Avalon, the Legend Lives

Avalon opened in 1989 which must make it one of the oldest MUDs still in operation. What’s even more remarkable is that it’s a commercial game with a subscription model that remains successful in an age of graphical MMORPGs and the subscription behemoth that is World of Warcraft.

I’ve played Avalon before, and indeed it was the inspiration behind some of the systems that I later decided to incorporate into Maiden Desmodus, so it’s fair to say that I have a little bit of a bias towards this style of game.

However it’s been years since I last played so I thought it would be a good time to create a new character and see how the game has changed, if at all.

Character Creation

Avalon doesn’t really do character creation. You pick your name, password and sex and then it’s into the game world proper. There are no races and your class is chosen later once you join a guild. The closest to a race is your character’s city affiliation which is decided for you at random when you first enter the game.

I like this system because it doesn’t force you into making a choice that you aren’t going to fully understand at this stage, however it can be frustrating if you want to play with a friend as there’s no guarantee you’ll end up in the same place.

Mud School

After character creation you’re dropped into the centre of one of the four cities where a friendly NPC guide approaches and offers to enroll you into the local mud school (or academy, institute or college depending on which city you start in). Here you are given a series of mini-quests designed to teach basic commands and give an introduction to the game world.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that Avalon is a very “wordy” game with long and detailed room descriptions. You are directed to help files but the introduction doesn’t overwhelm with long lists of files to read. The help system is comprehensive but the functionality is very basic for example there is no search facility and no alternatives are suggested if no file matches your keyword.

This novice training is really little more than a scripted sequence of events where you enter commands when prompted. You don’t have to think much for yourself and you get given plenty of direction on what to do. There’s no option to vary the pace of the introduction and I found that in places the pauses seemed either too long or too short.

Mud School, again!

Once you complete your novice training you are then enrolled in your city school which offers more tasks but with much less guidance than before. This was the point where I felt that I was actually playing the game rather than just reading a scripted tutorial which required occasional input.

There is no in game map, but there is a FIND command that makes it very easy to get around while completing the school tasks.

The tasks here are designed to give you an idea of the class system in Avalon by granting your character temporary access to a handful of specialist class abilities with which to complete each task. This doesn’t really work in my opinion as the abilities you get are often not relevant to the task and are drawn from several different classes.

For example, one task has you travel around the land to different villages either collecting tithes or exorcising evil spirits. Now if you are familiar with other MUDs or RPGs you might think this related to some kind of priest or healer class, but Avalon doesn’t really have anything like that. The abilities you get to help you accomplish this task are instead from the music, fatalism, spiritualism and healing skills which are drawn from the bard, seer and animist classes respectively. These classes are all quite distinct from one another and none of them feels much of a match for the task itself.

If the aim is to introduce new players to the specialist classes then it would be better to create tasks that are linked to a single class rather than try to cover a bit of everything. I certainly didn’t think that the flavour of the bard, seer or animist classes came through in the exorcism and tithe collecting task.

New character integration

One key feature of the Avalon new player introduction is that it all takes place within the main game world without any instancing. This means new players can begin to familiarise themselves with the game environment and interact with other players right from the start.

This is a double edged sword of course, and while new characters have some protections it’s still possible that other players may interfere with your character progress, whether intentionally or not.

For example, while travelling through another city as part of a school task my character fell into a magical pit that had been created by another PC and was unable to get out unaided. It’s possible to see these events as opportunity for interaction and adventure of course, but it will inevitably lead to some players quitting in frustration.

Guilds and Cities

It took me a couple of hours of played time to complete the novice and school parts of the game, though you could do it faster or slower of course. Once you finish in the school your next decision is which guild to join.

Joining a guild in Avalon grants your PC some specialist skills and can be seen as the equivalent of a class choice in other games. Most classes are represented by guilds in each city but there are some exceptions. Guilds may also be closed to new members which means that you need to find a PC guild member to induct you, otherwise you can join automatically.

If you wish to change cities, either to have access to your preferred guild or perhaps to play with a friend, you also need to ask a PC with the correct privileges to grant new citizenship. Some automated way to change cities for new characters would be a useful addition here.

Population

I played at what I would consider both peak and off-peak times and saw from around 15 to 50+ players online at any one time, including several staff members. Most people I spoke to were responsive and helpful, though a few appeared to be idle.

Avalon’s character progression system is time based so the more you play the faster your character progresses, which does unfortunately reward idling although I believe it’s against policy to do so.

The system could certainly benefit from some kind of taper to lessen the advantage from being logged in 24/7 and also to better reward those who can play regularly but only for short periods.

Charging Model

Avalon is a subscription game and on graduating the introductory school I had 10 hours of free play time remaining. The current subscription rate is $7.50 month. Other players can tell at a glance if your character is subscribed or not, and I found that while friendly some were less likely to offer material help to a character without a subscription.

It’s possible to purchase additional “lessons” (these are the skill progression currency gained over time played) but other than that there are no additional pay for perks options such as housing, pets or powerful artifacts as found in games by Iron Realms and others.

This does create a very different game atmosphere when compared to Iron Realms games, for example. They may have very similarly structured player run guilds and cities, but compared with Avalon I’ve found the players there to be far more stand-offish and less likely to help a new player out.

This attitude may be because on IRE games new characters can be created at no cost but on Avalon a newly subscribed character represents a player who has made a financial commitment and is therefore taken more seriously by other players.

Conclusions

I’ve just given my first impressions on the new player introduction but it’s immediately obvious that this is a rich and detailed world. Avalon is a quality product and a cut above your average MUD, as one would rightly expect from a commercial subscription supported game.

If you have an interest in MUDs I’d definitely recommend giving Avalon a try, if only to see an approach that is distinctly non-Diku and non-Tiny in origin. It was also a big influence on Achaea and by extension the other IRE games so if you’ve played those you might enjoy what Avalon has to offer.