RP-MUD sampler experience
Nobody asked but here are my first impressions of a few games I tried, with a priority on games that are RP-mandatory/RP. If anything this is more a reflection of me as a dusted up mudder than any sincere critique of each game, which are clearly doing all fine.
Armageddon (now closed) - Great while it lasted, unfortunately caught it shortly before it shuttered due to OOC toxicity/misbehavior. Loved how seriously it took its RP, good player-to-world-size ratio, but maybe it was like being in theater, the drama kids stirred drama.
Apocalypse - a natural, easy migration due as being cousin-code to Armageddon. Honestly, APOC deserves credit where credit's due, in that it seems held together primarily by 2 admin, one front of the house, one back of the house. Unfortunately it suffers from a low player base, I think 5-6 was a good day during my playtime, which even on a small map meant it was hard to organically stumble upon others or RP. Small player base meant that player-driven economy/RPTs were very limited, and this punished craft-focused, non-warrior characters and introvert character personalities. Their Build-Your-Own-Clan system also had a very steep cost to build and maintain, which basically meant a lot of grinding because again, the economy was quite flat. But bless the devotion and tireless work of their admin for the RP/engagement they lead. The help files were a bit patchy/sparse. I feel decent temptation to return.
Sindome - My only familiarity with cyberpunk was completing Cyberpunk2077 but that was honestly enough for all its lingo and world to make sense, so I figured I'd give it a shot even though my preference is for fantasy. Building the character felt easy, they provided great prompts to nudge a backstory out of you and on the fly I had a great character I was honestly excited to play. Once my char touched down in the world however - holy overstimulation batman. Every room had incredibly long descriptions and 5 different color-highlighted items/NPCs etc. In many ways it was very on theme for a Cyberpunk future but from a functional standpoint, hard for my eyes navigate and speedread the way you need to with MUDs. The constant auto-scroll per spam/channel chats I couldn't figure out how to turn off made it nigh unreadable and I had to bail day one, not even out of the newbie area.
ThresholdRPG - I appreciate it is RP-enforced and a playerbase of 100+ at any given hour is insane. The player-to-world size ratio felt very fair and movement was appropriately delay-less and speedy. Tutorials and character design system were very straight forward. That being said, it started my char at 18, and had RPG-standard starting tasks of kill mobs-gain-coin-level-up. Nothing wrong with that and clearly it's doing well. I was just looking for something a bit more heavily focused on RP, so the mob-tasks kind of broke immersion, while the starter age restricted how I wanted my char to wake up in the world. Appreciate the color-coding that added to legibility. The droppable/resetting inventory system did not make much sense to me. First impressions it's probably not RPI enough but keeping the door cracked open. The website's info files are dated - new races are not listed, and the sorcerer guild has been merged with mages.
Harshlands - There's so much potential and a high barrier to entry. The help files are simultaneously really thorough and yet stop just short sometimes of telling you the exact command and steps. The income token system is somehow both liberating that you don't need to depend on player economy, and yet very confusing. The cool down on actions and the craft system of interacting with just about anything is not intuitive or well explained in the tutorial. Were it not for a kindly player who walked me through the very basics to getting started, I might've bailed in bewilderment. That being said I'm split on whether this is my MUD. The RP seems rich & deep, there's virtually no limit to how a player might grow their character/footprint on the world, but the learning curve is very steep and I'm tired with a mushy brain. Also, even though 20 players on avg is a solid headcount, the world is very large and so the functional player-to-world ratio feels low. They've done a great job of populating the world with NPCs to a fault - I genuinely struggle to identify whether an NPC or real player is in the room. All in all I can sense the potential and remain very intrigued. I think they JUST added color-coding? Nice.
Again, none of the above is meant as true critique or intended to dissuade players. If anybody has any recommendations of what to try, would be curious!