A picture is worth a thousand words... but not always better.

I have recently been introduced to the illustrious world of "MUDding" (thanks to Ialie) . She informed me of this apparently "sweet" game called Lusternia.

Now, dear readers, I myself am incredibly fond of all manor of RPG's and MMORPG's. (During my 10-day free trial of World of Warcraft last year, playing that game became slightly higher on my list of priorities than breathing--thank God the two never conflicted with each-other.) So, naturally I became very excited at the apparent depth Lusternia offered (18 races, 12 classes, and over 1500 skills--all draped across an incredibly rich fictional multi-planar universe complete with deep history and all), and delved into the character creation process with much enthusiasm and zest (possibly more zest than Olive Garden, even). I ended up creating a Viscanti in the guild of Geomancers named Samarutaw.

Upon entering the gameworld, my heart initially sank to realize it was all text--not at all what I had expected after the detailed illustrations of all the various races. At first, I saw this as a detriment, but decided to give it a try anyway--if only out of politeness. Oh sweet cheesecake, is that a choice I'm glad I made.

After getting used to the controls (which are similar to a few text-based adventure games I used to play during calculus on my TI-89--commands like typing "n" to go north, or "cast blast fink" to magically attack a dirty fink and "get fink" to pick up said fink's corpse), I found myself deeply immersed in a world that, while invisible to my physical eyes, plays vividly in my mind. The lack of graphics in MUDs, I quickly realized, is what makes them so d--- enjoyable. In games like WoW, there is a specific way the world looks, and that's just the way it is, take it or leave it. With Lusternia and other text-based RPG's you build your own conceptions of the world (this means absolutely FULLY customizable character appearance ;) and is incredibly conductive to a growing imagination. Also, since the cost of maintaining the game is so low, it's free to play forever. Friggin snazzy.

I highly recommend checking out Lusternia, or any good MUD.... You may find yourself pleasantly surprised, if you're into that sort of thing. It will probably eat your soul, though--I've already devoted upwards of 11 hours to this game in just the past two or three days.

Happy Easter to all of you, and may your pouches be filled with gold pieces. Happy questing.