaea After HD Crash

Daki writes "Achaea, the flagship text-based MUD of Iron Realms Entertainment, suffered 'a massive hardware failure', and all of the current player and world data was damaged early last Friday morning PST. After sending the damaged harddrive to a data recovery firm in Toronto, it seems as if the world of Achaea will once again be up and running by Tuesday morning at the earliest. In the interim, they decided to roll back to a week-old copy, but the info gained on this backup version will be wiped when the recovered data is loaded. This has caused the birth of a world dubbed 'Anarchaea', where rules have no meaning, the gods fry the players at request, and players are killed by homicidal butterflies and socks. During Anarchaea, the text-based MUD even reclaimed the number one spot on Top Muds, which is quite a feat."

Comments

Lets try this again

[moosesocks]

Thanks to slashdot, they're about to suffer another massive hardware failure.

But, seriously... Until I saw this article, I had honestly thought the MUD scene was dead.

Never really ever did get into muds. Maybe once their HD is back up, I'll create a character... (who in their right mind doesn't use RAID?)

Re:Lets try this again

[E_elven]

www.mudconnector.com

There's a lot more out there than Achaea. Use the search feature.

Re:Lets try this again

[b0r0din]

There's no pretty much. The MUD scene is dead.

I used to play MUDs a lot. And by a lot I mean the fail out of college type. But this doesn't really seem like news to me. Sure, it's nerdy. But this sort of thing happens to MUDs all the time, and there are about 1000 of them, and aside from its mild popularity, it's about a maintenance window. Equipment failures, bad HDD, etc, that's not news. IMPs going and making a crazy server for a week, that's not news either. I remember when we were switching over to new code on a game I used to play, he made a non-PK mud PK, and gave people all kinds of weapons and NPCs were switched into and killing people. That was a lot of fun. But I wouldn't announce it as news. So I guess for about 10 people who care, you just made their day :)

But just for the record, who here still actively plays? And who doesn't? Who did?

Re:Lets try this again

[Anonymous Coward]

The text MUD (Everquest is a graphical MUD) scene is actually more alive than it ever has been and there's a LOT more innovation in design going on in it than in the graphical MUD market. Now, it's nowhere near the size of the graphical MUD market, and the fact that the graphical products get all the attention these days is why it may seem to you like it's died off. It's also misleading to say there are 1000 text muds. Yes, technically there are, but is it worth counting those that are downloaded and run more or less 'as is', and who have like 5 or 10 players simultaneously online, ever?

There are maybe 50 text muds that get any decent traffic and are of decent quality, ranging from the biggest (Simutronics' Gemstone IV with ) down to quality roleplay intensive MUDs like Armaggedon with maybe 50 or 60 simultaneous players. We (Iron Realms Entertainment) have, for instance, way more players than Meridian 59 has, and yet it gets quite a bit more media attention than even Simutronics' games (which have more players than we do) do.
--matt

Re:Lets try this again

[0x0d0a]

Okay, clearly you're running a commercial venture, and there are clearly players that like your style. I'm not trying to bash your approach.

However, I kind of liked having five to maybe twenty players active at any given time on MUDs I've played. It meant that you could know just about everyone that played.

That being said, I'm sure there's something to be said for having a virtual city...

Hilarious

[Nutcase]

This is the funniest thing I have read all day. The mental image is classic. That said, thats the only place you get an image, as it's text based... so I would probably just be confused. (Uh Oh.. geek street cred dropping rapidly...)

I would've tried it, but they closed to new accounts until the hdd is restored.

That said, the most interesting thing is that the MUD is commercial. Which I would presume means that all those requests for death by god are being paid for. The game sells currency which players use in game for things.

Even if Anarchaea is free, Achaea is not... which means they just got some really great free advertising. If I was them I would have a yearly "hdd crashed" special event.

Backup

[BrookHarty]

I remember one time, someone had a their home directory as /home and I did a normal deluser. Boy I'm glad I back my servers.

Only happens once, and you backup the rest of your life.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the CEO if Iron Realms, which owns and operates Achaea and a couple other text muds. First, I realize this is a low-value news article to most of you, but we didn't submit it (one of our players did). Second, I am fairly embarassed about this whole thing. The backup problems were a result of a minor but very crucial screwup on our ISP's fault that left us without backups since February 12th.

Anyway, believe me when I say this is hardly the kind of publicity we need or want. (We've only got about 5000 users but that's plenty when you're a text mud.)

--matt

Updates to my Post

[daki]

Please forgive me Matt, I didn't mean to reflect poorly on the Company, but in the two years I have been a customer of Iron Realms, I have never once been disapointed. When the character creation is back up, I urge you all to give it a try, as it is by far the best MUD out there.

Re:Updates to my Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it's ok. I know you did it with the best of intentions. It IS our fault that we weren't using a RAID array and that we trusted our ISP to handle the backups for us and while we wouldn't shy away from admitting that I would just rather not have broadcast it to the wider world. ;)

Seriously though, don't worry about it.

--matt

Re:Updates to my Post

[shadowcabbit]

Y'know, this is just a personal view here-- I haven't played a MUD in at least a year-- but the stance you guys are taking (ie turning a bad situation into something entertaining and attractive) is one I'd dearly love to see in more companies. I'd love for, say, Square-Enix to give players gil in their other games when the main FFXI server goes down for maintenance. But you guys did something really unique and interesting with what would otherwise be a major disaster. Good job.

Sounds like...

[dynoman7]

where rules have no meaning, the gods fry the players at request, and players are killed by homicidal butterflies and socks ...my kind of game! Where do I sign up?!?!

Re:OK, I'm know I should be shot for not knowing t

[Synic]

MUDs are the precursor to MMORPGs.... seriously, a little googling would have turned up the answer and a more comprehensive history.

screens?

[paradesign]

Anyone document this with some wicked screenshots?

Re:screens?

[Reducer2001]

Screenshots for a text-based MUD? I could type something up in notepad.....

Apocalyptic visions?

[thesp]

This seems interesting from a psychological viewpoint. The players have effective foreknowledge of the end of their world, with the knowledge that all actions undertaken in the short while left will, ultimately, have no consequence. Result - disruption of enforced and evolved social fabric.

I wonder if this has anything to say about how society would react if we knew that we would all die in a week; or if we knew the time was about to be rolled back by a week, and would have 'never happened'.

The true judge of morality is what one does if one could never be found out; however, on the other hand, as everyone is aware that there _are_ no consequences, can there be any morality defined in this sort of situation?

Just food for thought...

Re:Apocalyptic visions?

[AMystery]

Interesting, I have observed some of these same tendancies in people. I thnk it is more about the escape from normalicy when there is a lack of control. When we have strange things going on, there are others who join in just because it is different. Its a mini vacation in a way, i doubt if the deadline was longer than a week, that they would continue to act in the same manner. I've only tested it for a few hours though.

I am a "god" on another mud shameless Barren Realms plug and while reading this, it sounded a lot like what we do when we are bored. We are free so there is really nothing to lose besides time. I often kill people because they want it. I don't know Achaea's death system though so I don't know if it had any major penalties, for us it just means you have to walk back to your corpse and get your stuff again.

As for the giant butterflies, I usually have the vorpal bunny taunt people, although its a bit weak to actually kill anyone out of diapers:) There are some very powerful sheep, maybe I should go sic them on someone. Hmm...its 5:30, not many witnesses around...

And just in case anyone is reading this, particularly any of my fellow imms. We are a very friendly mud and pride ourselves on community, but like any community, we enjoy having a good time and playing with eachother.

Oh, this reminds of a time I tried one of my friend's muds and had no idea how the consideration system worked so I didn't understand the message that said that if I attack that hummingbird I would die a quick and painful death. Getting killed by a hummingbird is not the way I want to go.