speaking of neobarroso...
I really miss my old MUD, Arcane Nites. That place was great. And I made it even greater. I miss walking around in my beautiful texts, swirling from room to room... I espeically miss Dream of Red Mansions, my most elaborate and careful effort, extremely accurate to the book, with careful writing and a wealth of characters and objects. I miss the city I made up, Panthea, which was full of jokes for anyone who had played merc/diku/envy muds from the late 80s onward, because I put in so many Midgaard references.
I miss the silly all-races strip club. Life is just no good on a MUD without a male and a female and a neuter half-dragon stripper, and then there were the gnome strippers... it rocked. They all had mobprogs so that you could give them gold pieces and they'd do a subversive, hilarious lap dance for you.
I miss the kind of cheesy area I made that was based on The Golden Compass... and the tiny Battlefield of Kurukshetra, based on the climactic scenes of the Mahabharata, with all the characters and the gods above in the clouds. For that one i had to go through the book very carefully and figure out what items the different warriors and gods had, what weapons and flags and emblems... I did Dante's Inferno, with a helpful mobprog-powered Virgil, so you could go slay all the different sinners and loot their stuff, which was mostly weird auras or cursed items with complex effects.
I added dozens and dozens of extra socials and emotes ...
I miss the funny meetings with the other IMMs or immortals. Often stressful... subject to the whim of the main dude in charge, a very interesting guy, but he had some issues with power. I miss being nice to newbies, and settling conflicts, and getting to know the lonely teenage players on there and wondering about their lives; their imaginary lives were interesting, there on the MUD where they were powerful, confident, knowledgeable.
I miss the whole immersive experience of it, creative, social, and escapist... But blogging is better.I used to MUD with Moomin in the baby bjorn, asleep...
If you went there now you would meet my son .. usually around 4.30 am. Reading this post I can't understand why you don't like Terry Pratchett more.
Posted by: Iris | February 15, 2006 at 01:07 AM
You don't like Terry Pratchett??!
Posted by: elswhere | February 15, 2006 at 12:02 PM
My very first online world was a class MOO, and I sometimes still dream in the space -- you entered the looking glass in the top of the clocktower, and spiralled down through interlinked Arthurian legends.
Posted by: Wired | February 15, 2006 at 02:43 PM
MUDding with a baby-in-lap? ME TOO!
Nothing better for whiling away the hours that might otherwise drive a suddenly-at-home mommy mad.
Posted by: Lea | February 16, 2006 at 05:52 AM
Howdy old ANer. Not sure who you were, but best wishes to you.
Posted by: Danik | April 13, 2006 at 12:39 AM
Dude!!! Danik! Who do you think it is... I was the Immortal Maya, Architect of the Gods.
Posted by: badgerbag | April 13, 2006 at 07:35 AM
yo chrono sanji darkseid starblade here wassup hohoho
typed arcane nites and found this bloggies :D
i can be contacted at [email protected]
Posted by: Sanji | April 19, 2006 at 11:09 PM
Wow! Hi Chrono! You were a totally studly mudder. I think you levelled me up when I was a lowly newbie, the half-dragon Tiku.
Posted by: badgerbag | April 19, 2006 at 11:41 PM
hehe wasssupppppppppppppppp tiku!, quit mudding for a while now too lol, how's life w/o mudding?? hehe
Posted by: sanji | June 15, 2006 at 09:14 PM
Hello. I was in a sentimental mood, so I decided to lookup Nitemare and Arcane Nites. I've just learned that the mud is no longer in existence, and that's sad. I've grown tired of playing the graphical online games and thought it might be interesting to go back to the old school text games where it all started. Anyway, I came across this blog in a google search and decided I needed to say hello. I also wanted to thank you for the Golden Compass area. I always wondered where it came from. I remember spending far too many hours exploring and leveling in that area as soon as it was introduced into the game. Even though you call it cheesy, I thought it was great. It was so rich with details, mobs, and deliciously different items. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi and thank you for the memories.
Posted by: Bane | August 16, 2006 at 11:28 AM
Bane! Hi! I remember you well. I'm so glad you liked the Golden Compass area! I loved writing the descriptions of the rooms to try to give a rich impression of physical place in a very few words. It's funny but ... some of my best writing is on that MUD. It means a lot to me that someone appreciated the artistry -- and not just the way you could level up a whole group off of slaying the panserbjorne.
Did you ever trigger the mobprogs? There was one where you could take a balloon trip with the cowboy guy.
best,
"The Immortal Maya, Architect of the Gods"
Posted by: badgerbag | August 16, 2006 at 11:34 AM
I don't recall if I got the mobprogs in the Golden Compass area to work. I know I spent a great deal of time in that Port area trying to make them work. I remember the skycaptain and his balloon, and I remember trying to figure out how to get him to give me a ride, but I don't recall if I was successful. Didn't the bear king also have a mobprog? I seem to recall trying to get several mobprogs in that area to work, but I don't remember how successful I was.
Have you considered writing any more areas for any other muds? I got an itch to try coding again, so I got this crazy idea of perhaps starting my own mud based off of the old Arcane Nites. However, like most of my ideas, it might never come to fruition. I guess we'll have to see.
Posted by: Bane | August 17, 2006 at 09:19 AM
I don't recall if I got the mobprogs in the Golden Compass area to work. I know I spent a great deal of time in that Port area trying to make them work. I remember the skycaptain and his balloon, and I remember trying to figure out how to get him to give me a ride, but I don't recall if I was successful. Didn't the bear king also have a mobprog? I seem to recall trying to get several mobprogs in that area to work, but I don't remember how successful I was.
Have you considered writing any more areas for any other muds? I got an itch to try coding again, so I got this crazy idea of perhaps starting my own mud based off of the old Arcane Nites. However, like most of my ideas, it might never come to fruition. I guess we'll have to see.
Posted by: Bane | August 17, 2006 at 09:20 AM
Whoo, I was looking up Arcane Nites to see if any trace of it was left, and here I find all the older players, not sure if anyone remembers me though, sadly I was on only for the later parts 3 years before the newest change that everyone left at, I wish it would come back
Posted by: Darkedge | October 23, 2006 at 08:04 AM
im playing diablo 2 these days :D.
NO IMMS :D
Posted by: sanji | December 10, 2006 at 09:19 PM
Funny mud with great pplayers and dam ugly admin who would not even have his player database safe a week long :)
Sigh Fried, the HalfDrag cleric pure hero....
Or Riendf, the useless thief..
Posted by: Riendf | December 11, 2006 at 09:13 AM
Found this by accident today when going through old links. I was one of the initial imps (Johnus) WAY back when it was still running on servers at the University of Minnesota - Duluth, and then later at Pacific Hightech in utah. After graduating UMD, i didn't get to play much, so i kinda dropped off and let Ryu do his thang. Still use the names i used there though, and even the "Grey Death" clan that Silence and Zak and i started way back in the day. I play as "Johnus of Grey Death" on Asheron's Call still to this day!
Funniest AN history note: Ryu changed the name from Nitemare to Arcane Nites so that we'd show up on the first page of MUDs on then "fledgling" mudconnector. :D
Posted by: Johnus | December 18, 2006 at 06:02 PM
Ha! Johnus! I think we "met" once but mostly I'd just see your name in the code and on memorial places or shrines.
I do wish that someone would get it running again - If Ryu doesn't want to I don't at all understand why he wouldn't just give out copies of it and let other people split off from it and make new versions and stuff. It pisses me off to have all my work on there just lying unused. Let it live, Sean, aka Ryu! Dude, don't go all mili-paranoid and possessive on it.
Posted by: badgerbag | December 18, 2006 at 08:08 PM
The only thing that I would like to see back is the old school Arcane Nites, before the new sphere stuff and that, I definetly preferred remorting and choosing your hero class to the newer one class and only one. Anyone know Sean's email, maybe I'll email him and ask for the old AN codes and bring it back :p
Posted by: Darkedge | December 28, 2006 at 12:35 AM
[email protected] is sean's old email. :D
Posted by: sanji | February 07, 2007 at 08:27 AM
Another of Ryu's old email addresses is [email protected] but I'm not sure if it's still in use. If anyone could procure the code, I'd love to help run it. I've been looking all over for that remort system we had, but I can't seem to find any remnants of it anywhere. Hmmm, if I had the code, the only major changes I'd make would be to remove the 15k hp/mana cap and make psionicist an actual class instead of a random special ability.
Posted by: Bane | April 15, 2007 at 12:30 AM
Look at all my old buddies, remanissing about the good old AN days. I myself was bored.. typed in Arcane Nites on google to see what i could come up with, and BAM here I am. To all of you who I remember off top of my head.. Like Darkedge, whats up my old friend. As well as Maya, my old immortal pal. I was the big ass psionic thief, Quinton. Not to be confused with that pesky cleric QuintIn.
Anyways I just wanted to say whats up to you all, I hope all is well in life. Please post back if the old AN code pops up somewher for playing. Wouldn't mind flexin my old AN skilllsss :)
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | May 31, 2007 at 06:05 PM
How cool! Hi Quinton! Yes I remember you!! You were tough!
Wonder what happened to Spirokai, remember him? Now there was an interesting guy.
*hop*
Posted by: badgerbag | May 31, 2007 at 06:31 PM
Spirokai... that name rings a bell but i cant recall for the life of me! Oh damn, didnt even notice Chrono and Johnus were around here. Wats up you old bastards?!?!? Now bane.... I know that name... Could that be the old Giant Warrior known as BLADEN?!?!? I think it is if memory serves me right. Many of battles we have had my old friends! Heh, I know there is a copy of the OLD arcane nites code out there somewhere... Im talkin the OLD code, with half-dragons as a race, and where Psionosists were decided by level 3. I actually got to log into it and check it out about year in half ago. Maybe I can poke around and find the old buddy who has it. See if he can convince Ryu to let us bring it back!
Who knows though... It was good to see some of these old faces... For a while there i have been soiling myself with Vampire War's muds... all Pk wolfpaw hosted.... its just not the SAME! No real challenging PK like old school Arcane Nites with looting at its best!
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | May 31, 2007 at 08:44 PM
P.S. I just came accross the old Imp Maynard, aka Exnilio on some RPG forum today. All these arcane nites oldbies poppin out the woodwork...
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | June 01, 2007 at 06:09 PM
Huhaha I check this blogger once a while see what's up :D, yup I am still alive Q ;)
Arcane nites PK was the best.. :D always got that blood pumping rush action... cant get that anywhere else..
Imagine 5 PKS hunting you ;)
DAMN I AM OLD :D
Sanji/Chrono/Darkseid... and my other 100s chars ;)
Posted by: sanji | June 01, 2007 at 09:55 PM
Huhaha I check this blogger once a while see what's up :D, yup I am still alive Q ;)
Arcane nites PK was the best.. :D always got that blood pumping rush action... cant get that anywhere else..
Imagine 5 PKS hunting you ;)
DAMN I AM OLD :D
Sanji/Chrono/Darkseid... and my other 100s chars ;)
Posted by: sanji | June 01, 2007 at 09:55 PM
Q! It's good to see you pop around, I remember you, and Havok teaching me all the basics to pk and what kind of gear I needed, man, you helped all my alts out. I agree pk isn't the same on other muds, not even good ones. If you could bring back the old AN, because I tried Sean's emails and one isn't working and haven't gotten a reponse from the other one, I would love to come back to pre-spheres and bs and hang out with everyone again.
Posted by: Darkedge | June 03, 2007 at 02:14 AM
HHAHAHAHA, SON OF A BITCH! For so many fuggin years i wondered who Darkseid was... Damn you CHRONO!!!! LOL, should have fuggin figured :P.
Darkedge, it's good to hear from you brutha. Fuck, if i could bring back AN, I would! I dont even have active internet at my house right now, but i'd get it for some AN. :P But, a little birdy told me that Sean's hotmail email address is still active. So that would prolly be the best point to get ahold of em. I dunno though, im here at work and gotta actually do some work. I will be checkin in from time to time to say whats up and what not. Take it easy guys and gals.
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | June 04, 2007 at 04:08 PM
well after arcane 2 gone and remade on AN3, my other powerful character was Yagyuu :D, went to level 4000?? fuck i dont remember lol. My Yahoo messenger has Sarah.. sean's wife in RL, but i havent seen her for a long time.
Posted by: sanji | June 04, 2007 at 08:44 PM
We should all just post up at Sean's house picketing with signs and all! "HELL NO WE WONT GO! BRING A-N BACK SO WE CAN GROW"
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | June 04, 2007 at 09:11 PM
Hey guys, it's that "pesky cleric Quintin" (THANKS QUINTON) :) Some may of known me as Arawn as well. I just wanted to say Hi and mention that I do miss AN. I would love to see AN come back. I am a coder for the devil now but would love to help code if something did turn back up again :) Feel free to email me at [email protected] if anything is uncovered!
Hope you all are doing well!
Cheers,
Chris
Posted by: mukkel | June 12, 2007 at 06:58 PM
Oh damn! LOL, sup Q 2! or maybe id be Q 2, but either way. Good to hear from you too brother! That's too funny you come poking around shortly after I said that about you. Hahaha, ahh well just keeping my eye on this blog to see if something pops up. Take it easy
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | June 13, 2007 at 03:42 PM
Hey all,
I will say, I happened to be at work and something came up that made me think about the MUD. I decided to do a quick google and came across this Blog. All I know is that the games of old had so much more depth and promoted far more person-to-person relationships compared to the games like World of Warcraft/etc. I know I learned a lot about how to lead by the failings I had as the IMP of Nitemare. "Ruling" with an iron fist basically was the worst thing that I could have possibly done. Empowering people to do their best comes from giving them the space to fall on their face and eventually rise to the occasion. The level of effort put into that game was substantial and was really a community effort based on the work and imagination of the players, imms, and imps. That is why Nitemare/Arcane Nites was a great game. It is just too bad that games like that just don't exist any longer.
Either way, drop me a line some time. My email address is [email protected] and while I don't check my email non-stop, I check it enough that I should respond fairly quickly.
If someone wants the code and areas, I may have them hiding around somewhere. After all, I am not using them for anything atm and if someone can make sense of the useless crap I wrote, more power to them. :P
FYI, if any of you plays World of Warcraft, I am on the Garona server (alliance side) with the name Cerdia. Sorcha also plays on there. Between a few friends, we run the guild Zoi Dia Thanatos (Life through Death). I would love to catch up with any of you guys.
- Sean (Ryu/Cynthal)
Posted by: Sean (Ryu) | June 15, 2007 at 10:25 AM
Did I ever tell you guys.. that Sean is the SHIT. That very posting right there is going to prompt me to get some at home internet ASAP.
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | June 15, 2007 at 05:51 PM
Wow, the very man who changed my gaming life actually came to speak with us, I'm so touched. I mean who would ever think that this kind of game would give you friends you remember for years. I actually play WoW too, but man, Arcane Nites was 100%, I better mail and see if we can get it going again. And Q, you are banned from protesting now!
Posted by: Darkedge | June 16, 2007 at 07:24 AM
Sean how cool! Did I hear y'all had a kid ? I can't remember. I would certainly love a copy of it all and even if someone else doesn't put up a version, I could have it running on my own machine so I can occasionally show off some areas 8-) I wished I had them a couple of years ago for my literary theory class when we talked about the "ludic nature of interactive fiction."
Posted by: badgerbag | June 16, 2007 at 02:47 PM
Hey all,
Lovable psionic monk-ey Dain here :) Some from Nitemare days may remember me more as Harold. (Brother to Quintin/Arawn) He told me that he found a blog and I had to look it up. Nice to see a ton of familiar names out there. If there is a revival, be sure to let me know. [email protected] If peeps be playin WoW, I play on Crushridge and Laughing Skull. Send me a mail if you wanna play ;).
Dain/Harold/Nimble/Amilian/etc...
Posted by: Dain | June 16, 2007 at 11:24 PM
Wow, Dain too!
But where are Morr and Stomp? 8-)
Posted by: badgerbag | June 17, 2007 at 12:17 AM
Holy Giant-Monk-Dain batman! Long time sense i've seen that name! Infact... I recall our last run in. I used a heavily exploited trip bug to bring down your monstrous ass.... Bwahahahahah! Sorry, just had to bring that back up cuz it popped in memory! :) Good to see you pokin your head in brutha, and I hope all is well.
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | June 19, 2007 at 03:29 PM
Whatup all...
Reporting in.
Sherman, Moefiend, Raakphan et al.
Posted by: Raak | June 25, 2007 at 04:36 PM
AN4 is on the work?? ;)
anyone taking over? hehehe
Posted by: Chrono | June 26, 2007 at 08:27 PM
Man, I would love to run it my damn self.. Just have a couple..... small bumps in the road... Like bump 1, no at home internet right now... Bump 2, I dont know the first thing about coding, let alone just hosting the mud myself! Pllllzzzz someone bring it back so something will force me to get at home internet!!!! :)
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | June 26, 2007 at 09:09 PM
I had great fun leveling up with my giant warrior, and even though I went PK past the heyday of AN pk, I had a blast pking too. I think I had the worst character combo of any pk characters I knew (giant dru/cle/war hero warrior), but I didn't have the heart or patience to make a new character, and honestly, the challenge just made pk that much more fun. I had to run away and hide a lot, and got killed constantly, but I had a killer corkscrew attack that it was great to unleash on others (especially quinton...much love, bro ;) )
I haven't MUDed in ages and have stopped playing video games too...the stress of college doesn't allow much time for that; but if someone manages to bring AN back up (the remort style AN please...never got into the whole spheres mud) I will definitely have to check it out for old time's sake. I'll send an e-mail to Ryu too and try to get the code, maybe play around with it a bit, see if I could host it...I get a free website with my Stanford account, but no promises...
oh, and I will agree, the golden compass area was awesome!
Posted by: treebeard | June 30, 2007 at 05:10 PM
Hahaha! What is up Treebeard my old Giant friend! Good to hear your everything is well with you. And man, we sure have had some battles... Even though I think I won them all! Bwahahahaha, sorry just gloating over my victories! :). Anyways, its great to see more and more old names popping into this blog. I think we all owe Maya a big hug and a thank you for putting together something that drew all these old names together! Even if it was for simply stating the sentence "I really miss my old MUD, Arcane Nites." We all owe her some thanks, because without this blog, shit who knows if we woulda ever got in touch with Ryu/Sean and gotten the chance to bring Arcane Nites back in full affect. Maya, we love you!!!! XOXOXOXOXOXO
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | July 02, 2007 at 03:05 PM
P.S. If anyone wants to get ahold of me outside this blog, you can reach me at [email protected] or www.myspace.com/lilcrazytrey. Stop in and say whats up, see what your boy has been up to all these year!
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | July 02, 2007 at 03:20 PM
This is Anubis !! :P
http://www.myspace.com/anubisiv
Holla! :P Miss the mud. Add me on myspace and send me your old AN alias so I know who you guys are :P
Posted by: Eddie J. Drummond IV | July 05, 2007 at 06:05 PM
Dang! I forget to visit for a few months, and I read that I've missed Ryu again! Sean, I'm glad you stumbled across this blog. Guess what? I don't have the long hair in braids or the fu-man-chu anymore like the last time we got together in Duluth. Wow, when was that, 5-6 years ago? How's the family doing? Still liking it out east? I'm thinking of applying for grad schools soon for either genetic, stem cell, or therapeutic cloning research; I'll go wherever a school will take me. I don't know much about the eastern part of the US; got anything like that out there?
Maya, thank you for running this blog for us to meet at. You're the one responsible for bringing us back together =) Hello to everyone who's found this blog since my last post. There are some familiar names in the bunch, but a simple hello will hopefully suffice for all.
Hmmm, aside from my irritating Bane character, I used to be part of the old UMD crew and pk with Bandit alongside of Widowmaker and Punjab (and occasionally Bolter/Carnage). I got better at pkilling, but my forte was always leveling and finding the good equipment.
Did you guys know I found a way to level a character through remorts and part-way through hero in a day without the aid of an Imm? Of course, I got jarred/slayed/purged/demoted 100 levels for it. Wasn't my fault the mobs kept their full XP value when they zapped themselves down to 1 hp left while being charmed and ordered to wear equipment against their alignment. Also wasn't my fault that my lowbie would gain 10-15 levels off each kill like that.
Talk again,
Noland
Posted by: Bane | July 06, 2007 at 01:38 AM
Sean's a jerk! If you remember me, then I most likely pk'd you at one point. Sean cough up the code to Noland so he stops bugging me.
Love you Guys.
Posted by: Widowmaker | July 09, 2007 at 07:41 PM
WIDOWMAKER!!!! You old dawg! Nah I never knew you as the Player, but I knew you as the Immortal. Infact for a while there, I was your lil assassin. Alot of my eq was spider based after dealing with you. Even though I was a half elf, you thought i was a drow for the longest time... Bwahaha, I know you remember me :)
~Quinton Vha'Sokan (aka Trey)
Posted by: Quinton Vha'Sokan | July 09, 2007 at 07:59 PM