How'd you get into IRE games/Mudding?

Sakyl

I'm starting this up 'cause I'm curious how typical the entrance I had into playing MUDs actually is.

I'll start with my own experience, and hope others will share. I'll also note that I'm 21 going on 22 now, for the sake of everyone who cares to be able to get their timelines correct.

Anyways, so essentially, I was showing MuDs when I was about 11 and a half years old, my mother was dating the father of my youngest brother at the time (it was before he was concieved) that his oldest was playing a MuD and I got curious and wanted to give it a try. I forget the name of the MuD, and never managed to return to the game, but the taste of it was all I needed after I had, up until that point, been starved for reading material. Simply put, at the time I picked up MuDs, I was already through with every Harry Potter book out, the entire Gregor the Overlander series, amongst every interesting fiction book in my school's library that was within my reading range (I was at the very top of the Accelerated Reading list at an 11th grade level, the school's AR reading books didn't even GO UP THAT HIGH.) So I had the perfect fields in my mind to learn my love of MUDs, and I played that game rather consistently when I could, though never admittedly getting out of novicehood in it, because I was young and still picking up the basics. Fastforward when school had picked up again, and I had forgotten about the game because of schoolwork, and then one weekend, I decided to try and find it again. Well, after digging through Google, I came across Achaea, and shrugged, I figured I'd give it a shot, it wasn't what I was looking for, but it would be a better fit than the other things I had tried. I used my email to create my first character in Achaea, he was a Druid of Eleusis, with his grove being located in the Black Forest. He wasn't a serious enough character admittedly, and I am not even sure he got above level 21. In fact, I didn't even develop my first serious character for another year, in the summer of 2006 to 2007, I was 13 years old at the time, and I had gotten curious about other games, I also had an entire summer's break, with Stage6 still being an active website, Halo 2 still being the top Halo game on the market, the Gamecube still a living game, the Wii wouldn't exist for another few years, and wasn't even announced yet, and the 360 wasn't around yet either, if I recall. That summer was a summer when I first decided to sit down and play Achaea seriously. I created a character that still exists today named Mhato, he was the first character I bought credits for, and admittedly, he's perma-shrubbed now for various reasons I won't go into, but I also crafted characters in Lusternia, Imperian, and Aetolia. Lykas became a common username for me and my online handle, with Lykas of Imperian being a Warden of Ithaqua, Lykas of Lusternia was a Serenwilde bookbinder that wielded twin swords. Aetolian Lykas was a Lycanthrope of the Atabahi, and Lykas of Achaea...well..I forget what he was, but I know he wasn't what the Lykas of Achaea is now. Anyways, that summer was the one where I finally established my full love of these games, the love that has kept me returning time and time again, unable to take permanent leaves, only extended breaks because of reasons outside of my control.

I love IRE for their work, and I love Aetolia just as much as I love Achaea, Lusternia, and Imperian.

MKO isn't all that great IMHO, BUT I also have to admit that they lack the godmin power over there to manage what has devolved into a toxic playerbase.

Aetolia: I love you guys and you are all part of my extended family, I might not know all of you, but I do know that I'd set a place at my dinner table for each and every one of you, just like I would for Robin Williams.

Konnorn

My sister kept talking about this game called Aetolia, which is sortof like tabletop rpg, in all text, and so much fun! She would go on and on about it and I just didn't get it. One day, I decided to make a character, log in and just mess around with her.

However, it wasn't that simple... I couldn't just start messing with her. I needed to understand the game in order to do that. I had to understand says, tells, emotes, all of it. So I ended up telling her who I was in order to learn.

9 years later... here I am, just as hooked and unable to stop playing as I was then. I've met some unforgettable friends through Aetolia and however much I can hate the game at times, I don't Think I will be able to stop playing anytime soon.

Aryanne

I was a lonely, once-dated 19-year-old who found a boyfriend on Craigslist though a table-top-geeky posting I made.

He was super into Aetolia, and after several months I decided to give it a shot, too. He stopped playing a couple months after I started and we eventually broke up.

As far as I know he hasn't come back. Occasionally I wonder about him and wonder if he did ever make a new character.

Teani

It was a stressful time of my life when I was introduced to MUDs. I was working in customer service, but had been informed that the contract for that particular job was about to run out and I'd be transferred elsewhere. At the same time, I was dating a unicorn of a boyfriend, who had a very strange view on what could be demanded in a relationship.

My friend was talking about this weird game without graphics (I was more used to first-shooter games like Counter strike, Ghost Recon or riddle games like Myst) and I had no clue what to think. He showed me, and I still had trouble understanding what it was actually about, but being a tabletop roleplayer and avid reader of fantasy books, I thought it sounded at least somewhat interesting. I figured I'd give it a try, but didn't want him to know it was me and watch me make a fool out of myself.

So, I made a character, not intending to put much effort into it, but rather just to figure out the basics so I wouldn't look completely lost when he was talking about his stuff. After stumbling around, being in complete awe of people who could actually read all the stuff that flew by on the screen, I realized there was so much more to learning this game than others I'd tried, so I read through help files, started working on a few requirements. And since I couldn't finish enough the first day, I had to come back the next one to make sure I had understood things and by that time, I was basically hooked.

A short while after I had made my first character, my relationship completely fell apart after I told him I was done being treated as I was (and he proceeded to enter my apartment and take my electronic devices, leading to me pressing charges and eventually him returning my things to me). Then I was told I'd be transferred to telemarketing instead of back to my previous position at work. With my mental health dwindling rapidly due to stress and general circumstances catching up with me in life, my hours of escaping reality into Aetolia went up to around 100 hours a week (no idle time here!) over that first summer.

I've since then tried out Imperian and Midkemia (love the books by Feist), but Aetolia is my favorite by far, both because of the RP being more wide-spread and the community being (for the most part) fantastic.

Draiman

I had a friend introduce me to it (he quit playing, sad). I made a Magi character and heard about Bloodloch and it was apparently supppperrrrr hard to get into Bloodloch and they were evil and full of vampires and stuff, and the thought of having to actually work for something in a game was kind of exciting. I started getting bored with it until my cousin (I had introduced him to it) wanted to fight one day. I was on a syssin alt and I stabbed him with Voyria outside of arena and omg it was so funny. So we started working on ways to kill people ever since then.

Malok

I've been playing MUDS off and on since about 1995. I got my first computer then, and I was 12 years old. The first mud I ever played was Gemstone 2 or 3, back when it was free to play on AOL and such. Eventually when it became pay to play, I moved on to a game called AnimeMUD. That's was my home for many years, and was also where I got my first taste of PK. I then moved on after a time, as life often does, and a few years later I made a character on Achaea. I never really got into it a whole lot and stopped playing after awhile, but really enjoyed it back then when I was getting butchered at landmarks and I had no idea what I was doing.

After that, I moved on to Godwars muds for the pk, and various other muds. I've played just about every type you can think of at some point or another. Ran my own at several points, built areas on several, dabbled in C and stuff like that. Eventually a few months after Aetolia opened, I made Malok on here, played it off and on...and was actually logged into Aetolia the night that Imperian opened. I stopped playing Aetolia for many years and was one of the first Guildmasters on Imperian, and did a bunch of other crazy stuff there over the years.

In my experience, as I've gotten older, I got less and less interested in text based games. It's not clear to me why my interest renewed in December...though the friends I have made since have a lot to do with it.

It's been a crazy twenty years, thats for sure!

Valenae

When I was 15, my younger brother and my cousin started playing Aetolia. My brother kept nudging me to play and one day I decided to make a character; he and I even got bloodlined into the same family icly before he got distracted and stopped playing lol. Even my cousin went to Lusternia, so it was just me in Aetolia. My first character was a snuggly forestal. Making Val was my attempt at serious roleplaying.

I had never played a MUD before and it seemed overwhelmingly complex when I first started. I made friends with a group of people in Aetolia who were/are amazing and even though Aetolia was different from what I was used to as a console gamer, they made me want to stick around. When I got into roleplaying and started branching out to more Aetolians, it made me love the game. We're a really cool bunch! My boyfriend is a golden oldie from Achaea-turned-Aetolia convert who artied-up on Aetolia just before peacing out lol. I have made so, so many friends on Aetolia. I keep thinking I'm done with Aetolia but I can't quit you bb.

Isande

Mm, let's see.. I came across my very first (and longest played) MUD after doing a google search for statistical information on relationships that started online, which is how I'd met my now-ex, to use to convince an over-protective friend that I wasn't crazy. (Jury's still out on that one) There was one result, which I was never able to find again afterward, that led to some fellow's personal webpage where he had drawings of himself and his lady love, and talked in detail about the game in which they'd first met before meeting in real life. Now comes the funny thing- to me at least, looking back.

His description of the game was very biased, even bitter, as he described in detail how amazing and complex the game was ..eeeexcept for how completely skewed it's politics and RP was due to favoritism since the MUD's head admin also played the God of Darkness. He complained about how weak the Light side had been made since the God of Light had actually been killed off and the Lighties were always outnumbered by those of Darkness, hunted down constantly on alignment alone rather than any In-Character reason, sometimes even supplanted by the spy alts of Dark players which further imbalanced things. The Gods that were still alive were highly involved and interacted with players in both large and small ways, often appearing when being discussed, manipulating the environment around with emotes, boosting the skills of those they favored with a permanent skill blessing, or even going so far as to spirit away or kill mortals who caught their fancy.

I distinctly remember that he went on to caution the game was "extremely dark and PlayerKill heavy" as you could kill anyone, anytime and anywhere, who wasn't still bearing the divine grace from their last death, even lie in wait just outside the ress point and grief-kill until they logged, or be dragged kicking and screaming (Literally, a skill thieves had) into various grim or graphic scenarios. Due to the perks and more chances at inclusion in game-wide storyline events that seemed to favor those of Darkness, the armies of Darkness were larger and players on the Light side and even many Neutral-aligned folks such as merchants and happy go lucky druids were frequently bullied. Many would give up and quit since they couldn't hold a candle unless they were either one of the top ten players in the game or very accepting of spending lots of time dead after randomly being ambushed and killed while trying to bash back up to where their experience was the time before that.

Well.. This fellow's grim words actually ended up inspiring me to find the game and make a character for the sole sake of playing the underdog and helping bolster and encourage those of Light. I promptly fell in love with everything about it, especially the dark storylines and complex political tensions between cities, orders, and guilds. I played it for over six years, met my wonderful boyfriend on it, and actually ended up both a Guildmistress of Alchemists and a gypsy High Priestess in the neutral Order of Fate which swung both Light and Dark- unanticipated yet fulfilling positions that hold so many memories for me which I've often looked back on with fondness and longing after the game's server experienced a critical failure and was put to rest for good. I tried other MUDs briefly over the years, including a few IRE ones, and the only one to similarly capture me thus far has been Aetolia...

Ezalor

I was like 11 years old and my friend told me to play Achaea with him. I had just read LOTR so was totally into fantasy stuff (took a lot of dictionary checking to get through it at that age).

Got my first MUD wife at 13. Told her I was 18. Woo.

Riluo

I got introduced by an older brother when Aetolia was only 24-48 hours old! We both made monks I think (Latter I became a priest). He had played other IRE games and knew the ropes so he taught me to say/emote/tell and use basic punches etc. After I understood the basics he quit and left me in the middle of Shallam. Within moments I was swept up in a quest to capture and kill hordes of rats by a pair of players. They explained that their pet rats had accidently consumed a potion that had caused them to become infected with a disease capable of infecting my species (forgot my race) and if infected we would go blind and die from blood flooding our lungs drowning us from the inside out. I took this very seriously (put on his wizard hat) and began the mighty quest of becoming "Ramina, the rat hunter."

Over the course of three months I learnt the basics and how to get around including drawing detailed maps by hand and a 20 line system that consisted of movement, get rat;sell rat, punch and cures for health/mana etc. At around this point I think I became a priest and got into converting players to an order we had in Shallam to do with the then fire god.

Moving along I quit playing Ramina and created Riluo.

I spent days roleplaying a wounded Priest lost in the desert and was feed upon and beaten by some Vampires called Kiansha, Ramiel and Zahmekoses (who became my sire). After days of roleplay I was made a servant of House Voltaire and dragged "naked, chained and bloody" into the City of the Consanguine, instructed to act as a food source for Zahmekoses and several others slowly increasing my standing until I was made a thrall. However back then there was no frenzy just kick and we had to reach level 50 (equivalent of todays level 100) to be sired. I did however get very rich killing beetles and only beetles with "kick."

Back then when I started playing Riluo the roleplay standards were so heavily enforced it was insane, we never spoke OOC and would have to find ways to ask OOC questions through the use of "special statements."

Fast forward 10 years, a few bachelor's degrees, kids and I still play like a made cocaine addict.

Konnorn

Omg, the hand made maps. I Went through so many note pads drawing maps of Everything. I guess that's why I still move without a mapper these Days, cause I Always found it to be so much fun.

Hadrak

Started in Legends of Terris on AOL. Made friends with a lot of people there, did some derp as hell RP but the immortals liked me for springboarding their events. Played roughly two or three years.

Saw some top MUDs site with Achaea leading the charge some years later and joined up, bumped around Aetolia and Imperian.

Rashar

I started playing a circle mud based off of Mercedes Lackey books when I was like.. 11. My uncle introduced me to it, and my first character was named Moondragon because I was awesome as shit.

Quit that and paddled around on various no RP, pure PK muds. I actually tried Aetolia once years and years and yeaaaars ago, because it was advertised as PK and vampires and sweet, I wanted to be a bad guy too. Then I didn't see any PK for like three days and some guy yelled at me for not calling him a Marquis, so I rolled out.

Twiddled a bit more and then a couple years ago decided to get back into mudding. Made chars on all the IRE games and then got bored, but a couple days later Lusternia sent me an email about a free credit gift for my birthday so I was like oh hey. Played there for a couple of months and then moved to Aetolia. Haven't looked back.

Came for the PK, stayed for that cool thing called RP and emoting whaaat?

Trager

I started in Avalon when I was about 13 years old. One of the first people I met was Moirean (Went by Narissa there), and she was the head of the Thieves guild. The guild had some rich, rich RP that immediately grasped my attention (Moirean has a knack for that, obviously). My first really big hook was when I was challenged to a fight by some other newbie-esque type person, and had zero idea what to do. Nari passed me a knife with this poison called jegga on it. It's instant death in four seconds if you're not properly defended against it. So I walk in, stab said person, and ran away. They died.

After that, it was pretty much game over. It was a really grief-heavy game, with little to no RP for the most part (Moirean excluded) and literally all I would do for hours was fight nonstop. Downside of it was when the owner/head god Genesis started getting into credit card fraud, and charging random cards for hundreds/thousands of dollars. I remember trying to google anything I could find about this guy, see if he had a history of it, and came across the IRE games due to Genesis originally selling the rights for the game engine IRE used to run on ages and ages ago. Vampires? Hell yeah, so I started up. Went in/out for a few years due to the Army, deployment, etc, but finally settled into it and became a RP whore turned PK whore. Now I'm a recovering addict.

Periluna

I don't remember the first MUD except it had a Xena/Hercules theme. I played once or twice when I was about 11 or so. Fast forward about 8 or 9 years, I attempted to find it again. Found Avalon: The First Age. Played that for several years but only because one of the Gods I think had a thing for me and seeded me. Genesis (same guy @Trager spoke of) still said I owed money even though I paid for three months. I was still very much a noob there when I moved over to Aetolia and remained a noob here for... I don't know. Probably still am. I fell in love with the atmosphere in Aetolia. I tried other IRE games, but none of them stuck.

Asaraii

I've been playing for a bit over 10 years, on and off? Met this guy that went to school with my cousin that showed me Imperian, and pretty much taught me everything about the game, hooked me up with CMud, and showed me how to Cmud. I was in a really unstable situation, then a foster kid, then adopted, so at this point in high school I was heavy into drinking/drugs/partying. As I got more hooked to Imperian, I got less hooked to drinking and drugs, and ended up getting out of that realm of insanity. Moved away, to my cousin's house that I also got to play Imperian, and got away from my druggy mom and friends, and been playing on and off since.

Interesting note. Said guy started seeing a chick from Imperian I was friends with. When I moved, he was trying to get me to move in with him. I didn't, and he stopped talking to me. However he started dating a chick from Imperian and she got pregnant, and he was a total scumbag. Her and I had been friends for years through Imperian, and texted/talked regularly all this time also. They broke up, and she moved. Conveniently, she moved to to where I am now. It was just a strange coincidence that my friends I live with now moved out here. So last summer when I moved, her and I became legit 'neighbors' (about an hour and a half away). So like the weekend I moved (12 hours away from home), I went to meet her, and we've been BFFing IRL ever since.

I love how things worked out. I have a lot to be thankful for from IRE!

Keroc

I stayed up late one night with a friend on MSN to see an Iridium Flare after hearing about it from my science teacher of the time. He suggested I try out Aetolia, but the java client of the time ran really poorly on my PC. I realized I could connect to Aetolia through telnet.exe (oh god) and started on the most awful client you could possibly conceive for a MUD.

It was fun and reminded me of Nethack, a game was I heavily into at the time, so I just ran around picking up random things like I was playing another rogue-like game. It wasn't until an early friend I made in Aetolia introduced me to MUSHclient and how OP icewalls > aerial > holocaust was that I started getting really hooked.

Mariena

I started playing MuDs by playing Aetolia in highschool. I was introduced by my boyfriend who had a Vampire in Voltaire. It was funny because at the time I only typed 30-40 wpm, which is absolutely miserable. Interesting fact: That character was Mariena.

Silena

I was in college during my last few semesters when I saw a link for IRE on a webcomic I used to read. At that time, I'd never played a multi-player online game(no, not even WoW), and though I'd played video games my whole life, never played a text-based one. But, I was bored one weekend and decided to give it a shot, picking the one with the most interesting description- Aetolia.

14 hours later I realized I was still playing the game. Since then I've tried Achaea, Imperian, and Lusternia, but always ended up coming back here. It gave me better typing skills(by a lot), my first interest into programming, and always seemed to combine the enjoyment of writing a book and having other people contribute to it. Which is more than one can say for most drugs and addictive, time-consuming hobbies, right?

Azzello

Maybe not the greatest story, but I was on house arrest for a while when I was a kid. Back then, we didn't really have much for online gaming, and even if you did play one of the available ones it was slower than a seven year itch. I heard about Achaea, started playing and the rest is history.

Pypo

When Game-informer was still a magazine, I never even knew textual muds existed! I believe it was early 95 or 97 when i read the article and I remember looking up Achaea. The last textual thing i played was Zork, an that kept my attention span for a short time till I grew impatient.

I began by making a dozen alts letting timeout run on them and exploring, but I had a disadvantage because I couldn't read room to room trying to remember where my orientation was! There was no MAP command at the time, so I started playing a druid so i could live in wildlife rooms due to the map they had built-in an spent a good year just being anti-social moot grove tender. It amazed me how easily you could run around a mud in the wildlife rooms an NEVER see a soul. I was robbed twice in my entire time that I wasn't standing idle in the black forest. However, I hated the 'bond' aspect of morphs and felt like the mud was lying to me when supposedly they 'morph' into creatures. I wanted to turn INTO the creatures I emulate, I decided to switch muds.

First I went to lusternia, but I didn't really 'fit in' with their 'forced' community, its still something kind of keeps me from truly enjoying Lusternia, an well when I gave no shit to rise the ranks or politicize myself, I was ousted from one of the forest communities for totally legit rp reasons, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. I tried a bunch of places, bounced but finally found a place I fit in. However, lusterna is also very money hungry to really improve any aspect of yourself, I have to pay 200-500cr for assembling wig curious, an an Illithoid like myself loves looking stylish! >.>

I came to aetolia with two alts during my times in achaea and in lusternia, I was exploring the mud to find out ins and out of sparkle-butt dom, but there was one thing I KNEW wanted to try, it was their shape-shifting system. This is still one of the most unique systems in all of the IRE realms, Imperian only recently copied a version for themselves with their magical hunters. At the time, leaders of the werewolves were much more drama-llama focused because everything that went on in the rout they had to get involved with when I started, an I kinda mulled around exploring figuring out what I stood for and what I would shape Pypo into for Aetolia. In fact, I never even TRIED vampires till less then a rl year and a half ago. An found out I like it! It still amazes me how well it has really developed the UNDEAD aspect of being a rotting cadaver has changed me. An well....I still wish Mutations wold become a more in-depth thing in mud! ^^

Faerah

I was 12ish, and I played a very dorky Buffy the Vampire Slayer forums RP. Someone there was working on a MUD with his friends and invited me to play with them. It was a DIKU mud with all the CoLoRs and *A*S*T*E*R*I*S*K*S*! Eventually, I went looking for something else when that endeavor died. I found Achaea. I played there for 8ish years until @Toz finally convinced me to try Aetolia.

And now you know who to blame.

Toz

Faerah said:

I was 12ish, and I played a very dorky Buffy the Vampire Slayer forums RP. Someone there was working on a MUD with his friends and invited me to play with them. It was a DIKU mud with all the CoLoRs and *A*S*T*E*R*I*S*K*S*! Eventually, I went looking for something else when that endeavor died. I found Achaea. I played there for 8ish years until @Toz finally convinced me to try Aetolia.

And now you know who to blame.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

As for me, I was 13. On a whim, because what else do you do at your grandparent's place when the internet is crap, I searched 'free internet games' and went to page 13. First result was Achaea, which blew my mind - I loved to read, and the whole game was like a giant book. I used to feel super stupid RPing and stuff, so I mostly didn't, I just walked around talking to people and asking random questions.

I have fond memories of somehow breaking both of my legs and not knowing how to fix it, so I asked my House (the CIJ) and nobody there knew either - some other novice came and we sat on the bridge and smoked cactus weed for hours. And stupid as that was, that's actually the first time I ever RP'd, and the guy was so funny (at least to my 13 year old self) that I'd keep coming back after awhile of not playing.

What ended up getting me hooked on pk was playing serpent though. My House (Sentinels then) wanted to raid another city, but had no way in. So they got me to phase into the city, blow up the mono and let them portal to me. It was something tiny, but I felt like such a badass. I think I evaded all 200+ rooms from Eleusis to 'avoid detection'. Rangor gave me a cityfavor after and said I was exemplary in my bravery for going in first, and that was that. Pretty sure I didn't miss a raid for the rest of my time playing there.

Hadrak

I will never forget sitting with Sartan during that War of the Child event when all of Achaea came to pound Mhaldor facedown into the ground for Sartan stealing Eris' baby to do EVIL THINGS. Sartan leaves the room as about sixty people came rushing into the room and instantly paste me. THANKS SARTAN APPRECIATE THE WARNING NBD

I think I got into the order not long after that.

Areka

I'd started roleplaying with chatrooms (MSN and GCN), then forums after MSN shut down. One of the people I had been roleplaying with suggested I try Achaea, that it was kind of like the chat RP mixed with GWs.

A decade later and IRE is still stuck with me.

Teani

Faerah said:

And now you know who to blame thank.

ftfy

Tenshyo

I was fifteen and had developed a crave for playing a text based game. So I google searched "text-based game" found one, it made no sense, and I quit. Months later I would return to the same search to see Aetolia, the Midnight Age near the top of the listing and thought to myself "That game sounds cool. I guess I'll try it"

Here I am, 8 years later. Still kicking and screaming.

Xenia

I didn't have a computer growing up, but a friend did. One day, when I was about 12, I was spending the night at my friend's house, and late into the hours of the night she introduced me to the mud she was playing. I didn't role a character, and she reluctantly and hesitantly let me take the reigns of her character. However my typing speed was slow and soon enough she was cringing at how long it as taking her character to reply to people and she took it back over.

Flash forward 10 years to when I was in college and looking for a way to pass the time one uneventful evening. I remembered that she had shown me that text game, that it as called mud, and just did a general search for those. I came across Avalon, same game as Moirean and Trager, and started playing. Soon I was hooked and continued playing that game for about five or six years. In truth, Moirean's character and role as an antagonist for my own first character was very much the motivation that got me to continue playing. She stopped playing shortly after I did, but when she returned some years later it got me playing again.

Avalon wasn't much fun and soon she returned back to Aeolian, advertised that she'd done as much, and well, Xenia was created.

Sevaan

A friend of mine suggested it to me a few months ago, he told me stories about the game that really piqued my interest. I had never played any text-based sort of game, and when I finally decided to create a character and play, I was admittedly daunted by the... largeness of it all. I've never played a game where I could be or do anything I wanted to, I'd never seen players create the world around them on such an epic scale. At first it was difficult to get into, so I put it off for quite a while. One day I was hearing him talk about the game again and decided I'm really going to put in the effort to learn and play this game, especially if it's as fun as he makes it sound. Here I am now, completely hooked on Aetolia with no signs of stopping.

Dristin

I was 17, going to college and was bored as could be in class. Someone sitting nearby me suggested I try MUDs and showed me a website that listed them. So, I checked out Achaea from the list since it was early in the list and sounded okay. That was in 2001. I eventually moved over to Aetolia during the original opening events, same with Imperian when Imperian came around. Obviously, my favorite is Aetolia.

Zsadist

I was 13 and looking for more games to play. Typically free to play games. So I typed in 'free rp games' into google and came across some Wheel of Time MUD that ran through telnet. Oh the fun I had there. Some guy introduced me to using spears and PK. Was fun bashing mobs though with my godly spear! Anyway, about 2 months later, the game got shutdown for some reason or another. I decided to look at more MUDs and saw the Top MUD Sites link and found Imperian. Of course, I dabbled in Lusternia and Aetolia a bit as well, but I primarily played Imperian. I played that for a fair bit of time and then quit due to the pure hostility and toxicity of it (not to mention they killed all the gods) and took a break from MUDs for about a year. I decided to give IRE another shot and started playing Aetolia abit more hardcore. And as they say, the rest is history.