Some Memories from Wireplay MUD 1997-99

I started playing MUD2 in December 1997, just after having found out about Wireplay a while earlier. Like so many other players I discovered MUD2 purely by accident having really only come to WP to play other games. Despite being one of the few, I always loved text adventures over graphical games. I hated it when they started to lose favour with publishers - they became scarcer and scarcer until eventually only shareware authors were writing new ones (but that's another story)... ... A MUD on the other hand was something that I'd never played until I found WP, I had always longed for a multi-player text game. I was curious if a text adventure would work online and as it was available free I just knew I had to play it!

The first few games of MUD2 reminded me of Twin Kingdom Valley that I'd played on my Spectrum so many years ago - hostile and strange wandering mobiles, clues on paintings, the inn at the end of the road, and a vast land that left you wandering around lost looking for treasure in your goal for immortality. The Land at first was a very strange and bewildering place, the other mortals even more so ... Some things they did were puzzling and only became clearer after some time. Just why did they keep shouting "Icons anyone? ..... ICONS?????" and why steal my worthless bit of coal when instead they could of nicked the 100 pts ruby?

I had many characters at first which all met a swift death due to inexperience! My first "main" character was Liouxise (the name itself being a play on Siouxsie as I was a Banshees fan at the time.) My other two personas became Saffron, and of course Severina.

The first other people I noticed were the inseparable team of Wdi and Gdn who were always there. They were usually hunting the notorious PK known as Thwomp! Another PK was Lestat, probably the more infamous at the time (better known to most as "someone is about to attack you") He was one of the quickest PK's I'd ever seen.

Then there was Dunbad the Quixotic, with his bizarre sailor-spiel! He would often team up with me to help me rid The Land of PK's (or pirates as he called them!) He was one of those players that could come in mid-set with no kit yet easily turn the tables in a fight. I remember thinking he was one of the coolest role-played characters I'd ever seen on mud, never fell out of character once.

There was Skunk who was the first mage I ever saw. He was another player I'd often team up with, but more on the exploring side. Things didn't always go to plan though like when we first tried to do the blizzard and later ended up getting killed by the mammoth! I remember when I was low on stamina and he tipped me off about Eviledna sneaking into the set minutes before she summoned me to the NE tomb to my near death (fortunately managed to flee on 7 stamina). But after a while Skunk vanished and never returned ...

Quests at the time were rare. I remember Kyric's Elf Quest which was cool, but then hearing other people shouting out they hated it because they couldn't get the coal easily! I remember lots of the wizzes here when they were still mortal ... I even remember a mortal Karya (accidently) blowing me up in Cat's Manse quest (but instant death is often common in Cat's quests anyway - no offence Cat ;)

I left Wireplay sometime around mid '99 to do other things ... After several years, curiosity of what happened to MUD2 got the better of me, so I decided to find out. I found about Phoenix and thought I would give it just another few games ... It seemed to have changed loads. The number of quests looked to have tripled and new areas had been added. The bad side of WP seemed to have gone too - the community is smaller, but the people there are sounder, just like it was at the start of WP. Having played on and off for the past few months I've decided I'll just give it a few more games ...!!!

See you in The Land!

Image Copyright Jen Dolan