How did you find AR?

[Avendin]

A friend showed me how to play in '98, and I was on for a few days. I came back in 2000 when I had a sudden urge to google "Abandoned Realms" from some repressed memory. All I remember from my first stint was the arena and attacking Zeus and killing my whole group. The last bit was pretty intentional, too. Haha!

[Rozzy]

My friends showed this to me and I was like wtf is this? I didn't know what was what. All I read was something about a mountain and I don't remember the rest. For the longest time I thought it was the stupidest shit and never understood why anyone would want to play such a dumbass 'game' and watch a bunch of words scroll up and down my friends' screen. Then I tried again about a year later because my friends still played and I still didn't know jack about it but played a little while and my friends helped me out with where to go for what. I had no idea what RP was. I said everything OOC. Then I quit again because I was pissed that I was always naked from dying. Then I tried again about six months later and stuck with it from then on. Finally got a little better. Anyway, that's my story.

[Talisman]

A long time ago AOL had a MUD in open beta, and I decided to try it. Ended up enjoying myself so when they started charging for it I searched for something similar and ended up at the mud connector. I used their advanced search to look for a mud that suited my preferences and tried the first one in the list. It required an application in order to start a character so I gave up and tried the second one and found myself in AR.
ROM was a fairly different system than that AOL mud, and I was totally lost. This was back in the first age, and AR wasn't exactly newbie friendly. I had a blast exploring moria and the shire. Thought sting was the coolest weapon ever. Played acouple characters to level 15 or so without grouping (didn't know how or what the benefits were).
Eventually I got distracted by some other game and forgot all about AR. A good many years later I was bored and found my way back. Been playing off and on ever sense.

[theobserver]

Wayyyyyy back in ol 97 I spotted two friends in the college computer lab frantically slamming the keyboard with a intense look of concentration on their faces. Fearing an exam, i pottered over to see what they were doing. Ended up playing a mud with five friends. I found Ar after the original mud decided to turn gay, purge the player base and implement stupid 'realistic' policies like no player can talk to another who is not in the same room ie no more telling so we all moved on found ourselves on Ar. We lost the server address after the great Khardin crash so I was around 98/99 before I stumbled across it again.

Probably the most exciting thing in those days was ranking in the emerald forest because it was the second biggest death ground next to seringale, frantically spamming where pk every three seconds because it was given back then that youd be pk'ed within five minutes. Now people think they have a god given right to rank and train in peace

[Asyndic]

Hrm, was imming on another mud that was heavy RP and as Imming get's old sometimes, I decided to do a search for a PK oriented mud. Found AR, made a dwarf warrior who got repeatedly gimped at 15 during first age by some evil bastas and left the PK world to those better suited towards it. Finally came back a few years ago after some serious life issues caused me to cease having a social life (My Son's Mom ripped my heart and soul to shreds after I left her.) Ar helped me sink away from the real life issues that were eating at me. I finally got past my rl difficulties and contemplated setting AR aside, however, I had developed some good friends and have pretty much stayed due to them still being around.

[Dark Elf]

A friend showed me, he said hey you like drow. i know of a game where you can be one. I said he was full of shit then he showed me. i saw all the text and said wtf is this, but he help me creat my drow and after that i was hooked.

[Bones V2.0]

I can't say I remember coming here. It's just like I was one day. Weird. I remember playing this back in mid 97, and other than taking a sabatical for most of '00, I've always been here.

It's like The Shining or Solaris or something.

[Flumm]

One of my friends convinced me to try it with 5 days left in the first age. I think one of the reasons I stayed was with everyone with new characters, finding a group to rank with was super easy.

[ssgtortho]

I don't remember exactly when I started play AR- around '97 sometime. Found it on Mud Connector. It was the first mud that cought my eye. I was looking for a D&D type game that I could play anytime i wanted. Landed up with AR. Got most of my high school friends hooked on it. The school ofically banned playing it on school computers. It didn't work . I quit for a while when I was in college, and missed quite a bit. After college, now I play several hours a day.

[Avendin]

Ssgtortho, if you're a first age player, how the HELL do you still sound like a total newbie? Just curious, but in the 6 and a half years you've played, how many level 50s have you had?

[Quiet Wanderer]

I sorta stumbled onto AR. Had heard a friend recommend trying a MUD out, and in the process of searching the MUD Connector for it, found AR and decided to try it. Started out having no idea what in the world I was doing, and now some time later, I wouldn't say i'm too much better off. But it's fun! I've sampeled many other MUDs, and IMM'd at one, and none are anywhere near on par with AR. The staff execels in nearly all areas, and the players actually know how to use english and not: 'Can u hlp me get that sword, plz?'.

Now it seems i've been hooked! AR is fun, addictive, and fairly easy to learn, if you stay alert.

[Clifton]

For me, AR start back in the summer of middle school. It was during the mock class where we just sat around and did nothing that I first met AR. A friend of mine, Xaneduei, had brought in a big ass packed of info and helpfiles all printed out. I read through most of it and went, holy shit, interesting. So I went to look at the webpage. First time, I couldn't find the connect button. Next day, went back, went, alright, I couldn't do anything... he's like, uh... hit the connect button you tard. So I did, made some char with hometown of darkhaven, got powerranked to 12, and died. Started my next char. And been here since. Took a break the next summer to play AOEROR

[Amdorin]

I started off playing this one mud that was rom based, but after you got in 30 hrs of play you had to start playing, and I was SO pissed because it wasn't stated anywhere on the website. Then I kinda when around here an there and stumbled on AR. I found AR through MPOGD and created my first character, an Elf Ranger by the name Laive (I'm VERY partial to rangers as some would think now).

He pretty much got his butt handed to him whenever battle or ranking started, that's when Galhea wasn't Imm'd yet, and he and I think Clesa(or Demni) helped me gain mithril and a fiery dagger (to go rank on Timbers) and I thought I had the most POWERFUL weapon in Thera, Only got to like 30 or 31 with him. But after continuously dying and not knowing where to go, I just got myself stuck in the webs west of Seringale and eventually deleted.

I kinda got lucky I found AR on my second try on a MUD.

[ssgtortho]

[ssgtortho]

[Avendin]

Ah, OK, Ssgtortho.

How about you, Davo? Share your story?

[whatnow]

i started playing AR about 2-3 years ago. I saw two of my friends hunched over a computer and they were staring at a bunch of text. The were messing around with the socials. 'defecate' was one they used often. They were also poking fun at this one NPC: Santa. So i got in on the fun and typed somthing like: kiss santa, later i tried to kill it. And ive been playing ever since...

[marsd]

hmm, my friend showed me a website about 3 or 4 years ago in 99, but I thought wtf shite was it, that was before the new website design changes, so it had the background with 2 warriors in armor fighting. Thought it was cool with the menu, messed around and then forgot about it until a year later where I saw him playing in the computer rooms. Got stuck from then. Stopped for a year later after 1 1/2 years and now I'm back.

[Burzuk]

A couple of you guys are a bit off with your dates--AR was in beta testing during most of '97 IIRC, and our "official" birthday as we usually recount it is November 1, 1997. (Eldorian will correct me on the dates if I'm growing senile in my old age.) You guys were playing something else if you were playing "AR" before then. I had the 2nd post-beta level 50 mortal in early December of 97--the name of the first 50 char is a minor bit of AR trivia that Imms are prohibited from answering. If you remember fighting alongside guys like Tyranius, Elaine, Vanshalar, etc, those were some of the early 50's in early 1998. A bit after that was when everyone was getting mopped on the floor by Tyrone's characters--his cleric Tyrone, his berserker Pernell, his thief Quigley, etc. Can't remember his DK's name (G-something I think--Grisgby?) and some other chars. You haven't truly been schooled until you get your ass kicked by a guy using telnet on a 486. That guy was a machine himself. I last talked to him at the wedding of one of the AR founders about four or five years ago--he was about to finish his law degree at UCLA after retiring from AR, and is probably raking in the dough by now.

As for me, started on CF around '94-'95 or so (including their player purge), and my site kept getting banned from CF from time to time: over a dozen played from there, and half of us were respectable cabal players (multiple cabal leaders and even one Hero Imm) and the other half whom I didn't know IRL were unrepentant troublemakers. They eventually banned the whole lot of us for good, and I don't blame them (and I have no qualms on doing the same type of banning here) since I heard the bad half was pretty bad. Rather than playing around the ban, those of us who were more hardcore and less goofing-around on CF wound up talking together about what we liked and disliked about it, and downloaded the stock ROM code and then experimented with that code to emulate what we liked and leave out what we didn't (and there were some bits of really funky stuff with combat that we didn't like). And thus AR was born. Despite being an early beta tester, I had to reach Immhood the same way everyone else did--playing mortals to 50, and didn't even get accepted for Immhood until late First Age with Burzuk, which was around the time of Orcrist, Quazark, etc.

So despite rubbing elbows IRL with everyone involved with AR's founding (except for Virgil, who was in New Jersey while the rest of us were in North/South California) and putting in lots of hours before the mud even opened, I still didn't get Immed until 1999 or so--we're looking at 2 years or so as a mortal. That's favoritism on AR for you. That's one reason why those looking for some from me are going to be waiting for a long time.

Last time I saw all the OG AR Imps together was at a Labor Day LAN party at Stryth's place when Warcraft 3 had just come out a while back. That was a madhouse--3v3 War3 sprawled across rooms and 4-way Halo around the TV. Nowadays everyone's doing their own thing--kids, careers, you name it. Life happens. And as for mudding for over a decade--I'm a bit of a relic.

[marsd]

o.O I dunno if I should post, but lol. o.O indeed.