Why did you start playing? Why did you stay?

Etrigan

The title pretty much says it all. How did you come to start playing MUDs? Aetolia specifically?

What about this MUD has kept you playing it?

Haven

I was playing this MMO and I saw an ad for Aetolia on their webpage. It looked kinda neat and so I clicked on it to check it out. I saw it was about vampires and was kind of turned off but I noticed there were other classes that looked interesting. Infernals and Cabalists in particular caught my eye so I decided to try it.

...then the wall of text hit me instead of graphics and I was like wtf? But I've been RPing since forever in like Yahoo chatrooms and stuff so I thought why not! Let's give it a shot. Aetolia was pretty overwhelming at first but the players at the time made everything seem so epic and they were pretty nice overall. "We can literally shape the world! We Infernals had an event where we started the Mhun/Goblin war!" I thought that was pretty awesome that we could influence the world that way and so I stayed on and off for years.

Sessizlik

I started playing because someone I know was playing and was talking about it all the time. I didn't do it because I was overly interested, but because I wanted to mess with this person's head. However, I soon realized that I needed to learn mechanics and emotes and all that -in order- to mess around and before I knew it, I was hooked. Never played a MUD before that, never seriously gave any other a try after either.

 

I stick around mostly because of all the awesome people, the lore, the events and rp. As Haven said, it feels amazing to be part of something that changes the ing-world, for better or worse, even if you are just a small part of it or a spectator. Also, all the different aspects give Aetolia so much flavor. There's pk, crafting, exploring, hunting, writing books, running shops, politics. There's Life and Undeath, Spirit and Shadow. No matter what your interests are, you will always find something that makes it fitting for you.

Areka

Aetolia was the last IRE I tried. I had avoided it for -years-, I didn't want to deal with the pseudo-goth Hot Topic, Twilight-ified, Anne Rice Sue vamps (I can be a *little* opinionated!). I begrudgingly made a character here at a friend from Lusternia's request, and was totally blown away by the level of RP and immersion that I found. The crafting system, on top of this, hooked me, as did how pockets of the community embraced me and helped me learn and settle in. In the end though, the RP (between admin, events, and just the quality of character development that Aetolia offers) has had me stay, along with the continued investment into characters and the organizations they become involved with. Our playerbase, despite our issues, ups and downs, and infighting, is a really wonderful community full of opportunities. A dysfunctional family, but still far more of a family than any of the others have been. 

Valenae

In truth I started playing because my little brother and my younger cousin kept griping at me to try it. lol I finally did and met a whole group of friends here who were as interested in politics as I was. My younger brother and cousin quit playing but I kept logging in. When a few of us got on the council of Duiran and started acting out our leadership roles, we were hooked. We were only around fourteen or fifteen at the time. Anyway, I stayed for a few years in various incarnations before making Valenae. When I went off to college I started going in cycles - I would get really psyched for the game for 6 months to a year and then torpor, come back for 6 months only to torpor again. I think what kept me coming back initially is my group of friends. We still talk a lot and are facebook friends, we've visited etc etc but I don't have the same passion for the game I used to. 

Elwyn

I had a friend in HS that played and she wanted me to. I'd never heard of a game like Aetolia before and it took me three tries to really get it because it is overwhelming for new players (and this was 10 years ago). I, in turn, got my friends to start playing. Vasilus, for one. Yes, I take credit for him and his name...I picked his name. Anyway, it was something neat to play around with friends and such. I had one other main before I created Elwyn and she was your typical vampire and never left old Ashtan. So, with Elwyn, I really wanted to explore and learn the land, histories and such. I didn't really get the whole emoting system (customized ones) until much later.

I stick around for the people I've met and the RP this game has to offer, the events ect. I've never played another MUD and I don't intend to. Aetolia for life baby. Or until I grow up or something. I've made some amazing friends here, which is why it is hard to stay away for any period of time.

Minarael

I have played text games since I was a kid, so I have like..23 years of off an on text gaming under my belt. I started with IRE about 10 years ago at Imperian, but have -always- had an interest in Aetolia. They seem to have a pretty solid RP community with PK that isn't quite as problematic as Achaea or Lusternia. 

I walked away from Imperian a few years ago and had successfully avoided returning to text gaming until a developing MUD I'd helped with 'opened'. I got involved with that until it started to collapse in on itself, and was left with a strong desire to MUD again and very little desire to return to Imperian.

@Vharen and I decided to give Aetolia a shot because I had some invested characters here and he was interested in a few of the classes for combat reasons. 

I've been really enjoying the community, you guys are a nicer bunch than I'm accustomed to from Imperian, and the open embrace of intense RP is a delight. Aetolia is not perfect, but I'm digging it overall thus far!

Piper

I started to play Achaea a little over ten years go because a girl that I had a crush on was a player. Her name, in the game was/is Sireni or something like that.. anyways, I made a character named Selerin which was a name modeled after the character Selene from Sailormoon and Rin who was a friend of mine at the time. This was because they didn't let me have a character named Crow and I was MAD about that.. anyways. I play Achaea on/off for a bit. The first thing that I did was die after kicking a dryad and then die to a butterfly. This was back before maps so I had everything mapped out in a NOTEBOOK. I thought I was so cool. Everytime I had an interview, I'd read the questions and preemptively write my answers down in this same notebook. A few years into Achaea, I decided to try out the other IRE games and made Anaesta.

She was adopted by Kiyotan and Shiari and I was full of drama llama and she ended up suiciding because my RL time wasn't working with requirements and I didn't quite understand ARPEE consequences back then. I promptly made her SON, Eern who was a Nebre'seir character and he didn't last for long either. Forgot about Aetolia. It was a silly game, anyways. Went back to Achaea. Made Fitzwillem and continued to play as him for a few years. Was happy that he was the only Runewarden in Ty'Beirdd.

After a few more years, I realized that Achaea just wasn't doing it for me. I went onto other things for the roleplay. Started to LARP. Played other games. Blah blah... tried Aetolia again and decided to play a character that was nothing like myself. Thus came Orisae. Honestly, it was @Kerryn that sold me to the game because I was probably going to leave it again but she just blew me away with how sweet, nice, and helpful she was. I've been hooked ever since.

EDIT- Going to add that in the entirety of me playing IRE games, I never had a char higher then level 60.. until Aetolia. Now I have nearly four endgamers. What did you people DO to me? I was such noob when I joined Aetolia and you FORCED me to grow up and learn what Selfishness was! I always thought it was a silly emote!

Lin

Went to Dayton High School with the likes of @Yettave, @Zyphen, and others. A few buddies of mine were talking about a cool MUD they found whilst reading their favorite webcomic. I initially paid it no heed, but then one day, I saw it.

IT WAS A GLORIOUS ADVERTISEMENT, THOSE THINGS YOU USE TO DRAW PLAYERS INTO THE GAME, FEATURING A GIRL WITH A KNIFE PLASTERED ACROSS THE TOP OF 8-BIT THEATER. (hint hint)

I didn't get MUDs and I didn't get roleplaying. I popped on as 'Speedlinezero', joined the Sentaari as a Horkval, and tried to beat up rats with a warhammer in Shallam. Speedlinezero didn't survive too long. Then I made Anfini, gambled his lessons and lost them all, suicided. This was all back in something like 2003. Speedlinezero's name was changed to Shinryu. Eventually I made a vampire named Glasse and promptly discovered badly-written teenage lesbian MUDsex. I was hooked.

Zaephlyn

My friend was trying to get me to play some online game with him, oh... 10 years ago, Star Craft or something. So I looked it up, and this popped up instead. Clicked it, went through the newbie hell, and ... got addicted.

I love roleplaying, always have, always will.

The girl with the bloody knife was also a good reason for me to want to stay, she gave me nightmares!

Draiman

IT WAS A GLORIOUS ADVERTISEMENT, THOSE THINGS YOU USE TO DRAW PLAYERS INTO THE GAME, FEATURING A GIRL WITH A KNIFE PLASTERED ACROSS THE TOP OF 8-BIT THEATER. (hint hint)


^--- that brought me in.

I saw we riot till they bring it back.

I stayed cause I PK'd my cousin once with Voyria. I thought it was hilarious, and wanted to PK other people. And now here I am, almost 10 years later.

Arbre

Lin

(man girl with dhurive was pretty good too tho)

Aldric

So many people speak so highly of knife chick.. I have no idea why they haven't continued using her again.

Vharen

A long, long time ago, I used to do message board and chat room roleplay at a place called Delphi. Someone posted a link to Achaea, and what 12 year old could resist that much mudsex? I switched to Imperian before I really got into things (Read: Before I had non-linear curing triggers). I was corrupted even further by a couple people there, and cue a decade of being a naughty PKer. 

I came to Aet cause Mina was whining at me, mostly. The other MUD we were playing wasn't living up to our expectations, even if my brothel was working amazingly. I went through the classes, decided triple afflicting sounded kawaii, and that was that. Plus, I get to sparkle!

Riluo

I had a really old pc and a 64k modem, so I could not play online games. Then a friend suggested we try a mud, and I joined the old priests rped myself as (you guessed it- the bastard son of a king-) needless to say I suicided him in a few days. Then I made Riluo, rejoined the priests transed a few things in a week (credits at 1.5k made it easy) got boried after people in the old renagade legion got mouthy, so I joined Voltaire, learnt the then buggy -web/feed repeat- and the rest is history.

Atrapoema

Aldric said:

So many people speak so highly of knife chick.. I have no idea why they haven't continued using her again.

Mostly because it's rose-tinted glasses. I remember when people were crying that she needed to go, because the site needed a massive facelift. Well, here we are...

Missari

I was playing another MUD like game, REALMS OF KAOS!!!!!!! and the friends that had showed me that showed me Aetolia, been playing even since 2001-2ish, with the likes of Moritz, Tirria and Atra in their various incarnations.

Aarbrok

Oh god, I dont even remember, it was likely back in the mid 90's I was only probably 12-13 at the time.  I remember my best friends older sister playing some kind of game on an IRC client, I thought it was a chatroom, since this was like the early AOL days.  Yes I am dating myself here.  I remember it being based out of the UK and was moreso a fantasy roleplay type thing than it was an actual MUD.  So one night I had her set me up an account, and I remember vividly being able to talk openly about homosexuality and the community was super amazing in helping me come to terms with my own feelings.  Anyways, fast forward a few more years and I bounced around between various forums/IRC rooms, and then learned about legit MUDS with Achaea from my ex boyfriend.  

Anyways yeah...im old, and the games have a special place in my heart.

Macavity

I started playing on 2/8/2002 at 21:00 GMT!   I was playing a game called Nightfall, I dont remember much of it except for two things, you could jump into a basket and go to hell, literally riding a hand basket to hell!....and as a Vampire you would have a coffin, where people could enter and you can pick the item up and carry them anywhere.  

Needless to say this is and continues to be the only IRE game I play, and the only Character I play as well.  I do not remember what caused me to choose this game, it was not because of anyone else, as I knew no one when I came here.  So I can only think it was from some ad or something, but who knows it was 11 years ago!!

Periluna

Oh wow. I don't even remember the name of the first actual MUD I played. It was some Zena/Hercules based MUD. I was...11 or 12 at the time. I didn't last there very long and I forgot about it after a while. When I was pregnant with my son (now almost 5 years old) I decided to look it up and found Avalon: The First Age. I played that for about a year before on of my friends logged on and told me about Aetolia. I was curious so I checked it out and said FA who? after about a day of playing. My first character here was a vampire and she was basically my trial and error character. I still play her occasionally. Created Peri about 3 years ago and discovered RP thanks to @Kog and a few others.

I've stayed because the community is awesome. I learn new things about the game everytime I log on, which is pretty amazing. I mean, I've worked at my job for twice as long and stopped learning new things there years ago. I've tried other IRE games and other non-IRE MUDS and none of them quite had the same YOU MUST PLAY thing for me like Aetolia does. Yes, there are times when I want to shut it down and never turn it back on, but I always come back. Even after quitting. (No one ever -really- quits Aetolia btw)

Daskalos

I started playing after seeing a friend, the person who play Searoth, play, on Achaea. I was in a technology program in high school and we figured out you could run MUSHclient off of a floppy disc and make it look close enough to MS Word that our teachers wouldn't notice, so I spent most of HS playing MUD's instead of doing classwork. Searoth's parents were military and they left, but I kept playing Achaea. When they retired it was right about the time I had graduated HS and was starting to go to college and they moved back to the area. He had at that point switched to playing Aetolia and I didn't want to write an entirely new system for Aetolia, despite the very, very close similarities at the time to Achaea, so he bribed me with his system.

We worked out a deal where he gave me the mentor credits back and I bought a thousand credits, plus the first time buyers bonus, plus the mentor credits and his system, and started playing Achaea as a 5-trans character immediately. I bashed to level 50 killing orcs in the Siroccians because they didn't hammer and then on my second day here, armed with Searoth's system and the similarities of Priest to Luminary (one of my Achaean chars was a priest) I started PK'ing, taking out Povox and getting 4 levels in my first kill. At that point, I was hooked and while I've left a time or two, I've always come back. I thought I was done for good the last time I walked away, then some happenstance conversations with Aren on AIM lead to me returning and playing again. 

Mariena

I first discovered Aetolia in high school because my boyfriend (Gawdin/Tater) of the time was playing it and I wanted to as well. My typing speed was horrible and my ability to read scrolling text was worse, but I stuck with it, with Mariena. 

I keep playing because of the amazing people I meet through this medium. I love the stories we create together and the freedom to write whatever, do whatever, and be whatever.

Ciarelle

I played a couple of smaller MUDs in my late teens (both long since shut down) and I kept hearing about the IRE games. I actually had a couple of Aetolian characters that didn't get far out of novicehood and when I did head onto larger MUDs as more than a brief diversion while still keeping up my smaller ones, it was over to Achaea.

I stopped playing MUDs at all for a long time. Things just got busy and other games had my attention. Then I started feeling like it again a couple of years ago when my part-time studies were wrapping up and I had a bit more time, so I decided to give Aetolia another go because I heard the RP standard was pretty high. I wasn't planning on doing all that much with Ciarelle and, for awhile there, it looked like she was going to meet the same fate as my other Aetolian characters (i.e. got to about level 50/GR3 and then I got bored). There actually was a 3-4 month gap early on when I didn't play at all but then I figured I'd give it another go. The reason I stuck around and the fact Cia Round 2 is still going can be attributed to the seriously good people I started meeting about 18 months ago and their ongoing presence.

Teani

I had never even heard of MUDs before when a friend of mine started speaking about it. He was in Pools at the moment and just wouldn't shut up about the game and what he was working on, programming and whatnot. So to keep up with his chatter I decided to make a character without telling him, just so I could see what it really was about and then quit before he knew about it.

However, the more I read and interacted with things, the more I realized I had to do just a little bit more to fully understand things. In less than three days I was completely hooked and I had gained GR in less than five days (was a bit harder to accomplish back then even for people who were not true noobs because of waiting periods and other things), even though I barely understood the game. Since then I've taken some breaks, but I keep coming back because I love the RP, I love the community and the game can not compare with any of the others I've tried out. I have an Imperian character I haven't even logged in a long time because the RP there isn't up to Aetolia's standards.

The fun thing is, I had set my mind on not making a Paladin in the beginning, because they were connected to my friend. Instead I told myself I'd pick the guild of whomever talked to me first just to make it completely random. However, that ended up to be Urial, then a Paladin Squire, who introduced me to other members of said guild, so Paladin it was.

Setne

Puttered around on MSN Groups for a number of years, largely Pokemon and Star Wars stuff, with a few other stuff every now and then, discovered Gemstone IV or one of the other Simulcron games, then in 07. After some google search, I discovered Lusternia, tried Imperian and Achaea, but never lasted more than an hour, don't think I ever tried Aetolia until maybe 2011 or so, when a few friends from Lusternia decided to make chars and I joined them, joined the Sciomancers, but I didn't want to be undead, so stopped playing and went back to Lusternia. Character got deleted after a while and I forgot about Aetolia until earlier in the year. Decided to make a new char, but didn't really log on for the first month much, then I started interacting with awesome people like @Moirean and other irc peeps helping me along and I've been hooked ever since, though personal issues make it hard to stay logged on and be active at times. Hoping that can all change though.

Meskhenet

Almost 11 years ago, I was bored online. I searched for an online game to play and found Achaea.

Which led me to Aetolia. I liked them both, even if what I thought was RP then is laughable now.

I quit, due to bad experiences and other things. A year ago, I tried MKO. Fell in love with RP. And then came back to Aetolia, tried a new character. I can't leave, even if there are days I can't find the energy to log on and play. 

I love the community, the willingness to help, all of it. 

Iosyne

I started playing MUDs well over fifteen years ago, back when the internet was still in its wild west days. I found something you could play online, with a bunch of other people, and it was kind of like a choose your own adventure book, which I was obsessed with at the time. I made a character in a MUD I barely remember called Red Dragon (I think?), then tried Avalon, then finally found Achaea and was hooked.

Spent a few years in Achaea, moved over to Imperian when it first came out, quit MUDs entirely for a few years, up until a group of my friends were all making characters here. I created a character for the PK, and stuck around for the RP, which was head and shoulders above anything I'd ever experienced in any of the other MUDs. 

Couldn't see myself anywhere else, especially now that I'm up in the Pools! 

Kikon

I started during high school. Our science teacher had explained to us what iridium flares were that day, and I had decided to stay up until something like 2 am to catch a glimpse of a really bright one that was to happen. I had a friend that I was speaking with also waiting for it, and suggested I played Aetolia to pass the time. I didn't really get into it at the time, but I remember seeing Arion shouting and thinking it was pretty cool.

Skip about two weeks ahead, and I had a niggle to play it after enjoying an old rogue-like game called Nethack. Add together that I had a really bad old PC with dial up, everything sort of set itself up to be a great game that I've enjoyed for far, far too long

Haern

I've been playing MUDs for over fifteen years now, starting with Legends of Terris on AOL and, during one fateful lunch period in middle school, stumbled onto Achaea. Those two games largely ignited my love for the medium, so I stuck it out and played for many years in Achaea and also throughout the early years of Imperian. High school came and went (and I don't remember much of it), but college largely removed me from MUDs and I spent most of my time playing other games. At the urging of my friends, I decided to pick up MUDs again after I graduated from college and came back to Aetolia. I'd already spent quite a bit of time in Aetolia, but it'd been almost six years and I wasn't exactly the best with my attention span.

But, one thing did seal it for me. I absolutely got caught up in the excitement of these invaders beyond the sea. Then, I heard a new continent was going to be unveiled and that excited me even more. I couldn't wait to explore it. I guess you can see where that ended up for me.

Daskalos

Building the continent so the rest of us can explore it?