Another voice in the fray

“His MUDs (or \’e2\’80\’9ctext MMOs\’e2\’80\’9d as he prefers) are among the most innovative. . .”

This seems to be the party line put forth by his company, but those who buy it tend to not actually have played his games. This probably isn’t the best place for this sort of rant, but the high esteem in which these games are held doesn’t make a damned bit of sense to me. But I suggest everyone give them a try to determine that for themselves.

I got fed up with the anti-customer mentality of Simutronics and decided to try some of the Iron Realms’ games a few months ago. If Achaea is innovative, then Dragonrealms must be the greatest MUD ever made, because there’s simply no comparison between the two: in Achaea, PvE boils down to spamming the equivalent of the ATTACK command, as most classes have no more than two commands that work against mobs. Iron Realms lauds its PvP system as complex, and it must be, because I didn’t come across anyone there who fought with anything other than zMUD scripts and triggers. Even then, it primarily involves drinking potions and smearing goo on your toon at the right moment, rather than combat tactics of any sort.

The experience system is designed so that, starting somewhere around level 40, your unmodified toon has as good a chance of being killed by the critters you need to advance as you have of killing them. Combine that with a reasonably stiff death penalty and the prospect of negative advancement (you can lose levels) becomes a distinct possibility. Not to worry, though. Iron Realms will sell you the XP and loot that you need to play the game if you’re a non-masochist. Frankly, given the rather shoddy and threadbare PvE system, inferior to many totally free MUDs that I’ve played, the whole thing struck me as little more than a scam to hook obsessives and separate them from their money. Sure, advancement is possible without spending a dime–if you’re willing to play twelve hours a day and/or stretch that advancement over the course of years.

I left Dragonrealms behind because of bad Simutronics customer service. Iron Realms games have NO customer service. Like hobbyist MUDs, the fictional gods are the code gods of their respective games, and their interest in the customer is nil. They tend to have the hobbyist mentality that the servers belong to them, and customers are merely peons who use them at their sufferance. This would be a legitimate, if obnoxious, perspective if these were hobbyist MUDs, but they’re professional games run as a business, and all players are potential or actual paying customers. Simutronics might take an irritatingly heavy-handed approach to customer service, but they actually recognize that their customers are customers. In my interactions with the Achaea gods, they couldn’t seem to care less. (That said, I was treated very courteously when I made an inquiry regarding the purchase of in-game money.)

You can find RP if you’re looking for it, but players tend not to actively provide any. The standard approach seems to be “let’s focus on killing things, but don’t say anything that breaks the fiction too much,” which is all right, but nothing that isn’t available elsewhere. There are reasonably frequent RP events, but they seem to fall prey to the same flaws as events elsewhere, judging by player complaints: the buddies of the gods get first dibs; they’re prescripted to resolve in a certain way, regardless of what players do; they don’t change the gameworld in any significant way. That said, your average Iron Realms gamer seems to be more literate and RP-aware than your average Simutronics gamer.

All in all, while I do appreciate Mihaly’s thoughts on gaming, the success of his games is due more to a combination of good PR and systems designed to beggar a few hundred OCD candidates than it is good writing, good play mechanics, good… anything, really. Mihaly may be innovative as an online businessman, but as a game designer? Hell no.