If this has already been brought up before, go ahead and shoot me in the face and get it over with. Just curious.

One, how about a way to customize humans to fit varying needs? For example, certainly humans are average but aren't some exceptional in some areas? I for one have a hard time roleplaying nonhumans, but it seems from what I've read that some classes are just better with some races, to the point where you wouldn't really be competetive. If I'm wrong, correct me, but here is my thought: If I wanted to play a human assassin, I could sacrifice a bit of stats to get more dex/int, whatever. A bit of int/wis to get a bit more con/str/dex, however I wanted it. Dunno, I'm sure you get the picture.

Seems on a mud so based on RP and all that, you would have a way to hide your class from view by everybody. I mean race would be obvious, but how are you going to tell an assassin from a warrior or a ranger or even a mage, for that matter? Or an arcanely dressed person, how do you know he's an invoker or a necromancer or whatever? Unless it's been tried or mentioned and thrown out because you're very keen on preparation and all that. I dunno.

Further, is there a basic rundown on specs somewhere that will show what stats they're based on, even generally? Or does that even matter?

Shoot me in the face if you want, or hunt me down. My only real char is a fairly noobish nexan mage, won't be too hard to seek me out.

>Seems on a mud so based on RP and all that, you would have a
>way to hide your class from view by everybody.

This basically is one of our concessions to newbie-friendliness / gameplay. Class used to be hidden but the reality was that veteran players could either infer it or could adopt PK strategies that minimized how much knowing an unknown character's class mattered, whereas newer players seemed to get a lot out of knowing that, hey, that's a necromancer coming for me.

Maybe we should start some kind of Q&A page on the web site discussing game design decisions like this that aren't obvious and could easily be argued the other way.

It got changed because it made things harder for new players.

Vets either had a client changing all the people's titles into class + level, or just knew them. Newbs tended to get waxed that much more often.

In general, most people are going to come off as a human playing something else, when it comes to basic conversation. For instance, when you need spells while leveling, or are deciding on a place to travel to (for XP or EQ), when conversating about enemies of your cabal, etc. The separation comes when you start adding in little saying and quirks that only someone of that race would. If you look at the individual helpfiles for the races, some of them offer little quotes and warcries and whatnot that are generalized for that particular race. You'll have to read up on the history of the race in order to figure out your own quirks. If you're going to play a Drow and you're from the Underdark, then occasionally, you might reference the Underdark in some way or another. Apply this to all the races.

Knowing another person's class 101: Basically, all PC players are considered "adventurers." These people, even the low level ones, are as renown as say, Dern the Mad, or Ludan the Dwarf, and so forth. We are the special people of Thera, and people whisper our names in taverns, and ask for our help when they see us, and offer us quests, etc. We are all well known in Thera... Or that's how I view it at least.

Back in the day, class and level weren't specified. Only your name and title was displayed. So if you had a special title, you could indeed hide your class. Or if you just simple didn't know the title name structure, you might not know what class they are.



Warrior weapon breakdown (generalized): Basically, assume they all rely on a physical aspect, as opposed to mental stats. So either dexterity or strength. Legacies get more complicated when it comes to stats.