Top Ten Least-Preferred Zones of JediMUD

Aug 3, 2006 at 10:04am   QuoteEdit Post by Dank on Aug 3, 2006 at 10:04am MY TEN LEAST FAVORITE ZONES EVER WRITTEN (as compiled by Dank Cysterian, Magnetist, Heretic and Hospitalier of the Temple) First revision: 08/03/2006 Second revision: 10/13/2007 Third revision: 05/29/2008 Fourth revision: 01/08/2009 Fifth revision: 11/05/2020 1. Arcadia Did someone simply use a text editor to cut and paste ten thousand identical rooms into this giant Walmart of immersive role-playing experience? Sheesh. If it weren't simply a sad pasture for perfect remorts who have nowhere to go with the overpopulation of the main towns, Arcadia might make a higher spot on the Worst Zone list. Fix the autoexit flags and round up all of the silly cats and put them in Ciara's God Room. Please, please get rid of the annoying gem signs. Add the Sanctuary City, Hellas or Valhalla wandering mobs and their procs and make this place a semi-interesting one to visit. Author's Note: Okay, to be fair, this zone was intended to be replete with mortal-inspired keeps and shops that offered an opportunity for the playerbase to color their mud world... However, being in the field of entertainment, and being in the profession of teaching creativity, I know that a very few know how to clearly express their creative bent, and fewer still know how to deliver it. The idea of a self-created zone was flawed from the start... it just needs a little push to get going. I think that someone needs to place ALL of the old statues in the city, relocate the statue's god room to Arcadia, spawn the stat in the room and let them wander in the zone to start. Then implement the generous remort policy that I outline somewhere else on these boards. Until this zone gets some attention, it will remain #1, imho. 2. Ofcol Tell me that there's a special proc, interesting tale, or mildly amusing piece of eq that loads here. The fact that I even recall the name of the zone amazes me. Editors Note: Ok, yep, Ofcol did have fifty+ rooms and an assortment of mobs in the original CAW implementation, but for some reason was culled into the current state. I'll be attempting to restore the original zone Raven modified guided by a copy of the 1998 lib/area someone, (Steppin?) was attempting to OLC into a new version of Ofcol/Northern Plains. I'll attempt to continue that effort. It's quite fascinating, with a series of druidic masters, more citizens, a plotline and strange Gygax style creatures. 3. Dwarven Village Fix this zone so that there is a point to the quest. Attach the broken backdoor in the castle to the Goblin Cave's backdoor and I'll remove the zone from my silly list. Author's note: The topaz bracers are still a nice little item that you can get if even a lowbie char after a few dozen runs. 4. Three of Swords A bizarre little hamlet, reads more like a ballad than a zone. You've got all the ingredients of a great story delivered with all the power of a whimper. Ever heard of Nellix? Author's note: After running the place extensively, (and side-stepping the DTs), I think that all this little place needs is more mob generation. Add wandering mobs to the town square (like panicking citizens--all running from the dragon) and many more mobs in the caves. And how about a couple more cool items? 5. Elven Village The best thing about this zone is the way you get into it. I would suggest bringing a recall and using it as soon as you do. An endlessly sorrowful set of room descriptions linked by a eerily Stephen Kingsian story-line ends up just confusing more than it entertains. And for the love of God, could someone please give the dying, burned, little blind kid some water? I get seriously depressed whenever I bump into the little dude. Author's note: Still, it's quite well written and you can make a really cool spell book from the assembly quest featured there. I will attempt to restore Steppin' original vision of the zone, including several mobs and objects that have been commented.  The Fomorian will roam again, perhaps not world wide, but at least in the zone. ZONES that were on the list, but are now removed, for one reason or another: Doom Doom remains the leader of this list, falling in beside the great Florida Swampland, the Mohave Desert and the Vietnam War as a vast pointless waste of time and effort. The design is capricious, the prose sophomoric, the implementation flawed. Years of playerbase complaints have resulted in few bug fixes and zone mods. I'd sooner put an iron rod through my head and wire myself to the front bumper of Dutch's Volkswagen. Just put me in the Great Desert and force me to type E one hundred times. Author's note: Actually, now that I've actually been there and have seen some of the neato equipment that loads in there, I have come to regard the place in a different light. It is not really a typical "prose zone" but a technical challenge that pushes the best players to discover a solution set. Doom is a masterpiece of .zon coding and mob tiered loading, rand zone reset door loads, portals, DT, mob variance, you name it.  It's genius and Anton's rewrite improved it.  It's still the premiere challenge to the best players in the game. Lair of the Cave Fishers Come on. Seriously. Let's change the zone to Lair of the Leisure Suit Larrys and see if attendance rises. Maybe it's a name thing. Author's note: Okay, I'm not sure what crack I was smoking when I posted this. For those of you who are not familiar with the Lair, it's actually just a single room in a larger cave system which, in turn, is part of Rhyoden. Refuge/Asylum Until the zone bugs (broken doors) are fixed, and more is revealed about it, this odd little zone by Gonfalon/Cognitasne will hang out here with the rest of the odd little zones with little purpose but to introduce some curious new equipment. (I do like the idea of introducing zone location clues by adding NPCs with speech procs in the cities. Coolness.) Editor's note: So the zone has been fully implemented, doors and keys fixed, and my only sadness was that the Dr. Who Tardis didn't shadow storm style tp me somewhere else. Perhaps that was the intent Gonfalon had for the device but it's broken. I'll look into fixing it. Emerald Maze Another Cog zone, the maze puzzle is actually pretty neat, and the story and clues are cool... but some of the zone construction is broken and the lack of maxlimits leave a lot of junk around your ankles as you run around fighting troll parts. The !magic zone is just brilliant, and once all the stuff is fixed, including the main constructible (the AC apply is reversed due to the application of the wrong effect), this entry will be but a memory. P.S. What's up with all the butterflies? Editor's note: It's fixed and the multi-tier constructible (Iris Godbane Sword) is highly sought-after. The Trials of Minos I wish this zone were a little bigger (under the island) and a little less like a mini-gauntlet afterthought. I don't really believe there is an underlying story here. The mobs are a bizarre collection, almost a menagerie. The sea is a silly maze (much like most of Cli (Colleges)) with some wicked DTs and mobbies scattered about. Author's Note: At the time of this writing, I haven't mapped all the way into Drakken Ru, so perhaps I'm missing something here. Editor's Note: And I was. Tam did a fab job of rounding out Mahatma's original zone without sterilizing it. Adding the maze and the eventual device woman entrance to the Dark Jedi area was cool. Ru is a must mob for all evil Jedi, and, as we know, the only Jedi to be at Jedi is an evil Jedi. So. The Shadow Rift Welcome to JediMUD! I'm sure a zone that functions pretty much like a death trap would appeal to some twisted, basement-living, post-pubescent, animal torturing BLDR. Not me. Author's note: After running the zone and mapping it, I now see the joy in the sheer Cthulhuian madness of it. For those who know how to run it (get a big C or M and blast away, avoiding rooms with multi-hiddens), it's damned nice xp. Ok, instead, get a striking Sohei or a brain imploding evil Jedi and run it for the chaos band and xp during HH. Floodlands/Great Road Apparently Steppin mistakenly left this bit of script attached to the zone file while he was testing Ravenna or his Straight Path. Just remove a couple of tildes and the meaningless jumble swampy paths will go away. Author's Note: With the addition of some new items and the discovery of the DOOM portal here, this zone is slowly slipping out of this list. There are some neat items to be found here, but the addition of a few more zone hooks will finally take this little "zone corridor" off this list. Criterion used in consideration: 1. Zone Originality - Is the zone faithful to the source it was derived from? If original work, is it well-crafted and interesting? 2. Level of Detail - Does the zone boast unique features or characters? 3. Popularity - What percent of the player base are attracted to the zone? 4. Mobile balance - Is there a range of intra-zone mobile challenges in order to appeal to a broad playerbase, from large groups to solo artists? 5. Equipment balance - Does the zone lure more than one class? 6. Prose - How immersive is the zone prose? Is it well written? 7. Zone consistency - Does the zone feel like it belongs at JediMUD? 8. Key clarity - Did the builder create solvable quests and clearly defined locked paths? 9. Corpse retrieval - Can you readily get your junk back if you die? 10. DT factor - Are the death traps well marked? Was the BLDR just sadistic?

Last Edit: Nov 4, 2020 at 9:57pm by Dank "XYZZY" -- A powerful magic word, ADVENTURE, circa 1977, (and a great way to remember 3D matrix transforms).