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Comment by PenguinCoder | Hacker News Reader

Look for MUDs and MOOs[1]

I've liked and played in the past a lot of these text based role playing games, especially when I was on a shittier dial up connection or remote satellite connections. I liked Aardwolf and Realms of Despair the most. I've played the IRE games like Achaea and Aetolia way too much. While those two definitely have a great lore and many active players, I have always loathed IREs pay to win "credits" style.

Text based gaming is still alive and evolving. Just don't expect a AAA game and definitely not single player.

[1] https://www.topmudsites.com/

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I would never recommend an Iron Realms game to someone for a couple of reasons.

One being the pay to win aspects where players who pay real money to buy items get major advantages.

Another being the amount of grinding required to level up.

I'd recommend Akanbar instead. It has no pay to win features. Balance based real time combat loosely based on the old Avalon game (Achaea did not invent balance based mud combat, it came from the now dead game 'Avalon') and you don't have to learn a coding language just to become competitive and partake effectively in the pvp if that's a part of the game you have interest in.

It sits in a sweet spot between complexity and simplicity and has a fun concept, well made guilds and a dedicated playerbase and admin.

I agree, I wouldn't recommend IRE games these days for anyone; especially newcomers. Same reasons and quite a few other ones. But it's has been quite a few years since I had time to engage in any type of MMO or MUD though, so I don't have any current up to date recommendations.

The IRE games are very well done. I too have spent many, many hours in Achaea, and more recently (a year or two ago) in Starmourn.

You can get by without paying for credits, though it does involve more in-game grinding. For me, what made me lose my interest in these games is the role playing requirement. I understand that for some people that is part of the fun, but I could never really get into it.

Very sadly, TMS was shifted to an archive-only format a short while ago. End of an era. It looks like Mud Connect is dead, too. Not sure there are any aggregators still standing? :/

https://www.mudverse.com/ is actively maintained.

Thanks for that! As someone who got into tech directly because of MUDs, it was sad to see TMS go.

I loved playing Aardwolf years and years ago. I was a big fan of godwars type mostly. What a flashback!

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