Shattered Kingdoms

I don't think this mud requires anywhere close to 3-4 hours a day to be competitive in player killing. You could pk for 0 minutes a day and be just as fearsome and confident as if you had pk'd for hours. Believe me, I have done it!

No. Does it matter? Junk lets me do it either way. QQ.


I already do this, if I or somebody else needs it. The rest goes byebye.


You mean a quick, swift motion?


That's fine.

J-looting is both an IC and OOC way to say, hey, don't lose to me, or this happens.

Yeah, and its ran off three people I've brought to the game that enjoyed the game except for the entirely unfriendliness towards noobs attitude.

Give me a break, you need to stop whining if you play this mud. I played a character for hundreds of hours who only entered pk about 4-5 times and I had a fine time doing that. If you are getting yourself killed often, it's because you are picking sides in wars - and you need to expect to be junk looted if you are on a side.

Play a grey aura if you don't want to be killed and looted, anything else is picking a side in a battle.

If I was playing a good character, I'd be way more friendly IC. I can't really bend backwards that far. I'm mostly nice IC with Youma to new players, but there's obviously a limit.

And if you're noticeable enough to get killed, chances are you aren't a newbie.

As a complete newbie to muds and to SK, I have to say it's not as bad as many have complained about on the forum. I've been playing less than a year and have only been PKed twice:

-one was a wrong place wrong time type thing at the portal stones. I was raised, they went and got all of my stuff, and gave me some coin for the trouble. So this doesn't count.

-two by someone in the teron inn with my first higher level char. As you grow levels the greater chance you'll get PKed. I accept that.

I've played both lightie, darkie, and greybie newbies with all the same considerate response from other players. I just think that people still have a hard time seperating IC from OOC. I mean if you're playing with a whole bunch of evil people they aren't going to be all that nice.

The J-looting and just general unfriendliness towards noobs is what I was saying. Hey, if they actually had an enjoyable fight to the death instead of bam, your dead, your stuff is gone, start from square one, they might stick around.

Basically, they log in, create, play until they get massacres and raped, then just don't even bother finding a rez. I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did, except I had ONE other player help me out with it.

The game is basically like this.


Oooooowwwww nice and friendly Noobie area.
Level up on some really easy NPCs for a while.
Walk out of the Noobie area.
Greet someone.
"stupid noob"
*gets ignored*
*gets shunned*
*attempts to rp and gets killed for not being nice*
*gets raped*
*is taught a lesson*
*leaves sk for good cause they don't care about learning lessons, they wanted entertainment*

Hell, I can't even get someone to Buddy up with any of my characters because I'm not in a player group.

I mean, this is getting kinda off topic. But basically that one death that the Noob experiences turns them off the game. I think most people here forget what it was like first playing a mud. I think so because I remember how un noob friendly the game was. I wouldn't even be trying to play if it wasn't for the one person that introduced me to the game. And that comes from a person who games all day long and has no buddies to table top with, so finds things like shattered kingdoms GREAT. Hell, the first time I got pk'd with Calahdru, it was because the other player was having a [REDACTED] day or some thing. I wasn't even gonna bother after getting killed, then J-looted, then told basically i was stupid, my character was stupid, and all my rp was stupid. So yeah, I can see why the mud suffers.


[edit - in response to jada]

Female players generally get treated better than male players. Noobs included. Congrads though, the MUD was not so friendly towards me. And still isn't.

Sorry, but anyone who deletes over a single death was never going to make it in SK. Even the NPCs in SK are more challenging than that.

I'd also note that being PKed when you haven't done anything provocative has gotten rare. Gone are the days when PC death sqauds would try to kill every other PC in the city - unless you're in Teron, of course. Newbies who stay in law-protected areas that are appropriate for their race and aura should flourish. If mentors are directing newbies to Teron, those mentors deserve a swat on the nose with a newspaper.



I almost never see this, unless said noob can't manage to stay in-character. Such newbies are going to find resistance, along with (I hope) some gentle hints. Some such players have gone on to be great additions to SK. Some never do get the concept, and it's for the best when they eventually leave.

This is not to say that us oldbies couldn't do a better job of including newbies in their roleplay. That's always worth encouraging.



Playing a dark-aura character in what was then a decidely light-aura zone is provocative. This is a recurring problem in SK: People choose an evil alignment, but they don't want their characters considered as truly evil and malicious. If you want to be taken as a grey-aura, play a grey-aura.

Not burst your bubble that females have it so much easier, but... well actually this is to burst your bubble.

I've been known to shim quite often. I've played an equal number of male and female newbie chars. None of my male characters have made it to become notable or interesting characters though. In fact most of them don't make it to apprentice. But I have received equal treatment regardless of sex. I find the MUD becomes less friendly the higher your level goes. Perhaps I'm just an oddity, an exception to the rule. I dunno.


Edited to burst my own bubble:
All of my true newbie characters (ones I rolled when I was very new to the MUD) were female. So when I was still stumbling over sytax problems and trying to figure out how to eat my bread, I was a female. Upon further thought on this I realized that many of the people I find helpful to my newibe characters are actually female themselves... Hmm. Maybe all you dudes need to stop being so grouchy.

I mentioned the E-p3n0r before. But that didn't meet to well with the others. *cough*touchysubject*cough*