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In the world of online gaming, it is the human element that brings complexity and consistent replay value. It's a simple fact. Dress it up however you like- there exists at the core of our gamer's heart a driving quintessence of intellectual competition. Born of our cunning and creativity, we constantly strive to outperform, to outdo, and as always, to outkill the rest of the crowd. In today's gaming universe, however, individual accolade and renown are lost in the thousands of pre-teen spamtoons. An atmosphere of true immersion is a laughable prospect. The bells and whistles, the scenery and the stock lineup of faceless "heroes" are easy to play through, and about as much fun, ultimately, as manipulating a clock radio in a too-bright fluorescent padded cell. The human element, in the end, is actually limited so severely by those bells and whistles, by the multitudes of the legitimately immature. To find a reasonable adventure these days, you'd actually have to sit down with a book.
Maybe.
Then again, maybe there's an adventure out there after all. An adventure that started twenty years ago, for me. With the emergence of the famed Copper Diku, a paradigm shock was seeping into the collective consciousness. At the University of Denver, the smartest, most popular American "MUD" had been born. I still know the IP by heart: 132.194.10.1 port 4000. With such successors as Renegade Outpost and Black Knight Diku, the first online gaming experience had been born. There are many reasons why people still play this particular platform, so to speak, but near the top of the list has to be the richness and depth that the combination of the human mind and the English language produces. It is our collective inspiration that crafts the ENTIRE experience, from top to bottom. It is our imaginative firepower that writes the adventure as we live it, in an atmosphere of mature and enforced roleplaying, constantly evolving gameplay that evokes within us a spirit of adaptation and improvisation- qualities that no other game can boast of encouraging, much less requiring.
Carrion Fields has been active and successful since 1994, and has proved the mightiest and truest of spirit in the line of those descendants. A rich, diverse world, staggeringly large and yet familiar after only a short time, amazingly detailed and prosaic in its construction. An Implementor and Immortal staff the like of which cannot be found in any other MUD in history, much less in the faceless, soulless GM-base of online pay-to-play boredom. A playerbase that challenges and inspires the veteran and newcomer alike, while providing an intriguing and helpful welcome to those in search of that true gaming adventure. Now perhaps most seductive of all to the average gamer- by quality of roleplay and gameplay alike, there exists a massive amount of Immortal involvement. The game-staff is constructed from the playerbase as well as the original creators, and thus encourages individual heroism, achievement, and recognition across the board.
The level of customization and the ease of gameplay speak for themselves. I understand perfectly well the contentment of being force-fed someone else's imaginative vision while gaming. I played SWG, I played WoW, I thankfully was never addicted to Evercrack, but I've been there. LOTRO, DDO, you name it. City of Heroes. It almost makes me sick to look back at the list, and realize that the experience I was really looking for was back in the power and eloquence of my own mind, forged in the perfect atmosphere and bent to the task of active gaming and creativity. Pick any of the alternatives I listed above, and by comparison, I was paying $X.XX per month to button-mash. Call it skill-grinding, call it raiding, call it whatever you like. It's button-mashing. It doesn't stimulate. Maybe the whole creative process I put into characters is just button-mashing writ large, but I think I can call a rational defense in its superiority. Also drawing from the list and two decades in online gaming, I would say I'm somewhat qualified.
Cheers, and See you in the Carrion Fields.
- The Faithful of Nazmorghul
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