I got in touch with Oce, who has a March 2005 backup of Realms. This means we have the code, rooms, objs, mobs -- and even players -- from 2 years ago.

The codebase we're running right now is a beta version of the mud. As some of you have noticed, it's still buggy, but that's because it wasn't finished for public release, yet. The codebase from March 2005 is stable, so we're definitely going to be switch over to that as soon as possible.

The question then remains: should we use the old player base?

Before finalizing this decision, I intend to let you guys view what players are currently in existence - I can't post a list because there are over 5,000 of them. I'm currently trying to set the mud up on a Windows machine (without much success), so we may end up with Oce hosting the mud, if he's up to it.

If you read the poll, you'll see the three options we have. If you have any other comments, feel free to post about them.

How long will the poll be up for?

Forever, but I imagine once we make a decision, it'll become kinda pointless :P

Is baz, tempt, jun, rekaz, or embis in existence still? Also, how will we know our passwords to our characters? I've changed my pwords alot and I'm not sure if I know what Baz's pword at that time would be.

Also a very good question - what do we do about characters who have forgotten their password?

I won't be giving out player's passwords. I have no way of knowing who is who. If you own a character and can't remember the password, you can tell me your guesses - if any of them are close, I will give you the character. Aside from that, however, I don't see anyway around the issue.

I totally disagree with the idea of re-loading everyone's old characters. I have been through probably 7 purges on Mordor-based MUDs over more than a decade of playing, and there are ALWAYS more people who play after a purge than before the purge. All the old characters have limited gains left, whereas newer players have the possibility of being higher level - even if only for a potentially limited time.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Thanks,

The Bodhisatva