I am working on a newer generation of Open Source MUSH, featuring the kind of more modern features like you see in AresMUSH and the like, while having a best-effort compatibility layer for PennMUSH code - with things like syntax highlighting, a web portal, etc added.

This is a good ways out still, but in order to prioritize the work I am doing and making sure I produce a product people actually want, I have created a simple set of surveys:

One for players: Player Survey
One for Wizards / MUSH Coders: Wizard Survey

I would love your help on this!

For more details, check out the Documentation Page, the GitHub Code page, or our Discord:

• Documentation
• GitHub
• Discord

@Hobbie MariaDB is a binary-compatible interface replacement to MySQL. But I actually use MariaDB. I just said MySQL since it’s the more commonly used one and would cause less confusion.

And you should! Give it a go! See what we’ve got in place.

Let me know if you need any assistance on the near-MUD stuff. PennMUSH recently removed the 1-second wait time and has sped up its queues quite a bit thanks to it. But I know some stuff that can help you out. Can always PM me for my Discord or the like.

@Hobbie
The main issue I encountered was my own hubris in trying to create a Graph Database out of MySQL to drive my system. In theory, it works. It functions. But really, MySQL isn’t meant to do that kinda stuff.

Back then, PennMUSH didn’t have @http built out yet, and I hadn’t gotten enough into the hardcode to create an http() function. One of the technical challenges I am meeting right now is trying to port from MySQL (remarkably slow) to ArangoDB (ridiculously fast).

But it’s slow going because <life>.

But I’m not entirely sure I am answer what you are asking. Are you asking about the Codex system perhaps, or what are you seeking to learn about?

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@Mercutio Most excellent answers, thank you. One more question, since I forgot it off of my list

How friendly is the game to more casual players? Many of us are old and grey(ing) now, with many commitments. Is there a distinct disadvantage to only being able to put in an hour or three a week?

I think the best way to answering this are the following items that our game keeps in mind:

1. Unless it’s an FC, we don’t ever idle a player out, and we don’t have activity requirements. And even with FCs, we are fairly relaxed in our stance, as long as folk at least log in. Most importantly, we just do not idle-nuke, ever (aside from non-approved characters who have sat idle in the app room for ages).
2. We have a few European players. We have a few players who actually use SceneSys to play-by-post when they are having trouble with schedules.
3. We keep a page of ‘things that have happened in the world’ so that if someone was not around for a while, and comes back, can catch up quickly.
4. We do recognize that more casual players may miss our bigger scenes, during which lore tends to drop. Which is why we use the Codex system to try and distribute it. We keep all bigger scenes published as public Scenes, which can be found on our website.
5. Bigger scenes are scheduled, usually at least a week ahead of time. They are announced on Discord, so more casual players at work might be able to check in on the game.
6. Players can also use our OOC and IC channels through Discord, which connect directly to the MUSH.

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

1. In conversation with your players, what is the key (or top three if finding one is hard) thing that they describe this game as excelling at?

• Deep Lore.
• • Even on day 1 we had people who spotted the use of Hymmnos on our front page (originating from a game called Ar Tonelico) and they rushed to translate it, and were theory-crafting about what it could mean.
• Friendly players / sense of community
• • We are generally just very low drama.
• A sense of ownership
• • Ownership of things they created, especially as a community. All shops, inventions, homesteads, etc are done by groups. We always have people offering assistance to eachother. Also, because we mark milestones both on the MUSH and on the site. For instance, the Scale Emblem Alliance has to beat a boss to get to a higher level of the tower - and each room shows what they beat, and who were there to beat it!

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

2. Do your players have any oft-repeated complaints that are worth noting?

• Staff has been pretty slow on +jobs in the past. We are addressing this by hiring on new staff (a much needed thing) to solve this on the long run.

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

3. While we all might want a game to go on forever, do you have future plans to draw the game to a conclusion - and if so, how far away do you anticipate that to be?

• There are a variety of ways we could draw the game to a conclusion, but we also have a lot of long term plans. We have enough content for at least another 10 years or so. It’s a bold statement, I recognize. Every single year played is one I am happy with.

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

4. What’s one thing you, personally, like about the game and one thing that you find a challenge about it?

• Like: I adore the excitement people get about engaging with the deep lore and slowly peeling away the many layers of secrets.
• Challenge: Having a lore-heavy game has made it so the players feel it is harder to run their own (larger scale) content, something that we intend to address in the next few months by making more lore publicly findable and creating a way for them to find spots to interact with / things they get to hold onto and play with, with less staff interference.

@Pavel said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@Mercutio said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@icanbeyourmuse
I was not aware this was an important information point. That’s easily documented, and I’ll do that right now!

Edit: Completed.

We’re nerds, everything’s an important information point to some of us.

Fair.

A bunch of updates have been made on the site and application rooms to cover some of the information discussed above.

@icanbeyourmuse
I was not aware this was an important information point. That’s easily documented, and I’ll do that right now!

Edit: Completed.

@Istus I’ll look into documenting this more closely!

To give a direct answer, let’s say that the memory is that she had puppies, and that made her happy. Let’s now assume as an extension, they likely adopted an animal in the Isekai world because they remind her of her puppy.

Losing that memory may make Sarah still like the animal, but no longer understand exactly why the animal makes her so happy. Maybe it deteriorates the bond, maybe it doesn’t - that’s something entirely within the player’s hands.

It is important to note that it is the player’s choice which memory they lose, when they lose one as a result of actions.

Edit: Memory files in Application have been updated to expand documentation on this.

@icanbeyourmuse said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

@Mercutio Noting that somewhere on the website could help a bit with the comments about it having a difficult entrance bar.

What does the ‘that’ in this sentence refer to? Just for clarity.

@icanbeyourmuse said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:

Adding a ‘at a glance’ page for people might help too.

I’ll see what I can do. We have a Premise page on the wiki, but what are the important touch factors you believe must exist? No rush of course. I’d just love to learn.

@Jumpscare I’d love to learn more. I admit it’s not the lowest barrier of entry game, but there may be factors that as admin we are blind to here.

@IoleRae I am afraid that may be a different Mercutio. I fear I am not familiar with Storyteller, beyond that the system exists.

@Roz, @Pavel, @icanbeyourmuse - this is indeed PennMUSH.

@Istus
They’re fair points. A lot of the history of MU*dom has garnered ways to do application processes, and it’s not often questioned why certain factors are done.

I’ll just touch on a few items though.

Personality Quiz - we added the Bartle test to help define what Relics you obtain and get a quick idea of the character. As well as helping make sure you end up in the right guild and all that. Help make sure with placement. Background wise, personality is a paragraph - we know it’ll likely change - but it filters out people applying for psychopaths (which doesn’t happen often, but happens more often than we’d like).

Background - we largely are making sure the theme files were read so that the player has a similar ‘understanding of the world’ as the others. Factors like the Viruses that occurred in the background flavor a lot of their experiences and their viewpoints on things, and alliance alignment.

Memories - we actually use these as bargain chips. They serve more purposes than on the face-of-it writing more background. Basically, to ensure there is a factor to ‘dying’ within the MMORPG Isekai genre, the character loses memories. This would influence the character’s personality, and creates a sense of ‘there are only so many times you can really go around getting yourself killed’.

Codex - hard to search through to get what you are looking for - recognized and something we should look at. But most of the important info is just on the website at this point. Beyond that, the codex tracks secret info you might know post-approval. And is largely used as a medium of sharing information with others and garner a sense of discovery.

Edit: Updated on the site & in the application room, so there’s a better understanding of their values.

@Pyrephox Hmm. I think a Practice Dungeon is definitely possible. A practice Duel Bot would be far more difficult. Better documentation on the card battle system is on the way though, in lieu of that.

@Tez & @Third-Eye A hard to forget instance, but I’d love to focus on the game if that’s okay, and not give that guy any more thought.

@Roz
The only memorable ban on our game. The amount of drama on ETO is honestly significantly low - so this really stood out like a sore thumb.

@Istus
Was there a particular part of the application process & information you found particularly hard to absorb? Was the timeline too hard to understand perhaps, or were you having trouble finding all the information you felt you needed to make a character? I’d love to learn more.

@Pyrephox
This is very helpful input, thank you!

We recently had an influx of newbies, which might help some of the concerns in regards to the older dungeons. But we’ll look at other ways to perhaps incentivizing this.

We recently hired two new wonderful staffers to help us do More Stuff More Quickly.

The world’s most popular Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online RPG.

In the wake of the malicious virus known as Pluto’s Kiss, the network of computers we humans became dependent on, ceased to function. Trust was broken. As the world’s channels of communication and technological infrastructure crumbled around them, humanity cried out for an answer.

After eight painful years, the answer came; ALTIMIT. A revolutionary new Operating System designed to be free of all viruses, ALTIMIT was released to the public with an unprecedented level of success. With the ALTIMIT system, the world could begin again.

Bundled with ALTIMIT was this game: Elder Tale Online, a universe apart from our own. It was created from the remnants of old programs long forgotten, previously small-time games overlooked during the original MMO craze merged with the wildly popular Elder Tale. Those fragments of lost worlds became one-third of the foundation of ALTIMIT’s success, and soon, millions of people became engrossed in the world of Elder Tale Online.

And then, millions of people became trapped within that same world, amongst Monsters, Empires, and those original inhabitants known as the ‘People of the Land’.

The day it happened would come to be known as the Apocalypse. A new expansion for Elder Tale Online, consisting of data from more long-forgotten games, brought with it terror arnd confusion as the world those people knew abruptly ceased to exist. Locked in this strange new world by unknown means, Alliances were formed in a desperate struggle to find their place in this world. Formed from this chaos, the New World Alliance seek to protect the Landers and the World from the harmful Waves of Calamity and foreign influences, making this their new home - the Olympus Alliance seek to change the world and adjust it to the growing needs of Adventurers - and the Scale Emblem Alliance seek a way home, fighting some of the hardest battles.

Now, two years later, travel has opened up to a greater world. Daring pioneers finally go beyond Yamato’s borders, while the climbers seeks to push beyond the bounds of the tower’s treshhold. New allies come out of the woodworks, while new enemies are revealed in the form of the Palace Lands. Newly made homes are threatened, and new inventions are being brought to bear. Secrets are revealed, and the dangers grow greater.

This is the story of Elder Tale Online. How will you change the world?

Elder Tale Online MUSH is an Isekai MUSH within a VRMMORPG setting. It features major themes such as Sword Art Online, Log Horizon, and the .Hack series, and others hidden amongst its expansive lore.

Features

Collectable Cards: A unique Card-based Combat, Project, and Rolling system, featuring Classes and interesting Power Paths!
Duty System: A community written system for traversing pre-written adventures with forking paths and card rewards!
Codex System: A special system allowing you to track secrets your character and their Alliance have learned!
Scene System: Automatic logging and posting to our website.
Discord Integration: Channels accessible on the MUSH and Discord, as well as a bot to warn you when a scene you signed up for is about to start!
Community: Between large community Card Projects, its collaborative storytelling and a friendly attitude, the Elder Tale Online community welcomes new and old with open arms.
Quick Approvals: We aim to get people on the grid as fast as possible.
Find Us
Website: https://eldertaleonline.com
Connect: mush.eldertaleonline.com 7705