The Elder Wars

Woo woo! So last night, after nearly a month, my MUD host finally got my account up and running. I run on over to the GodWars Forum and download the latest version of Zarius’s Dystopia. I login to my shell via puTTY and WinSCP and transfer/unzip what is basically Dystopia 1.4 X-Mas Edition with some neat additions. I compiled it with no problems (way to go Zarius) and got her all started up. Yay! I played around with it for a few hours before finally going to bed. I didn’t realize that when I closed putty it would shut the game down. Subsequent logouts haven’t shut it down so I’m not really sure of the cause.

I’ve only just realized that I haven’t talked about what the specifics of The Elder Wars are going to be, as far as classes and everything. So here it goes:

There are going to be 12 classes total, belonging to 4 different archetypes between 3 factions. These classes are going to be mostly original, a few of them being loosely based off of classes that already exist in Dystopia.

The four archetypes are Assassin, Avatar, Champion, and Mage. All 3 factions will have one of each, customized specifically for that faction. So even though there will be 3 classes based off of the Assassin archetype, they will offer a different experience not only mechanically but environmentally. And just what do I mean by environmentally? Well, even though I know this a GodWars-based MUD, and that people only play them in order to kill other players, I want to establish something akin to a roleplay environment. Which is where the factions come in.  

Long story short, the backstory of The Elder Wars provides the players with a reason to not only hunt down and ruthlessly slaughter other players, but attempt some form of roleplay while they are at it. Basically, the three Elder Gods; Ashalon - God of Darkness, Alloran - God of Light, and Gaia - the Earth Mother, are in an eternal struggle but can not achieve victory without the help of their followers. So you have your three factions, the Legion of Darkness, the Brotherhood of Light, and the Swarm. Members of one faction can only kill members from another faction, except for the Legion, which can kill indiscriminately.

Apart from the three factions, or Orders, players can form guilds which will function very similiarly to kingdoms in other Dystopia-based MUDs. The major difference is that when a player founds the guild, he or she choses one of the “Lesser Gods” as a patron, which will grant additional powers depending on the God. The different factions will have different Lesser Gods available to them.

That’s all for now. Next post I’ll talk more about the archetypes and what classes can be found therein. 

Woohooo! Another blog about game development by somebody you’ve never heard of. I can already hear the groans! And let me just say it is a sweet, sweet sound. But enough foreplay, let’s get some freaking action.

This blog is for me, and anyone who is bored enough to read it, to track the development of my MUD. For those if you who aren’t “in the know,” MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon. Basically it’s just a text-based MMORPG, except maybe without the massively multiplayer part. They’ve been around forever, and I’ve been playing them off and on for about ten years now. I’ve been involved behind-the-scenes every now and again, but I’ve never actually had a MUD of my own. And I’ve never actually been involved in the coding process. So I figured it’s about freaking time….but we’ll talk more later. Boss just got back into the office.