Astaria

Astaria is a LPMud based on the TMI-2 Mudlib and the MudOS driver. Founded in late 1994, it is a mud with a rich history and a strong playerbase. We have chosen the MUD Astaria as our case study of online games as we feel that MUDs, being one of the oldest and most established forms of online gaming, would be able to truly reflect the status of online gaming today and also because Astaria is a MUD played by 2 of our site administrators.

Astaria can be classified broadly as a "hack and slash" MUD, where players would create a character for themselves and advance themselves in levels by killing monsters and making themselves more powerful in the process. Like most other muds of this genre, characters would be able to choose a profession (called a guild in Astaria) and gain guild specific powers as they advance themselves in levels, making the game more interesting by allowing players to choose the guild that they would like to play.

Besides killing monsters, however, players also spend much of their time chatting with the friends that they have made online. Features such as channels and tells (which allow players to send messages over long distances) have allowed for this. As such, Astaria would fit into the category of an "Adventure Mud" as defined in the section "What is Online Gaming".

Astaria has a rather large player base, accumulated over its six years of existence and at peak time, it houses over a hundred players at a time, all playing the game together. As this is an American based MUD, most of its players come from the United States. However, the MUD has spread to other parts of the world as well and boasts players from Singapore, Russia, Australia and Japan as well, to name a few.

What makes Astaria such a popular MUD is its unique blend of Roleplay. The staff of this MUD do not strictly enforce a certain type of roleplay on its players, allowing them to instead develop their characters at their own pace and choice. Players would thus be able to create a character that they can call their own instead of being forced into a stereotyped shell like most online games now do. This would thus allow for hundreds of unique characters to adventure the realm together, making the place more interesting and enjoyable for its players.

Another aspect of Astaria that attracts its players to come back for more is its unique form of gameplay. The staff at Astaria devised its own system of advancing in the ranks of their guild, giving players a more refreshing way to play the game and allowing them to be free of the drudgery of playing the same type of game over and over. This gives Astaria an edge over other MUDs, which usually employ the same, boring rules and gameplay rules, and even some graphical games.

Finally, unlike many other games, Astaria restricts Player Killing (PK) instead of promoting it. This creates a more peaceful environment for the players and discourages people who PK to make others miserable from playing the MUD, thus enhancing the game for its players.

All in all, Astaria has managed to successfully combine many unique aspects to produce a wonderful and popular MUD and can be said to be an extremely successful online game.