Amazing mud... Well coded, n not just smooth n pleasing for the eyes (also they have blind support for an even easier on the eyes {?fingers?} approach) but also complex enough to not get bored with n simple enough to not get lost in too many options... Large active player base, many active imps/builders/immortals, n they are actually helpful - even the players... Well designed crafting/modifications, mob creation, and abilities... An excellent help library and skill tree work-up, both on the web-site and in-game... Awesome area based quests to help with leveling, some more complex n riddle-like than others for those that truly enjoy puzzles (I tend to just get angry n ask for help, but that's just me...). Just an all-round well thought out and implemented design... Its a familiar and yet different mud... At first I thought the multi-classing required idea seemed weird but once I got into it the diversity became clear... basically you are defined by your primary and secondary classes but eventually you will have levels in every class... and while no race choices and only 5 class choices (soon to be 6 when druid is implemented) may seem very limited to some (myself included) but skill choices, class order, and play-style actually lead to diverse characters... While this mud may not be for everyone, as it caters to the long-term, its my new favorite mud... I'm looking forward to the PK aspects because from what I've seen its skill that sets people apart and not unique r hard to find gear like most PK muds out there... but don't take my word for it check it out for yourself... alteraeon.com 3000 www.alteraeon.com

Let me start off by saying that I am a person who likes sifting through MUD reviews for those that are really interesting and actually informational. Not the 'This mud is not like all the rest' or simply 'This mud is great.' So if I am righting a review I want it to be very well written. Both for the enjoyment of the reader and to present an accurate and well-described picture of what I happily call my 'Home Away From Actual Home.' Alter Aeon is a Fanticy based mud that has been well taken care of, well tended to and loved by it's many players and staff like a loved garden. These great people are not only dedicated to turning out area after area, but they actually show signs of life, interacting with the rest of the world. Speaking of gardens, the hard working coder, Dentin (no, it's not that stuff in your teeth... He's the wonderful coder of Alter Aeon!) is activally taking ideas and working to add the sixth class to the currently five-classed system, druid. At the moment you are able to play as a couragious warrior or savage barbarian, unholy priest or devoted cleric, shadowy pickpocket or skilled ninja, flame-throwing pyromancer or ice-channeling cryomancer, blood magic specialist or undead master... or a mish mash of all! And soon, a druid, a true elementalist who tames and uses the forces of nature rather than ripping the raw mana from outer planes shall be ready! Even now you can pitch in and make a valuable contribution to the soon to come class. There's even a few articles about magic mechanics and other such interestingly trivial things in the expansive website. Alter Aeon, apart from being a beautifully described mud, with equal attention to the slicing and dicing, bashing and slashing aspect and clever puzzles, fiendish clues parts. With truly unique spells and skills that differentiate one class from the other, but the chance to blend one with the other as you please, AA truly allows for player customization while keeping some realism. You won't bee seeing any magic-wielding assassens with 9 dexterity here. Alter aeon offers a varied selection of compatible clients, including one made by none other than our truly savi coder, Dentin. It's even got support for blind players, with a mush-z client that includes an excellent soundpack. The Dclient (as the custome Alter Aeon client is known) supports MSP and has a pretty extensive soundpack of its own. Long are gone the days of pointless slaughter and simple quests brave adventurer! This fine new world sits like the next unopened chest, awaiting your searching hands! Filled with the spoils of battle, yet full of sneakally designed traps! Such as the fact that the easternmost gem in the box was coated in a swarm of microscopic karnivorous mushroom spores....

If you are looking for a mud rampant with hypocrisy, an elitist group of coders and builders and where money determines the quality of your character, look no further; Alter Aeon is the mud for you. First, I would like to concentrate on the money aspect as that is what most people seem to care about in terms of muds. Alter Aeon is not considered a pay-to-play mud, but it may as well be, and with the prices for perks, you’d better have some good income flowing in. Lets take a quick look at what things cost and their relevance. Storage for one year: $25. One weightless, $25. One transfer of a character, $20. Change of spell colors (does nothing but changes the colors you (and possibly others see), $10 each. One practice, $2.5. Get out of death free card, $2. These fees are insanely exorbitant and yet people still pay them. A weightless is a rather large feature you cannot do without; most players have multiple sets of equipment they wear; mages and clerics have a cast set, warriors have a hit set. Everyone has a regen set, then a quantity of saves, which help protect you from mobs which do a specific type of damage, among a few more popular sets. A weightless gives you a place to put all of these sets and weighs nothing. Of course if the four eqset slots aren’t enough for you, you may also purchase more. This means that $25 is pretty much a mandatory cost for any character that is mid-level because they will have multiple sets of eq to juggle and all that weight in a normal container adds up incredibly fast. This is rather inconvenient because it means that your encumbrance shoots through the roof and you run out of mp much much easier than usual. A storage is also a rather nice convenience because it allows you to store this vast amount of eq you will most likely accumulate somewhere, but that again costs money. If you should also wish to purchase practices, they cost you about $2.5 per practice. Dentin also very kindly offers a level 1 character, whose stats are fully maxed for $2000, which he says is actually a discount. This provides some idea of how much it costs to train your stats to 25, which is the maximum they can be trained to. For example, it currently costs me 14 practices to train one stat and 20 to train another. This means that I would spend $85 to increase two attributes. Dentin has also recently introduced get out of death free cards; for those characters who suck at life and die constantly, you have to buy these to keep your experience. This is the most direct way to actually improve your character. When you die, you lose up to 10 million experience. A get out of death free card prevents this experience loss. Now there is an alternative to buying credits. can... Read More

Alter Aeon is a very well coded mud. The character development offers a great deal of balance while still affording for some uniqueness of character. The quests even have some great story lines to them and blend into new areas very well. I was greatly impressed with the number of blind players you find in this mud. Myself being sighted I can't say myself how well coded it is for the blind to be able to enjoy the mud but all the feedback from blind players I received while playing was quite high. Problem: It's really sad that an incredibly well coded and map developed mud tends to have over inflated ego's in it's staff. A problem I know I'm by far not the first to encounter in the realm of mudders. Generally I find that it is possible to address abuses of staff power with the muds owner. However, it was made quite clear to me by Dentin that not only was he not even going to discuss what had taken place but that he was only going to further the insult by immediately saying that I must have done something stupid. In short I disagreed with Lokar and for doing so he said I must either be stupid or a liar in regards to some mechanics of the mud. I suppose it could be considered stupid of me to think that if staff can speak that way to me that I could speak a little more freely with them. I asked 'Do you still need your mommy to hold your hand when you go to the bathroom?' and for that I was punished by Lokar and told by Dentin via mudmail later, without having even discussed it with me or even knowing the facts of the situation (He frankly stated 'I have no idea what you are talking about') immediately said I must have done something stupid. So the long and the short is simply mechanically it's a great mud, but don't disagree with any of the staff if you don't want to get insulted repeatedly and certainly don't try to use humor with them to defuse the situation. PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK

I wish to pass on an online game that the blind can play. It is a text based role playing game and best of all, its free. I know that there must be many out there that like me, enjoyed playing a rpg in one form or another. Well after going blind I thought those days were over till I found Alter Aeon. Its one place that ones blindness doesn't matter and you can just have fun. Alter Aeon is an on-line text based game where people from around the globe can get together and interact in a huge virtual world. The game interface has been modified to support accessibility for people with vision impairment. I am an immortal, builder, player and have been blind for 9 years. I have been playing the game for over 7 years now. The game has come a long way and the creator has gone out of his way to make the game as blind friendly as he can. Are you a mage, a wizard, a cleric, a warrior or a thief at heart? Do you like to hunt and kill dragons? Demons? Angels? Dwarves? Elves? Do you like to take on complicated and puzzling quests? Do you like to sneak up behind an enemy and slide your dagger into their back? Do you like to cast powerful spells and watch your enemies crumble at your feet? Do you just like to stand back and heal those that are injured? Are you the brave, strong warrior that loves to rescue that damsel in distress? Do you like to chat to people from all over the world? If you have answered yes to any or all of the above. Then, come and check out Alter Aeon!

Alter Aeon has been around for awhile, and I have played on it for a several years. It is a multi classing mud, which allows the player to level in mage, thief, warrior or cleric in any combination they chose (new classes coming soon!). There are a huge array of skills and spells to chose from for each class. Each skill or spell comes in handy in unique situations you will encounter as you explore the huge world (39000 rooms) that is Alter Aeon. There is a temporary player killing system that you can register for or enter an arena to test your mettle against other players. Player killing is purely voluntary and should a player chose not to, they will be perfectly safe from other players. Players often group together, each providing their own expertise as hitters, tanks, or healers to form large groups to take down big monsters and run equipment. One of my favorite attributes of the game is the room that your character has to grow and become more powerful. You can currently level to 34 in any class and there is always something exciting to do, whether leveling your character, running equipment or quests, or exploring new areas. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to run out of things to do on this game. The creator of the game, Dentin, is very active and is constantly weeding out bugs, putting in new content, and shaping the game into what I believe is one of the best muds around. Recently Dentin has created a custom game client which is very useful and displays the mud very well. It is a completely free download. You can find the client and tons more information about the game at www.xirr.com Come give it a try! It takes just a few seconds to create a character, and of course Alter Aeon is free to play! -Cria

Well, Alter Aeon is my first mud that I've ever encountered and I've never heard of a textbased game. I've tried others after being introduced but always found my way back home. Alter Aeon, in my honest opinion, is one of the best muds I've ever seen despite it's rank. The system is run well and the game is newbie and also blind friendly. There is a strict coding base for builders which does not allow other people to tamper with your areas and the gods are very helpful at times. I love the way that you can diversify your class choice from being a Mage Thief to becoming a Mage Warrior and vice verse thanks to the four different classes that can be leveled and that adds more diversity to your characters library of skills and spells which is always helpful. Anyway, I give Alter Aeon a 10 out of 10 and hope to continue playing it many years to come - Sakura

Alter Aeon is the only MUD I have ever played, but from the first day that I created my character and started the game, there were people who quickly befriended me and showed me the basics of the game. The overall gameplay is very simple to learn and the formatting of the game is easy to read and understand. If you are looking for a MUD to play, especially if you have never played one before, look up Alter Aeon. I'm sure that you will enjoy playing. Be sure to look me up as well. I am normally on at some point every day, so if you need any assistance, I'll be more than happy to help you out. Enjoy, Fury By the way, if you need to ask me something, but I'm not on, type this in the game: tell email send fury (your message goes here)

Well to start off I would like to correct some things the Alter Aeon info site says. First off the average amount of players is from 45-60 and the Mud has about 15000-20000 rooms. Now first of all i would like to say this Mud is by far thee best I have played... it instantly has this feeling that makes you want to come back after you play for an hour or two. It is massive has a good playerbase and community and is updated regurly. It is very newbie friendly while still having much for veterans to do. Again the world is huge with thousands of quests and hundreds of thousands of beasts to slay. I doubt anyone has and anyone ever will do everything there is to do... espiacally when it is constanly updated with no stuff. Overall on a scale of 1-10 I would give it a 9.5.. the only reason it doesn't get a 10 is because the Player Killing system is a bit... odd. But rather then that great Game that should be played by all. :)

Alter Aeon is a wonderful MUD to start out on. it is easy to play, the people are friendly, and the systems are basic and easily understandable. Some functions of Alter Aeon not found on other muds: Free (no pay-to-play) NO RENT! (save and quit whenever you want! Your eq is saved!) Recall/waypoints (the recall command allows you to instantaneously transport back to your starting location. Recalls are stored, and the waypoint command allows you to shift between them for easy transport around the world! These commands are standard, and available to everyone.) Map command (call up a map of your surroundings anywhere you are) Multi-classing (Level in whatever class you can, whenever you want) No exp penalty for fleeing Consider command available to everyone Two newbie training grounds Clan systems Grouping is available, but soloing is definitely a viable option Channel creation system (create a channel to talk with your friends!) 128 levels is maximum. scan is a standard ability, available to everyone. Tons of original areas. (VERY little stock)

Alter Aeon, is imho, the most underrated game, let alone MUD playable on the internet for free today. I have played several styles of MUD, from DIKUs to custom codebases, off the shelves and Mercs; Alter Aeon is the best, because it is the most diverse. There is an active quest system on the MUD far more complex than the standard: visit a quest master, kill the [mobile] located at [generic area-name] and return for rewards... you can actually affect the future of the way you play your character by stealing from the poor, saving the world or murdering innocent children for no reason! It plays on the ironies of MUDs and draws out the best qualities, with rewards for being a good player (you can rate the groups you run in), a bad player (become the most evil PPKer in history) and just generally rewarding skill and knowledge. There is experience for casting spells, healing people, berserking etc, you will always remember the first time you ***ANNIHILATE*** something with a leap attack! The items range from the very standard to the exceptionally rare limited boot loading ones. I would say that it is not a MUD really for roleplay... it is possible to do so, and there is more roleplay in the clan system, which is extremely advanced with its own areas, restrung items and gold accounts; but in general, people come on to play and get to know each other. The playerbase is very good, with over 100 at peak times, and new players joining all the time. The more experienced members can be a little cliquey until you get to know them, but the admins are a friendly bunch, often handing out mud-wide heals and restores (go T Cygnii!. It's the little things that get you though... the fact that you can always see the status of your enemy while youre fighting it, the eccentric weather system, or people aucing 'drink!' when people forget how to use the auction system. Every little detail is under constant revision, with the latest changes always tested by the players on the beta test system. All in all, this has been my online home, on and off for 6 years now, and I could not imagine surfing, downloading bittorrents (get on the bandwagon!) or just being on a computer without having my safe haven and companion there beside me... So enough already, telnet in, and if you need a helping hand, send me half a bottle of warm tequila and a tell if i'm on and i'll see what I can do :) *****VOTE FOR ALTER AEON******

After bouncing between hardcore pk-type muds and coddling newbie- types, I randomly stumbled upon Alter Aeon. As is my wont, I read through their homepage, from the creator's advertising, to the players' writings, and thought it to be interesting. I made a test character to give it a go. I was captivated from the beginning. The initial 'newbie training' sequence gets you off to a rolling start, and mobs in plenty, easily within the skills of these new characters. An extensive library of help files, easily navigable, and plainly written. An in-depth quest system, with titled deeds to be accomplishment whether your desire be pure and noble or self-serving and evil. Active and relaxed roleplaying setting, friendly players in general, and many who give time and aide to newbies just beginning. Fully active auctioning system, that's easy to use, and a banking system just as simple. And myself, being a builder, stand to show the continued growth, all the new areas yet to be found in the world, new challeneges to be met, more fame and renown to be won. The creators and administration are continuously active and INTERactive, which is a wonderful change from the usual I've known. The faiths of these gods hold rewards for their followers. This is indeed the most well-rounded and complete mud I have yet to find. Even the playerkilling aspects are well-handled, and well -coded.

Alter Aeon was my first mud. It has many detailed helpfiles plus a newbie channel for new players. It offers four classes to choose from, mage, cleric, thief, and warrior. It is difficult to be just one class in this game, because it has class specific skills and spells. There are deeds and quests available. It offers two different starting places, one for people new to muds and one for experienced players. It also offer two login addresses, one for blind players and one for regular players. I know many people who are blind that play this mud. The players in Alter Aeon are very helpful. Most will answer questions if you ask for help, some will even help you get equiptment set up for your character. I have been playing Alter Aeon for a little over a year and I would recommend it for new and old players alike. Hope to see you there!

Alter Aeon is an absolutely wonderful mud. I have been here since 1996 and I have yet to find a mud that is as original or has the same quality as Alter Aeon. The fact that Alter Aeon is custom coded, and not some edited stock derivative is one of the many facts that makes Alter Aeon unique. There's always something to do, so you are sure to never get bored. Try it out, you might get stuck like I have.

I feel that AA is one of the better muds. Especially since you can play more than one class at a time, which was new to me, coming from a single class mud. I was welcomed right away, and got alot of help to get to where I am now, and now look forward to helping others, having played muds for over 18 years as a cleric. Most people are friendly, and being a minister, that is important to me. So if you come over to AA, look me up. I am an elder in clan Elite and will be happy to help you.

Alter Aeon is a great MUD, with a huge amount of quests and many players. You can group with other players to defeat high-level enemies, or attack each other in a player-killing arena. Clans are a plus too. Overall it is a great MUD that anyone should try.

In my opinion this is the best mud online. I have been playing the game since 1996 (gotta be good to keep someone hooked for that long) and it is constantly being improved (we even have blind players now). There are just so many ways to have fun there. Check it out.

Alter aeon is the best MUD ever! I have played literally 20 different MUDs and Alter Aeon has captured my attention for roughly 7 years. It has multi classing (imagine being a thief, warrior, mage, cleric), the most set of diverse SKILLS ever.. friendly admin.. friendly newbie helpers. Always at least 35+ people on. Very healthy player base.. and it's huge! 20,000 + rooms.. over 144 different areas!