FieryMUD

Ah, MUDs ... now there's a term in the online community that really dates you as "old-school." Playing a MUD was a bit like playing ZORK (old-school in and of itself!)

Where Are They Now?

A good half of my floor when I lived on campus played Fiery, and most of the players were very successful... yet few still play regularly.

Although John played a number of characters, Selina was his first and was chosen to avoid his hall-mates recognizing him (he'd sworn not to be "sucked in" to mudding) and to garner help from other characters--females tend to get LOTS of help. Her name changed to Selandria with Fiery's revised name policy.

She quickly reached ** as an old-school mage who could solo nearly any area, then progressed to goddesshood through creation of the Ickle Aviary, Anduin Sewers, and Oak Tree areas. John changed jobs and had less time for Fiery, and Selandria fell by the way side.

Selandria is today back on Fiery as a young sorcerer. John still lives in Blacksburg, VA and works as a Software Engineer and is engaged; Beth thinks Fiery is "weird."

Matt began playing Fiery before John and went through quite a few characters before starting Silva as a trick on Rob; Matt intended to role-play Silva as a female to disprove Rob's boast that he'd never fall for such a trick. Matt's ploy worked, and even better, was logged entirely by Matt to prove his deception.

Silva had begun a couple of areas and worked as player-relations while continuing to play mortal characters, too, but eventually drifted away from Fiery. Today, Matt is a student at the Culinary Institute of America.

Although John's Selandria reached ** first, Rob's Bushwhacker became the first immortal from the O'Shag MUDders. Neither Rob nor I wanted to remain simple immortals long and came up with area proposals (Rob allocating my idea of an undead-themed area that became the Graveyard), and while I was out of town for a weekend, Rob managed to beat me to Demigod by a couple of hours, too.

As a technogeek, Rob wrote scripts for his mortal characters--Duran being one awesome monk--to level them without individual attention. Though this practice is now officially "banned," Rob made good use of it while it lasted and created a number of other ** characters through it.

Rob still puts in an appearance every once in a while, but after he completed his Master's degree, I haven't heard from him and can only assume he's out in the "real world" and a bit too busy to peek into Fiery that often.

Ryan began playing Fiery before John and did quite well with his thief character Slick--lacking an archer class or specialty, thievery was Ryan's second choice for a character. The restrictions on thief usefulness led him to start a cleric that he took all the way to **, but Slic had by then lost much interest and time for Fiery and never made the leap to immortality despite my offer as a sponsor.

Today Ryan is married and works as a civil engineer in the Richmond, VA area.

Yes, I know it's spelled "kamikaze" (I speak a piddling bit of nihongo, after all). After the tenth person informing (or taunting) him so, Chris knew it, too--but by then "kamakaze" had become his trademark, and by golly, you'd pay for your remark!

Famous for the line, "You are all going to FAIL when Quake comes out!" Chris was no newbie to games, particularly the ones that ate all our time outside classes. Though he didn't play as much as some of the rest of us, Chris' roleplay and antics on Fiery made for a good bit of fun.

These days, Chris works for IGN out in San Francisco.