Well, I have tried Ancient Anguish and I wasn't too thrilled with it, but that doesn't mean other people might not be. Of course everyone has different opinions, but it just didn't seem like the kind of mud for me. Part of the problem is that it's a bit too detailed. I love extra descriptions and that is awesome that they are there, but I don't wanna spend 5 minutes in one room trying to find all the extra descs for fear of missing something. I am working on making a mud myself, and very few of the extra descs will be hidden objects. If I do that, I will probably have an obvious object like a table, and then talk about the curtains that are on the window behind it or something and have something behind the curtains, but the obvious object is the clue to the hidden one. In general though, for me extra descriptions are just that, extra, and should be used to allow the player to get a better idea of what his surroundings are like. The game looked kind of nice, and maybe with some improvement could be better but there are a few too many hidden things in the newbie zones and stuff. I am all for hiding things from experienced players and challenging them to find hidden stuff, even with the extra desc stuff, but it shouldn't be so vague for newbies. If I am referencing the wrong mud on those things I am sorry but I don't think I am. I have, however tried many muds recently in an attempt to find ones I want to stick with so I could be mixing them up. Another thing I would say would be very good is to have directions to lots of areas, especially newbie zones, and put them all in text. Ascii maps are useless to us. If you start giving out maps to newbies, that might be handy, but make sure to put text directions at the bottom of the map. Perhaps, after further development, I will give ancient anguish another try as it does seem to have a lot of potential, but I am not the most patient person in the world so I probably wouldn't be a very good person to test things. Feel free to let me know when/if it is further developed and all that. Oh and one more thing, assuming I have the right mud, that sewer thing after you get the two hidden objects where you have the three directions, one through the cave and the others forking off through that underground river thingy are a bit confusing. I couldn't figure out just which direction I needed to go or if I would end up back there from any direction so that I could try others. That was a little annoying as a newbie and not knowing the way the mud worked.

--- On Sat, 8/23/08, Orin <...> wrote:

From: Orin <...>
Subject: Re: [tbmic] General Accessibility Features in MUDs
To: ...
Date: Saturday, August 23, 2008, 1:50 AM