Fantasy World
By Raymond L. Shi
ENG 1300
The world of zMUD is a fantasy, a dream, and the opposite of the reality yet it lets millions of people enjoy the character they are creating over the Internet. Mud games means “dig mud,” which lets people play the game and there never seems like an end to the game. People can create a character and keep playing that character as long as they like. Many “mud diggers” played this type of game for years and they are still playing this day. Some of them even combined their real life with mud life which they started to talk and act like the character they are developing. And I wish to let you have a look of the fantastic world.
Among all the English mud games, “dragon slayer” could count as the most famous game of all. The game, like all other western world games are based on “once upon a time” when there were warriors, wizards, powerful rulers. Where sword and axes, magic and potions became the way people survived and lived both happy and powerful. By login to the mud site, think of a fancy name that you would like. That name will represent you from now on. Then the game will ask you to choose a type of race that will affect the mud life that you are going to “dig”. There will be six races, such as human warrior, human wizard, sprite, elf and two other races. Usually people will choose the first four because after all these times of playing people already summarized that the last two races can do nothing but chat in the game all the time.
After choosing the character, you will now enter the world of mud. Use the basic command “look” to look for things around you. Since mud game is a word code game, you will see the word description at the area, which lets you imagine the setting with the description. That’s the power of the words, also the fun part of the mud word. When you type “look” you’ll find yourself inside a bar. “Hero Tip: A common bar in city Axodia, travelers, monks, wizards. No matter who you are or why you are here, you are always welcome in this bar.” At the end of the description of the area you will see people in this room. They are usually NPC, which means non-player character. But never disregard them because they are very important for your future in mud. The “look” command doesn’t only look at the area but also can look at things, such as NPC. If you type “look waiter”, you will see the description of the waiter and also the ability the waiter might have. “A busy waiter walking all over the place trying to serve hungry traveler, but it seems there is never an end to his work. He has no any special skills.” There, he has no any special skills (other than serve people), which means you can take him down easily. But wait, you don’t either. The command “skills” will let you know what skills you learned from the other. When you start a mud game you will have no skills at all since “skills” means ability learned from other.
After knowing the basic commands now it is time to walk around, it is as simple as it can be. Just type n, w, s, and e, which represent north, west, south, and east. It will let your character move to the direction you want to move. Every time you move you will enter a new room with another description. Sometimes there is only one or two exits for the room; sometimes there are more than four such as direction southeast, northwest. The exit of the room will also include in the room description. As in real life, mud characters need to solve some living problem too such as money, food, and drink. Money in this world is counted in “coin,” “silver,” and “gold.” One hundred coins are equal to one silver and one silver is equal to one gold. How to get money? Simple, in this world you are a hero, you need to help other people fight monsters and beasts, and they always have goodies on them. Usually money, sometimes even rare weapons or armors. Interested? Not so fast, killing a beast requires skills, no one can take on anything with sharp teeth and claws without any knowledge and skills. Before you can become a true hero, and starve to death, go learn some skills from another. Usually you can learn skills from an NPC that’s willing to teach you, but you need to apprentice to him first so he or she will become your master. Sometimes they will even give you stuff such as money, food or weapons. Use the command “skills” to know the skills the master contains, for example when type, “skills master Tuk” you can see all the skills he has. And since he is your master you can learn any skills from him that interest you. The command “learn” can do that easily, just type “learn (skill) from master” and you will gain the basic knowledge and level up the skill. Now when you type “skills” you will see you already learn that skill and it is now level one. Keeping learning from the master will upgrade the skill level but it will become harder and harder to increase the level. But there is a limit of how many skills and levels you can learn. One of the most important commands “hp” means health point and will show you the status your character has. It will show you the health point of the character, the mana of the character, experience, level, and knowledge points of the character. Health is very important, when it becomes zero your character will die.
Mana is the magic of the character, a character needs mana to cast spells. Knowledge points is the limit of skills learning, every time you type the command learn one knowledge will decrease, when it becomes zero you can no longer learn any other skills.
After learning all the skills from master it is time to hit the road. It will be a perfect idea to walk around the city Axodia and know the city a bit. Because there are pawnshop, bank, weapon shop, armor shop and all those stores you will need later in your game. Sometimes you can also “get” things from some area as well as “drop” things in your inventory. Confused? This is a whole new world with new things, since your character can’t do thing by your mind, you need to give commands to them. Knowing all the commands are as important as try to survive the game.
The game itself has a lot of help text, read them before play the game will be a good helper. By the time you understand the commands you will notice there are free weapons and money you can get as well as free food from some rooms. Then “wear” your armors and “wield” your weapon. You can start walk out the city and go in to forest, there you will find some small beasts and you can try “fight” and “kill” them. You will gain experience and knowledge pots by killing them. And don’t forget to pick the victory price in them! After gaining experience you might level up again and can go to your master and learn more skills, then you will meet NPC who want you help them to solve some riddle. Do some quests and tasks to gain more experience. Before you know it you already can cast basic spells and perform good fighting skills. Now it’s time to take on harder monsters and become a true hero. Moreover, never forget you are in an Internet game.
There are players just like you playing the same game with you the same time, use the communication commands “chat,” “say,” and “tell,” to talk to people and ask for help. Most people will gladly help you and make you feel right at home.
Mud world could be just a fantasy, but there are people you can make friends with. There are people who will become your enemy. To fulfill your dream to become a hero of all ages, you will experience fighting with the most powerful monsters and wizards. You will team up with others and slay the evil ruler of the dark kingdom. And most of all, you want to slay the undefeatable dragon that lived for centuries. Try to “dig mud” harder and you will have much fun as all the other millions of people have already experienced.