Nutshell: Expansive, detailed mud with lots to offer. Diverse mix of play styles, made easy (and exciting) by in game reincarnation system. Completely unique character builds for each player (no two are the same). Lots of diversions such as quests, tasks, enchanting, crafting, and so on. Most games say you can play 'any' character you want, this one means it. Some glaring oversights listed below.

Strengths: The diversity mentioned above. One cannot emphasise enough the endless progression possible in this game. You can spend a calendar year immersed in game and only scratch the surface of the possibilities. Very long and interesting introduction system involving a tutorial and quest, with active players acting as 'helpers'.

Weaknesses: Area quality can vary a lot. Some are unfinished for years? Some events seem designed to troll (unkillable thief monster that steals from long term players), to the point of making players quit. Some surprisingly offensive caricatures like black savages and the apologetic orientals ('Oriental golem' talking about spring rolls in floating city is particularly bad, coder should be ashamed). Looks like quality control or content review needs updated criteria. Game client is snazzy but overwhelming with too many features. Very spammy interface and UI in general - mud is definitely NOT accessible for vision impaired players.

Players: Seem to be from across the globe, with roughly half from Finland. English is the public language. No real trolls or heels in community, no noticeable pvp.

This is the best mud I've ever played. Over the years I have played various muds. BatMUD is always the one I come 'home' to. It is a huge world under constant development. It has a large player base. I like the variety of races and classes that one can play. Best of all, it is NOT a pay to play or pay to succeed mud. It really is free. What you can get by helping to support it is nice, but entirely unnecessary. I think the reason for that is that it is a player run game. It is a not-for-profit.

The quests range from easy to insanely impossible (but some people have completed even those). Some quests are solo endeavors, some require a party.

Parties - that's one area where BatMUD shines supreme. I have never seen a party system as good as BatMUD's. Each party can be up to 9 players, arranged in 3 rows. These 9 member parties can, in turn, hook up together to take on enormous mobs. It is easy to track prots, stats, health of members, all in one easy screen (particularly if you use batclient).

If you get bored, BatMUD has a really wonderful system for reincarnation. You can become something entirely new and keep all or most of your experience.

Last but definitely not least is the Batclient. If you are accustomed to ordinary mud clients, be ready for something special. It has a world map, or Realms Map, built in, so you can see where you are and where you want to go. It is searchable, so you can find new places easily. You can add built-in triggers and commands with ease, even if you are not a computer programmer by trade. I LOVE Batclient!

Come by and check us out. You may find your next addiction. :)

Used to be great but nowadays is mostly pay to win with boons which are required for making newer, obviously superior, races and guilds work. They also sell game currency and occasionally 'unique' game breaking items. Task points which are used to buy game advantages (boons) currently cost around 0.5e per one.

However, if you are ok spending real money to advance there is ton of varied content and hundreds of areas to explore. Also great many varied guilds with newer ones having complex set of quests, rules and mastery skills which you learn only by playing and might take months or even years to maximize.

World itself is divined in five continents to create illusion of distances and is as annoying as one would think ( http://jeskko.pupunen.net/gmap2/ for map). To overcome those distances you can buy or make ships which are essential for playing the game. In fact making those ships is mini-game in game which requires months of questing and preparing. Crafting is big part of the game though there is only few usable items you can create.

Areas, especially newer ones are relatively well done with lots of secrets, quests and somewhat varying themes. In practise though new players are discouraged exploring those areas by having lots of equipment destroying npc's present. However newbie and solo friendly areas usually don't contain anything dangerous.

Gaining new equipment is the major goal and you have player run and built cities to store it. Note that gaining worthwhile equipment is very very hard and requires you to either farm days for gold or having connections to secretive clans which usually don't take newbies.

New player experience is ok with nice introduction and possibility to use graphical java client for playing.

Conclusion: Playable (with real money)

First off, my background. Ive played muds for maybee 15 years (since school days) and been a builder for 5 or so years. After seeing our own mud suffer the fate of many muds today (reduced player base) i decided to look for a new home and gave batmud a try

Ive now been playing a couple of months, enough to form an impression. First the good. The client is top rate, with a great realm map, some nice graphics, the ability to organise spells/ group commands via point and click etc. It is the best client ive used.

The player base is generally very friendly to new players, it is announced on a newbie channel when a new player starts, and newbie questions are quickly answered.

The newbie area (dortlewall) is excellent, one of the best newbie areas ive seen, and the newbie tutorial is also very good. It offers challenges that are neither frustrating or patronising

Players also donate equipment for newbies to use, it is not sellable and from what i saw players donated regularly

The main problem for a new player comes at the point when they leave the newbie area, the areas vastly differ in quality, with more than one area being simply a big square with all the mobs being identical and offering no cash at all. One area i visited had no descriptions for npcs at all and felt very odd.

There are some decent low level areas, but my experience has been that the high level players regularly sweep them for easy cash so there is rarely anything in the profitable low levels to kill.

While the playerbase is friendly, the mud has a problem all mature muds have to a certain extent. That there are very few 'new' players to group with. Doing a 'who' shows 135 players online right now

Yet doing a 'who mortal' shows only 40, and just about all of those at maximum level, so it can feel a lonely place at times.

There are a vast range of guilds to try, so far ive only tried two..so my opinion may not be informed, however so far they have been 'single skill' guilds with one big attack ability to spam. It may change at higher levels however

Despite all this, batmud has an awful lot going for it and is worth a try if looking for a mud home.

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A Mudder's Dilemma

I enjoy playing muds that have complex guild systems. I enjoy trying to find the perfect build for my multi-guilded characters. However, this creates a big problem every time I create a new character on a mud. I end up spending way too much time in my spreadsheets and still can't decide on my builds.

Consider the following scenario. I created a character on a mud and invested time to level it up. For some reason, the guild did not work out, the race was not ideal, or maybe the build was just boring to play. Should I recreate a new character? It would be a big junk of time wasted on the first character...

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The Reincarnation System

Batmud solves this problem with an ingenious solution, the reincarnation system, aka reinc. When a player reincs on Batmud, his character is reset to level 1. The player chooses a new race and a new guild just like when creating a new character. The original character's experience points and equipment are saved, and available to use on the new reinc. In other words, the characters on Batmud can be recreated as the player sees fit, and keeps all the hard earned rewards!

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The Guild System

Batmud uses a multi-guild system. Every character on Batmud is composed of 3 or more guilds. First 10 levels of a character are spent on background guilds, level 11 to 15 are spent on racial guilds. 16 to 100 are spent on real guilds such as Ranger, Priest, Mage, and the likes. Each of these guilds are usually composed of 20~35 levels. For example, a character at max level 100, could be 10 Nomad, 5 Minotaur, 35 Ranger, 35 Barbarian, 15 Archer. The background guild puts restrictions on what guild combos are possible.

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The Party System

Batmud uses row system for parties. A party is a 3x3 matrix. There are three front row slots and six backrow slots. Only players at the front row can deal or receive melee damage. In parties, the guilds in Batmud break down into four categories:

Offtank: primary physical damage dealer - Front Row Stunner: stunned monsters hit less and take more damage - Front/Back Row Blaster: non-physical damage nukes and buffs - Back Row Healer: heals and buffs - Back Row

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The Economy System

Batmud has a player-run economy. Players buy and sell equipments to each other through a 'broker' system. In general, equipments from npc shops are just junk. Most stuff players can find soloing are sold to shops for gold. Almost all worthwhile equipment in Batmud is through questing or monster drops. Most of these quests and monsters require raiding parties not unlike of those in modern MMORPGs. Other than buying equipments, players can also buy player rooms, ships, and cities. There are guilds that focus on the economy system such as Merchants and Alchemists.

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About the Reviewer

I have been a mudder since 1998. Muds I've played include Batmud, Aardwolf, Dead of Night, Dragonswords, Necromium, 3 Kingdoms, Tron, Starwars, God Wars, and Reality's Edge. I prefer LPC over diku and ROM, because all the diku/ROM I've played seemed hack-n-slash heavy. I am more of a munchkin than a role player. I am literate in scripting and I use customed triggers.

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Hello, I have played many MUDs over the years and decided to give Batmud a try. To start, their java based client is AMAZING. All the information is in the right place, the overworld map makes navigation a breeze and It's generally very intuitive and delightful. I wish every MUD on the internet had one of these babies tuned up for it!

The newbie channel has been, by and large, very helpful with my, numerous, questions. Other channels are different, however, 'bat', the primary channel is largely a haven for the 'good ole boys', and people forming groups will usually have little time for a low level member trying to squeeze in. This is not to say that I didn't get help! A few members, especially Morag, took me aside to group, and those were fantastic times. Just don't expect it consistently, there aren't Morags to go around. Most seem to prefer to party with those who already have great levels and very high trained skills/spells.

The skill/spell system is a touch unforgiving. You really need to have things basically mastered to use them with any amount of efficiency, and saving the xp to do that is no mild challenge. For example: It took 516 thousand xp to get 'Attack' to 100%. Attack is one of THE most basic skills that determines your basic accuracy with melee weapons. Getting this to 100%, which is not as high as it can go, is considered just part 1 of even starting to be a front row person. Don't think that 100% means it always works, either. With 100% attack, I still miss about 30% of the time against easy/very easy mobs. Similarly, with 63% fire building, I often have to try two to five times to actually get a fire going.

Group combat is smooth and simple, especially with the client. You can see your allies' health and stamina and magic points swiftly and react to the adapting situation as needed. I have no complaints about the party system. Well done.

Crafting seems to be a large part of the game, but as a ranger, I was not able to see too much of this. I did discover that my 'make bandage' skill required cotton, which requires 30 plant lore to find and pick, but you can only pick cotton in the autumn. A rude surprise to discover AFTER investing the XP to make it possible. D'oh.

I could also turn corpses into various bits of armor, but I couldn't tell how good they were with any amount of accuracy, so most was simply turned into a bit of extra income at the shop in town.

A merchant will have to give a better report on player crafting. Player cities seem very flexible. I didn't have (even a dream of obtaining) enough money to build one, but I saw many and entered a few. They were just as serviceable as main cities, but built at the whim of their owners. Very nice. +points.

Overall I rate Batmud as a challenging game with a lot of detail and options. If you're willing to surmount the high cliff of entry, you may find a game you can sink a lot of time into.

I used to play BatMud in the 90's. I thought I would come back for some fun. I was having some minor syntax issues and looked to the newbie channel for help. Then the insults started flying. Yes, some were trying to help. But I've been on other muds and the newbie channels were monitored for politeness. If this, I thought, is how the newbs are treated, I'm not entirely sure I want to play here. So, sad to say I won't be discovering all the interesting things batmud claims to have. I wonder if this is an ongoing problem there?

Yesterday I finally stopped playing batmud. The reason for this has been a continual shift to mainstream sentimentality. I used to like the easygoing attitude on the channels. Usually the chatter had nothing to do with the game per se.

Yesterday however the mud started enforcing a policy of silencing opinions that aren't in accordance with the personal beliefs of who ever happens to be watching the channel. These immortals watch these channels rarely in a supervisory capacity, usually they just chat along about what ever is the topic. Recently however even old players have been banned and even removed from the mud apparently on whim.

I can not recommend batmud anymore as a rewarding playing experience. The immortals are out of line and the investment of time does not translate to any kind of reward ingame. The only way you can get to 'act out' is if you donate huge sums of money to the organization running batmud. This gets you a 'out of jail free' card and basically let's you dismiss any of the standards in the game. (see: Nazrix)

There is a time for all things, I feel that your time would be better spent choosing another mud over batmud. The game engine is retro to the extreme and the face lift currently in progress is eroding all the good qualities that originally attracted me to the mud.

Who knows, if the organization gets rid of the bad fruit in the basket, there could still be some kind of redemption, but there is no indication of this happening.

By far the best MUD on the web. Dozens of races and classes, which each have their own perks. A truly MASSIVE world to explore. I've explored about 18 of the first continent. And there's 5 of them, plus other planes of existence.

This MUD couln't be finished, even in a lifetime, because it's so incredibly MASSIVE. 200+ players online, and lots of immortals make it easy to get help.

If you want infinite adventure, play BatMUD. It's the best!

I write this review as a long-time player of batmud, and as a registered newbie helper. I've been playing BatMUD for well over 10 years now, and have found several things to keep me hooked.

In the first role, as a long-time casual gamer, what keeps me coming back is the large amount of content: quests to complete, guilds to try out, areas to explore, and such. Not only is there a large amount of existing content, but it seems that there's constantly new things added that keep me hooked. And, because the game is very social-friendly. I've gotten to know a number of players quite well over the years, and can keep in touch through the game. I also enjoy that regardless of my power level relative to my friends' power levels, I can almost always successfully group up with pretty much anybody; and the game auto-tunes the rewards such that people are rewarded fairly for how much they've contributed to the party. And since the developers are also people who are logged into the game and most of them were once players too, it is possible to directly give positive (and negative) feedback, and really feel like you have a say in what things are changed or implemented. In short, the large amount of existing content, the rapid implementation of new and interesting content, and the ability to keep in touch with my friends through the game are the aspects which keep me coming back for more.

The part of this review from my role of a newbie helper, I'd like to take a second to mention some of the things a new player can expect when logging in. First of all, I will say that MUDs in general and BatMUD in particular can have a fairly steep learning curve at the start -- it may not be obvious at a first glance exactly how to get exactly what you want to get out of the game; so a large amount of effort has been put towards helping new players get started. * First off, when logging in, players will be presented with an optional tutorial which will go over the basics of how to get started. * As one progresses in the game, various things will trigger 'tooltips', or helpful reminders of how to deal with whatever's going on (for example, the first time someone tries to send you a tell (a private message), you will receive a note explaining that a player contacted you, and the note also explains how to reply. * Several players, myself included, have registered ourselves as dedicated newbie helpers -- you will quickly be able to contact us if you have any questions about how to do whatever it is you want to do in the game, and you can expect friendly, helpful replies. * A public 'newbie' channel is dedicated to answering your questions, and all replies to you on that channel will be helpful and polite. * You will start the game in a private village just for new players -- you can get familiar with the game before having to worry about the big picture out there. BatMUD is a fun and challenging environment, and you can decide when you're ready to leave the gates of pleasantville in search of fearsome monsters, cunning quests, or epic equipment to wear.

In short, I expect that new players will find BatMUD to be a welcoming environment for new players, and a challenging+exciting experience when you're ready to face it. I'm looking forward to seeing you there; if i'm online, you can 'tell ooga hi' and I'll answer your questions as well as I can.

Batmud is an involving and immersive mud that boasts nearly 15000 rooms in unique areas linked by an outworld that contains forests, deserts and other landscapes.

The learning curve initially is deep, but it is easy to settle into after the basics have been picked up. Players are generally helpful and registered newbie helpers are a very good asset to the mud.

Possibilities for character development are many and very open. You can mix and match a number of guilds or choose to develop one before delving into another. The difference in the guilds makes for countless different styles of play, and when one character bores you, you may reincarnate to pursue a different life.

A facet that is very different to many muds and games is that you do not necessarily have to fight monsters to level up. There are guilds such as merchants who can ply their trade, be it making armour for other players, performing surgeries or another of their countless skills. Players can also do things to affect the world, such as build cities for others to live and congregate in. Rent rooms, housing, player communities and secret societies - these touches ensure that you can pursue the type of character you want.

Character development never ends, as there is no maximum state or 'avatarhood'. Rebirths are possible to high level players who hvae achieved much in their first mortal life, who can then become Elders and such, having selection of a wider range of races and thus new possibilities. It would not be a stretch to say that character development possibilities are endless.

The life is vibrant and alive, with hundreds of players and mobiles roaming the world. Quite often you can bump into various critters while out in the forest, headed for the city. The cities are full of life, with nice touches such as breweries, games rooms, arcades, casinos, swimming pools etc.

Batmud is continually changing and vibrant and is always exciting. Players and Immortals keep things alive and new; you never know what is around the corner for Batmud. It is easy to get immersed in such a world, but that wouldn't be a fault of yours.

Haven't visited Batmud in a while? Perhaps if you haven't, then you remember it to be slightly highbie oriented, that being the one major drawback to Batmud. Well, to that i say the mud has changed!

Believe it or not, the once highbie-advantaged mud has made some critical improvements, the most important of which is that the newbie channel, once a newbie channel in name only, now has wizard approved newbie helpers to answer your every question. There are no stupid questions in the world of batmud so a newbie can feel safe asking them on said channel. These helpful players are clearly designated as helpers in this format: (Nips the Helper [newbie]: the answer to your question is bla bla bla.

Apart from this, Batmud recently reverted to its old reincarnation system (reincarnation is the process by which a player changes race, background, guild, etc.). In this system, even the most experienced of players is again brought to the humbling level of newbie, as reinc. safe experience is slowly earned back. Of course a highbie might choose to gain all experience back instantly (Instant Reincarnation), but this results in HEAVY taxes on Total Experience amount, and it is for the most part avoided with gusto!

Heard Enough? Ready to go get lost in the world of Batmud? Too bad. One more important point. The gracious coders (wizards, archwizards) have introduced some brand-spanking new newbie oriented areas located very close to the begginers start location. This means that when a newbie logs on to the game after reboot (when he/she is automatically transported back to his starting location, among other things like quest resets and nonreseting monster repops) he/she is mere rooms away from newbie advantageous areas complete with small to mid-size monsters, and even quests to tease your brain if you feel inclined to stand apace to mere hack-and-slash gaming.

Batmud, like many muds, takes patience and a willingness to grasp at concepts unlike any other in the gaming industry. This innate desire for complexity is what drives us mudders to engage in mudding. If complexity is what you crave, then when you log onto batmud with your choice of character, race, background, allignment, equipment, skills, spells, player city, and even friends, you are interacting with one of the best free, not-for-profit muds available. The rewards can be great, the failures can be crushing, but no matter what the rollercoster ride has in store for you, i promise you this:

If you actively cultivate a relationship with batmud, it might possibly stay with you forever. So I ask you: what more are you looking for?

---------------------------------Nips Nightcrawler----------- ---------------------------------Batmudder since 1998--------

Batmud is a really involving mud. Although it can be daunting for a first timer, the sheer scope of the mud quickly becomes apparent. Firstly, the Batworld is all on a huge map known as the outerworld- this gives you a true feeling of travel when you are going to one area.

There are many unique and fun areas- the dedicated wizzes of batMUD have coded some 13000+ rooms, and new areas are constantly being worked on. The character creation system is very deep- you may customize your character as much as you like. There are 33 player races (with an extra 10 special races), 5 backgrounds (from which 30+ guilds come from, which you can join and advance in as you see fit), hundreds of skills and spells that all add together to make batmud an immersive mudding experience.

There are all sorts of things to do on batmud. For some, a good time is had when they lead a few friends and club monsters to death. Others like to form organized parties to take down a mighty lord of evil. Some players on batmud like to become a merchant, and go mining, or crafting fine weapons and armours (among other things). There are also people who choose to strike out on their own, being self-sufficient and efficient. Oftentimes they are more than they seem. Basically, on Bat, you can do what you want. You'll have your hands full just deciding on a guild (and if you want to change, you can always reincarnate).

Batmud is an immersive gaming experience. With colour terminals, fully coloured and detailed maps and a huge playerbase, you can be sure you won't feel alone or unchallenged. So log on now, and be addicted. It's inevitable.