Danny: 00:08 Welcome Aiel, Kin, Cairhien, Shienar one and all to the Titans of Text podcast. We are your hosts Danny "Austerity" Nissenfeld Eric: 00:08 and Eric Oestrich Danny: 00:08 And we have with us today the one and only Austin Bryan, the veritable Pattern of the text gaming world. Today we're going to take a trip on the Wheel of Time and talk about how Austin got into mudding. More specifically, Wheel of Time MUDand dive into the world of wheel of time mud itself. So welcome to you Austin. Austin: 00:45 Thank you. So I started out with the Wheel of Time as a young child because I had a teacher who wanted me to stop participating in class, just basically someone who used a lot of rhetoric and we weren't supposed to answer their questions because that was not their intent. So she bought me the Wheel of Time series, the first three books and suggested that I read those in class instead of talking. And I got really intrigued in the series and started looking for at that time being 12 years old, a game based on the books which led me to the mud. And I had never played anything like a mud before. So I started out thinking every command was just a single letter. It took me about two weeks before I realized I could move around in the world and actually do things and see characters and so forth. And it was at that point, being such an avid reader and realizing I could explore the whole world of the books that I just got really intrigued and I've been playing ever since. And that's been 22 years ago now. Eric: 02:02 Do you want to tell us a bit about the history of Wheel of Time? Austin: 02:05 Yeah. Well at the time I started, it had been up for about three years and it was started by some players who had been on another mud. Uh, it's the users of middle earth mud based on the Lord of the rings. And on that mud, they were very heavy pvers to my understanding so much so that they were asked not to play there anymore. And so they went off on their own to establish their own mud. They weren't sure exactly what they're gonna base their mud on and they met someone who suggested the Wheel of Time. So they took that as their basis and stock circle, I think with it may have even been Diku, but they put together what now exists as wotmud. The changes over time that have come into places then though are just world expansion and putting things back into a state where things are more authentic and true to the books. That's kind of like an ever evolving process in the mud. Austin: 03:12 We've just recently redone like Evensfield for example, which was just a set of about eight rooms really originally and now it's a full fledged village. There is a whole lot more to that. You know, I was reading over the history of wotmud post recently and it's more of a little bit of a story about each of the implementers and creators and how they came to play the game originally. And so it's, it's kind of there is no one set point from which it all derives. Danny: 03:48 How did you become a staff member of wotmud? Austin: 03:53 Well, the previous administrator of the game had reached a point where they were looking to move on to other projects and so they currently run their own mud now that's in development still. But at the time that they were stepping out, we needed someone else to step up and take over the role of administration for the mud. At the time, I was not an immortal and had never been an immortal on the mud, but things just lined up kind of like a perfect storm where all of the existing immortals unanimously requested that I be the one to take over. And so they kinda campaigned for me to be in this position and it was not one that I really wanted to be in. I had expectations that doing so would result in me no longer being able to really be a player as I had before. And that's held true, but at the same time I've really enjoyed it and it's been something that's really rewarding. The players have always been the most important aspect of the game to me because they are what make the world feel alive and make it intriguing. Everything else there is pretty static. So I've been able to kind of give back, hopefully in a way that enriches their game experiences. Eric: 05:23 So since a wotmud has been around for so long, have you done anything to keep players engaged for that long? Austin: 05:28 Yes. And the, uh, tenure or however you'd like to call it for each of those has been fairly long. Each one about a decade actually. So the, the first administrator at the time when I was really starting to become a player of the game rather than just someone observing everyone else play was Nass and he was a huge boon for the game; great at promotion. He marketed us a lot, got us a lot of endorsements from various sources and we had all kinds of stuff going on that boosted player numbers. We were at time seeing 150 to 200 people on at any given time and he had a lot of work. I guess the more human side of it dealing with players and their issues and making sure that everything was fair, but he was also very firm. Austin: 06:33 He actually, during the time that he was the administrator for the game, I earned several bans from the game that he issued. Now I was just a young and annoying kid at the time that did stupid stuff and later on now especially, I really appreciate the work he had put into the game. Then we had Vivian as the administrator and she focused very heavily on the roleplay and the story and building out the world to be true to the books, which later on in and at times like now has proven to be a bit of an issue because the world's too large at times, especially with lower player numbers. So we have people who can log on and spend hours in game without seeing an a player. One of the issues I focused on a lot is creating new means of mobility around the world ships, portals, which in the Wheel of Time is the ways place where people go into a dark realm that can let you travel around the world quickly. Or portal stones, which let the mages, which are called channelers, traverse huge gaps and go from like the far western border of the world to the far eastern border instantly. So it's, for me, tough to figure out exactly what kind of administrator I am because I've only been in the position, what will be two years. And so that's something, it's a bit of a overwhelming experience at times, but it is very fun and I've enjoyed it a lot. Danny: 08:19 What has been your big pushes? What is the thing that you really want to accomplish with wotmud? Austin: 08:26 I never anticipated that I'd end up here, so I had no plans. And after getting here, I still didn't have any plans. And honestly, I still don't. The people who supported me being here and the people who are the current staff, which we have lost some staff members over time. People spend a long time trying to get to the point that we're at and some of them when we got there decided that they would retire, but those are the ones who have had over a decade of experience as staff members who built the world and that's not something that I really can focus on as much as I would like to because I have a lot to do as it is with administration that going through the steps of being a newbie immortal and learning all the aspects of creating and running live quests and so forth. That's something that I'm learning still and probably will be for quite a while, but the overall focus for me has been making sure that all aspects of the game feel equally fleshed out. So we have had a huge focus on pvp ever since inception. Roleplay has always been one of those things that is not mandatory on our game, but it's an excellent environment for roleplay. Austin: 09:53 And so I've looked heavily towards trying to augment and supplement roleplay. One of the first things, actually, the very first thing I did was to simply change the directive for how the staff behaves. And that was to make us into dungeon masters rather than what we had been previously, which was to say that we were dictators, but not in the sense of the word and its context. People normally expect simply that we were dictating aspects of the game and then leaving that out in the open for people to deal with without any recourse on the player's behalf. I wanted them to feel and that being the players a part or role in the game and could do things that would alter the world. So we've been doing a lot of stuff over the past few years where if a player does something of note, then there's some way to recognize that now in game permanently. Eric: 10:54 Do you feel like the lore, um, since its derived from something as large as the Wheel of Time Is that a boon for planning out the future of the mud or is it limiting? Austin: 11:05 It's a bit of both. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Wheel of Time, but what I had mentioned earlier with regards to channelers the mages of the game and portal stones where they can traverse the world. Those also allow you to travel to what in the Wheel of Time series is basically a multiverse, so you may enter a portal stone and end up in a world where instead of the female channelers being the ones who are considered good and male channelers considered bad because they're tainted. The male channelers are the ones who are considered good and all the female channelers are tainted or it may be that the dark side is actually the light side and so forth. Austin: 11:53 So the ability to create stuff and have some degree of freedom with the content is that we are essentially one of those portal stone worlds. So we are very close and adhere to what's in the books as closely as possible. But we do have some degree of artistic liberties with that because of the basis we use with regard to the portal stones. Almost all of the staff members. In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say all of us own the Wheel of Time companion book, which is basically our encyclopedia for the book series. And we use that to flesh out the world update things to make them more accurate to how they are in the books. But when the game started there were not, the series was not finished. So the timeline is one interesting aspect of how everything in our game works. Eventually, and I hope this is not a spoiler, but at some point in the books, a lot of things change drastically where the taint for the male side of the power eventually is cleansed and so forth. Austin: 13:10 But in our game it's not cleansed and maybe at some point we will get there, but I don't know that we will. It's one of those things where if we had kept true to the timeline of the books or kept up with the books as they were published, things would be so, so very different now. But it's kind of one of those things people expect and have grown accustomed to and it would up end pretty much everything to start updating things or advancing our timeline. So what I've done is cherry pick the parts of the timeline that I think best fit into the game currently. And we're progressing along those lines. But we have certain aspects where it's something from like book eight that exists in the game and everywhere else there's nothing else that matches up to book eight. And then we have stuff that never happened in the books, but we have a very close approximation of what did it's just that it's noticeably different. And in some cases that's for playability reasons and in others it's for roleplay and, and others, it's just because that's how things worked out at the time we were doing them because we do a fair bit of live content and so forth. Danny: 14:28 So one thing about muds and having run one myself in the 90s through early two thousands, a lot of discussion that used to happen in the mud staff forums and channels and everything was, essentially avoiding lawsuits. Uh, people wanted muds based on ips specifically, but people obviously did not want lawsuits. If you go to the Wikipedia page for Wheel of Time itself, for all of this, the book series, it actually mentions wotmud in the beginning of the game section that it is officially licensed. How did that happen exactly? Austin: 15:11 So that's something I had reached out to Nass earlier this week to ask him about that because I thought he was responsible for that. But it turns out that Flash, who is the owner of the game had reached out and asked and it was just that simple. He asked for permission and it was given, there's not much I know beyond that currently because I had never really gone into trying to find out more about it. I just have a copy of our authorization and that's a question I intend to ask him more about but from what I heard from Nass and then asked one of the other staff members about that's, that's as simple as it is. Danny: 15:58 It's pretty amazing to email or send a correspondence to someone as famous as like Robert Jordan and get response at all. Austin: 16:08 It's funny actually, one of our players now works for Tor and knows Harriet personally and keeps in touch with her on several projects including the upcoming stuff that is happening with Wheel of Time. Eric: 16:29 Okay. So both Danny and I have had a chance to give wotmud a shot. And one of the things I kind of stuck out the most is that you've still got rent. I know a lot of players that we've kind of just seen around the community, like this is the worst part of any game. Like what keeps it around? Austin: 16:49 So in wotmud, if you die, you lose a level or more, you lose all your gear if you can't get back to it and require it. But other players can take all your gear. So if someone is, for example, going to take your gear and they've been in Pvp against you, they have a 15 minute no quit timer where they can not quit the game, they can't log out, can't rent, can't close their session and be gone. They are vulnerable that entire time and it's entirely born of pvp reasons. That's where our rent system comes from and it's been augmented to have functions other than that now where you can store items with innkeepers and so forth. Uh, there's so many times I recall on the game where I would be involved in pvp or some other activity gives, you no-quit and I would need to go and I just could not log off and I didn't want to, uh, just simply walk away because you know, what, if someone killed me or something happened and I needed to be there and it was detrimental to my character that I was logged on and unable to leave. But that's something that for the very reason it exists I can't really take it away because I don't have a good alternative and I'm not sure that we ever really will. Although we did provide a means for people to log off now where they can do so while they have no-quit as long as they are within the safety of one of their clan bases, which does require that you be in a clan in the game, but once you are, if you're in your clan base and you have no quit and you just simply want to log off immediately, you can, but again, that's quite a few conditions. Be clanned, be in that specific room and then activate it. Danny: 18:51 We're going to take a brief moment out of the episode for a word from one of our many sponsors. Do you enjoy listening to this podcast? Titans of Text is partially funded by the generous donations of listeners just like you via the ExVenture Patreon. Just head to patreon.com/exventure. Eric: 19:19 Could you explain to the people who may not have played what it's like when you're first entering the game? Is there anything that you guys are trying to do to help improve new players? Like as as they first sign on? Austin: 19:31 Definitely. So when you first start out, you end up in a circle of light, which is where players go to be respun every time after they die. That's for the light side. And for the dark side it's a circle of darkness. But for dark side we recommend players not start there because it is entirely pvp focused. Whereas on light side you have a ton of activities you can take part in with pve and roleplay and that does exist on dark side but first and foremost you're expected to PVP. Austin: 20:08 So for new players, when they start out in the circle of light on human side and they go down from the circle of light, they enter an area where higher level players can choose to teleport to various parts of the world. But the new player is just going to go down again and be greeted by a mob that will introduce them to the very, very basic aspects of the game and send them on a series of tasks and after they complete that, they move on to another area of the world and continue learning about the game and aspects of the game that make us unique. And there's quite a few of those, but at the same time I couldn't tell you which aspects are unique any more because as more and more games are developed, we lose those aspects that are unique to us. Austin: 21:02 The biggest thing for players at first, I think, and this is something that's really hard to gauge for me now because I'm so used to the way of wotmud is, where we are still different and what new players need to get them going in the game. So we've been working on adjusting gear so that new players can get into play more quickly. There's a very steep learning curve on wotmud and it is very unforgiving. It's something that honestly is probably very fun for someone who's a masochist, like you're a fan of something like dark souls or bloodborne or any of those in that series. This is probably a game you would enjoy, but for me and a lot of players, it's something that draws us back time and again is the adrenaline rush you get during pvp because there's such a risk involved; you can lose absolutely everything if you lose the battle and these battles can happen at any time, anywhere in the world, no matter what you're doing, there is nowhere safe unless you are within the confines of your clan base and nowhere else in the world really is truly safe and sometimes not even there. Austin: 22:24 That's something I can't really convey to new players and so I have to get them interested and intrigued and teach them how to play without just brutalizing them. There are no really care bear type things in the game. There's nothing that's gonna hold someone's hand and show them what to do. We focus mostly on giving them a set of tools and then saying, here, these are the things you need to know to stay alive and the things you need to know to get re-equipped and back into fighting condition after you die. And then we try to explain to them things like the rent system and things like the lights that are necessary. Austin: 23:08 One of the terms that you would read often in the books is walk in the light because if you didn't, that meant you were evil. In play that's one of those things where if you're in the dark, it's, it's very hard to stay alive because all of your defenses go away. You can't tell where you're going. You can't even tell what you're fighting. Most of the time you'll see the primary enemy that's attacking you, but there may be multiple others and you can't tell who they are. Darkness is deadly and lights are not, they're not something that lasts for very long or are easily available. So players do go farm these items or you can buy them from a shop. So we try to teach players how to have those basics of survival, but that's it for introduction into the game or any kind of new player experience. Austin: 24:04 The other side of that is that we also have been focusing on a web based client for players that includes things that they would need to know that there's a link that's on the new website that we're working on currently that takes you to things like the Wiki or things like the forms. And we have a newbie guide on the forums, but I have a problem with aspects of the game that require you to go out of the game to learn about the game or how to play. So I want those experiences to be in-game. And that's one of those things that I am currently and have been working on is how to make that experience more fluid so someone can jump in, start the game, learn the basics, and then get into active play. Because our feedback loops on almost every activity, whether it's pve, Pvp, or roleplay, they've very rewarding. But you have to get there to appreciate it. And I would like for the the process of getting there to be something someone could appreciate as well. Austin: 25:11 We used to have one aspect of the game: creating your character. You would have to get to level five to learn if your character was viable. If it wasn't, you had to create an entirely new character with a new name and hope that that was viable and you could go days, weeks, even before getting a viable character and so that's a huge barrier to entry that there's surely a ton of players who have tried our game and quit because you just can't get started. So now you only have to get to level three. That doesn't really make the issue better for new players, only existing ones because once you hit level three you can hit a button and start over, take another attempt with the same name, but for completely new players we have preconfigured characters where you can choose from any class and have a character with playable stats that are competitive, something that's viable for any activity in the game. Austin: 26:14 The other side of that is that existing players will create a lot of these characters and then wait out five whole years to reroll the character and get better stats and rerolls are a system that were implemented quite a while ago now that allow you to take any character and if it's old enough, get updated stats that are more competitive and every time you reroll they get more and more competitive. So we have players who just amass hoards of characters and wait out that time. It's kind of interesting to think about these things because for me historically I've seen them evolve and then now I'm the one responsible for that and there are things that I can look back on and and realize if it had been me I would've never done it that way. And then there are others where I know I couldn't have thought of a solution as good as what we have. Austin: 27:11 But the stating system on our game is one of those things that I really do not like. And at the same time, it's part of what got me so involved in the game because it was such a struggle. For me now I stat characters trying to get something incredible just because for me, for some reason it is fun. Other players do the same thing and that's one of those where we collected and amassed a huge stat database so that we can start to see the patterns in the homelands because there's 17 of them. I think maybe it's 14, there's a significant number for light side and then there's four stocks for dark side. And each of them have their own set of characteristics for each class. And then at the same time, there are other, uh, what we would consider homelands for the remort classes and they have their own set of caps. Danny: 28:10 I think, uh, one of the most interesting aspects to me for muds is how they try to get new players involved. You know, the deadly darkness thing is, is I would say canon for text games because you know, grues and everything , uh, I think, uh, in, we're going to close it out with one more question, a typical one that we usually ask. What advice would you have for anyone out there taking up the mantle of a game that has existed for as long as a game such as wotmud and has such a rich history behind it? Austin: 28:48 Well, I think I am a fairly unique case in the way I came about, but for me it's from the start and still now is to play to our strengths and try to develop new ones. The kind of things that we've done since I've come onboard, I've made a lot of changes for quality of life, a lot of stuff that addresses issues that I've always seen in game. One of the first things I did was allow players to reset their practices, which before they just weren't able to do easily. Now if you need to change your character set up, you can do so easily. Austin: 29:32 The overall approach is something I'm still developing. I'm really not sure. And it's one of those things where at times I kind of feel like imposter syndrome. At the same time, I realize if it weren't me, it would be someone else. And I feel like at those times I'm probably the best choice for it. So as for advice, I'm not sure I'm really the best to give it, but it would be that just play to the strengths and try to develop new ones. Eric: 30:08 All right. So once again, thanks for joining us, Austin. Austin: 30:12 Thank you.