For a game that needs players, it's crazy to me how hostile Imperian is to old players coming back. Especially those who have been out years ago.
For context, I started playing Imperian when it got, when Ithaqua was not even yet a village. I played for several years across all IRE games, and just got back now after maybe 7 years of not touching muds at all. I restarted my characters in Aetolia and Imperian. The experience couldn't be farther from each other.
In Aetolia, between welcomeback and Sunder, I'm back to bashing in 30mins.
In Imperian, I don't even have a health vial, and I had to remember how to vermin because I didn't have gold.
In both instances, I never talked to anyone.
Key thoughts:
- Need a WelcomeBack Type of Package - Fairly explainatory. If I wake up after 2 RL years of not playing, I should be incentivized to play again when I log in. Right now, we're disincentivizing returns by putting a fairly steep cognitive load and time barrier to get back into playing normally.
- Need a better way to bash - Imperian is fairly complex. In Aetolia, I got started bashing again regularly because of Sunder. In Imperian, I have to type in all my commands and figure out Mudlet again to code all my triggers/scripts etc. Very tedious. It was a great way to spend time 12 years ago, but now though, I don't want to spend 3 hours working on a system only to play for 30mins.
That's all I can think of right now.
I really liked this game and I want to play it again. Stop making it hard to do so.