News Archive for 1997

December 31, 1997: BE SURE TO READ a special new year message from Innocent the white witch. The message is available on the MUD2 Web page at http://www.mud2.com/1998.htm.

December 20, 1997: BE SURE TO READ a special holiday message from Innocent the white witch. The message is available on the MUD2 Web page at http://www.mud2.com/diduknow.htm.

December 13, 1997: A NEW VERSION OF MUD2, version 4E(34), has just been installed. Yes, there have been some changes, so be on your toes! Most importantly, MUD2's two long lost areas, the NORTH MOUNTAIN and the TEMPLE, are back! I hope you'll all like it there. Needless to say, if you encounter anything unusual that appears to be a bug, please don't hesitate to send me mail about it.

December 7, 1997: NOVEMBER'S Player of the Month is LAURA, a MUD2 oldtimer who just returned to our game recently. Congratulations on a well-deserved title!
The Death of the Month title was earned by Lestat, no doubt in honour of the numerous spectacular deaths that he performed to provide entertainment to his favourite immortals.

December 5, 1997: THE CANADIAN POSTAL STRIKE is over. Therefore, I'd like to ask all players who pay by mail and have not yet mailed a payment for December to please do so at your earliest convenience. Taking into account possible delays while Canada Post processes the backlog, I decided to extend the deadline for December payments to arrive until December 20. If you believe your payment will not make it here by that date, please let me know immediately!
Of course this also means that we're now able to accept new subscriptions from players who wish to pay by mail instead of using a credit card.
Thank you for your patience and understanding!

December 5, 1997: DECEMBER'S Sorcerers' Bash will be held this Sunday! This is your opportunity to test your fighting skills and earn the admiration of not only your fellow players but also your favourite immortals!

December 1, 1997: THE LATEST ISSUE of our newsletter, Admiral Bombow's Chronicles, is now available on the Web at http://www.mud2.com/bombow/. The highlight of this issue is two reports from the November MUDMeet, held in London, England.

November 23, 1997: THE WIZARD FORMERLY KNOWN AS HILOBAY decided to change his name back to what he has been known as for many years: Panther the wizard. Welcome, Panther, to MUD2.COM!

November 19, 1997: A NATION-WIDE POSTAL STRIKE just began in Canada. Therefore, I would like to ask all players who currently pay by mail to _NOT_ send any more payments until further notice. Your account will remain open and you will be requested to send in your payment when this strike is over (hopefully soon.) If you have mailed a payment recently and have not yet received confirmation from me that it has arrived, please let me know immediately. In any case, your account will remain in good standing until the strike is over and sufficient time has passed for your payment to arrive.
Unfortunately, this also means that for the time being, we can only accept VISA or AMEX cards as methods of payment for new subscriptions. My apologies to all current and prospective players for the inconvenience.

November 16, 1997: NEW VERSION: MUD version 4E(33) has now been installed. As usual, please alert me to any potential problems or odd behaviour.
One significant change that will affect all players is the method used to calculate the point loss you suffer when you flee. In the new version, this loss is proportional to your stamina. If you flee when your stamina is nearly full, you may suffer a very significant loss of points; if, on the other hand, you flee when you're near to death, your loss may actually be non-existent! Of course, the risk is significantly greater ...
Although there are no other changes of this magnitude, you'll see a number of small things that behave somewhat differently. As always, your comments and suggestions concerning these changes are welcome.

November 7, 1997: AND THE PLAYER OF THE MONTH IS .... Mapper! Congratulations! The Death of the Month award for October is shared by Angelone and Lestat; both received the same number of votes from their cheering immortal friends, no doubt in reward for the excellent entertainment that their deaths have provided!

November 2, 1997: ADMIRAL BOMBOW'S CHRONICLES will no longer be published on a monthly basis. Instead, it will become an irregular publication, with new issues coming out as material becomes available. Sorry, folks, but I received far fewer submissions than I'd hoped for, and although I could fill the newsletter with my rumblings, I don't believe it'll remain very popular that way!
Mind you, should this announcement trigger an avalanche of submissions, we shall return to a monthly schedule as soon as possible! Just as a reminder, what ABC needs most is NEW material, especially fiction. So if you have a story in mind about the sorcerer who fell in love with the dwarf queen or a science fiction piece about the Land's future, now is the time to write it!

October 7, 1997: SEPTEMBER'S VOTES are in: Congratulations to Crab, our latest Player of the Month! As for the Death of the Month, this time it's a tie between Adrian and Inferno (neither of whom, incidentally, appear to be deterred by such a minor inconvenience as the untimely loss of a mage.)

October 3, 1997: OCTOBER'S SORCERERS' BASH will be held this coming Sunday, at 2100 GMT (that's 5 PM EDT for us East Coast folks, and not 4 PM as some moronic arch-wiz thought whose banner proclaimed this mistaken notion to all mortals entering the game throughout the summer!)

September 17, 1997: BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: The September issue of Admiral Bombow's Chronicles is now available for your reading pleasure at http://www.mud2.com/bombow/. Enjoy!

September 16, 1997: PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS that some of you might be experiencing are due to a cable cut UUNet suffered near Cleveland. Consequently, most of UUNet Canada's international traffic is now routed via slower gateways between Vancouver/Seattle and Montreal/NYC, causing lag, especially during peak traffic hours. UUNet cannot say at present when things will be back to normal, other than stating that AT&T (who owns the broken cable) is working on it.

September 10, 1997: PLAYER OF THE MONTH: Inferno! Congratulations! As for the death of the month, that honour is bestowed upon Jezari this time around.

August 14, 1997: A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY to earn points and share the excitement presents itself this coming Sunday, August 17. Innocent and Tabitha, two of the Land's beautiful witches, conspired to brings us our very first SCAVENGER HUNT. The rules are simple: 30-odd objects, ranging from the obvious to the obscure, will be scattered across the Land and the first two players, one magic user, one non magic user, to bring at least 20 of these AT THE SAME TIME (obviously, after having found a means to carry them) to the presiding witches in the Cave of Stars, each win a fabulous purse, loaded with coins worth many thousands of points. The prize won by non magic users will be worth a lot more so it's is worth your while to play the hard way!
Every participant will receive a note at the start of play that lists the items that need to be collected. Rules will be presented on a leaflet that will be available in the tearoom for your reading pleasure.
Sounds easy? Hmmm, did I mention that swamping, stealing, and killing will be allowed? No, it won't be easy ... but we are certain that it will be a lot of fun and participating will be well worth the risk. The time? 4PM Eastern Daylight Time which, if I am not mistaken, translates into 2000 hours GMT. See you all there!

August 10, 1997: LATEST MUD2 NEWS: The August issue of Admiral Bombow's Chronicles is now available on-line, at http://www.mud2.com/ABC9708/.
The newest wiz in the Land: Homer! Congratulations!
July's Player of the Month title goes to Florence; the Death of the Month is Macleod's. It is not every day that you see a wiz start over as a novice!

August 2, 1997: SORCERERS' BASH: as you all know, July's Sorcerers' Bash was canceled due to serious problems at MUD2.COM's ISP. Our problems are solved, our connection is better than ever, so the Sorcerers' Bash is back: tomorrow (August 3) at 5 PM Eastern, 2100 GMT! If you never before played, a sorcerers' bash is a time when you can fight (and die!) with impunity: all you need is a "scrap" persona that a kind witch or wizard will "sorcerise" (turn into a sorcerer, complete with magical powers, temporarily.) So not only is a sorcerers' bash fun, it is also a great opportunity to perfect your fighting and survival skills. All players are welcome!

July 21, 1997: NOW THAT CONTACT HAS BEEN REESTABLISHED by NASA with the Sagan Memorial Station in Ares Vallis, Mars, it is again possible to connect to MUD2.COM from the red planet. However, such connections will unavoidably suffer from a lag of approximately 23 minutes. This is due to the round-trip light time between the two planets. This situation is unlikely to improve in the absence of Internet providers with reliable faster-than-light data communication equipment; on the contrary, in the next several months, lag is expected to increase as Mars and Earth fly farther apart following their separate orbits. Martian players are therefore advised to connect via terrestrial Internet providers who offer proxy server capability to avoid TCP/IP network timeouts, and it's also recommended that they plan ahead and exercise extreme caution to avoid fights and other situations where quick reaction to events in the game is essential for survival.

July 19, 1997: UUNET CANADA reports a UPS failure here in Ottawa; their ETA is around 6PM Eastern, by which time hopefully their equipment will be back on-line.
I'm crossing my fingers that this is an isolated incident and that I didn't bet on the wrong horse after all by selecting this provider. I guess the next few weeks will tell! In the meantime, I apologise for this outage.

July 17, 1997: WE ARE ON THE DIGITAL LINE! The transfer took a bit longer and was more complicated than I anticipated, but finally, everything is in place. In fact, the actual transfer took place Wednesday morning; however, the Sprint half of the Internet was still trying to route packets via the old Internet Service Provider. Now that that is resolved, everything is working fine.
Most of you should see an improvement in service (less lag, fewer network problems.) However, some of you, most notably those of you whose ISPs are connected via Sprint, may see a degradation. Sadly, this is unavoidable: whoever I chose as the Internet Service Provider, there will be people who will be 'far' from it in networking terms, and thus suffer more from network congestion. As before, if the degradation is unacceptable, I will gladly offer my assistance to help you find an Internet Service Provider with better connectivity relative to us.
Once again, thanks for your patience and understanding during the last two weeks! You've been a great bunch and I really, really appreciate your support!

July 14, 1997: MUD2.COM'S new (old) IP address: 199.166.252.64. Please use this IP address when configuring client software such as zMUD. Note that we are in the process of moving to a new provider and a high-speed line; therefore, outages will be inevitable in the next few days. However, I'll do my best to keep those outages at a minimum.
IMPORTANT: the old IP address may cease to function at any time. Please set up your software with the new address as soon as possible!

July 9, 1997: THE NEW SERVICE has been ordered and it's just a matter of days before MUD2.COM begins its new existence using a high speed ISDN connection to UUNet Canada's T3 backbone network. My apologies in advance for any service interruptions that may occur in the next few days while the transition takes place. Thanks for your patience and support!

July 5, 1997: CONNECTION UPDATE: it appears that the owners of IOSPHERE.NET have come to a dispute over who owns the service, and are presently wrestling with each other electronically for control of the "root password." Apparently, the welfare of their customers is no longer a concern in this fight for control.
As you can imagine, it is not trivial to move an entire service to a different Internet Service Provider. I have put things into motion and sometime next week, MUD2.COM will be routed via UUNet Canada; an old dinosaur that I once dropped as a service provider, but one that nevertheless provides quality service and more importantly, a direct connection to its backbone network with no intermediaries. I'll also use this opportunity to upgrade the speed of the connection; although we have not yet had bandwidth problems, we now have a solid base of subscribers so that such an upgrade has become affordable.
From what I can see from here, the condition of IOSPHERE's systems is deteriorating (no doubt due to semi-competent attempts to obtain control) to the extent that I expect additional service interruptions to be the norm for the next few days. For this reason, I have also decided that this Sunday's Sorcerers' Bash ought to be postponed; it makes no sense to organise an event when service may be interrupted at any time!
In the meantime, I apologise for this extremely frustrating situation. I also ask for your understanding while this madness is taking place; I assure you that I am doing what I can and in a very short time, we will have Internet service through a professional organisation.

July 5, 1997: THE CURRENT CONNECTION PROBLEMS will be over soon, as MUD2.COM will be connected to a backbone provider directly via ISDN. Until then, I have to ask you to bear with me, while this increasingly unprofessional service provider keeps on screwing around with their systems (and consequently, with their customers.) Thank you for your patience!

July 4, 1997: GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS: MUD2's Internet provider is having major problems, and they just gave me a warning that there might be an extended outage today or later this weekend. My apologies for this folks, sadly it's almost completely out of my control. I say 'almost' because as soon as next week, MUD2.COM may migrate to a different Internet connection and at the same time the speed of the connection will also be upgraded. It may mean additional (hopefully brief) outages of course but I hope to be able to count on your understanding; in the end, it'll mean better service for everyone. Thanks for your patience!

July 2, 1997: THIS MONTH, Mithriel became the winner of both monthly titles: she is our Player of the Month for June, and her death was also the Death of the Month. Congratulations!

July 2, 1997: THE NEW ISSUE of Admiral Bombow's Chronicles is now available at the MUD2 Web site, at the address of http://www.vttoth.com/mud2/bombow/. (Yes, this is still that blasted temporarily URL; Real Soon Now, if my ISP is to be
believed, MUD2's own Web site at www.mud2.com will become operational.)

July 1, 1997: INTERNET TROUBLE: MUD2.COM's Internet provider had a major system outage this morning, and although the system is back up, it still has trouble accepting incoming e-mail. If you need to send me mail urgently, you can also use my address on CompuServe: 70674.3414@compuserve.com. Sorry for the inconvenience!

June 30, 1997: THE JULY SORCERERS' BASH is going to take place this coming Sunday, July 6, at 5 PM Eastern Daylight Time (that's 2100 GMT.) All are welcome; here is your chance to try magic and fighting with little risk and a chance to earn a great reward!

June 30, 1997: THE LATEST VERSION of the MUD2 software, 4E(32), is now installed. Please report any problems or apparent bugs to me or Richard; it's best to just use the BUG command in the game for this purpose.

June 30, 1997: CONGRATULATIONS to Tobias, the Land's newest wiz!

June 21, 1997: CONGRATULATIONS to the Land's newest wizard, Hilobay!

June 13, 1997: THE SPRING CONTEST was won by Panther the necromancer. Panther correctly guessed the creators of 6 objects in the contest, and identified a further 4 objects as contest objects but associated them with the wrong wiz.

Honourable mention should go to Galahad the mage: Galahad actually had a better score than Panther (7+1) but unfortunately, because of his close relationship with one of the contest organisers, we decided to award the prize the Panther instead. Nevertheless, Galahad deserves a great big congratulations as well!

During the contest, mortals were expected to find the following objects and correctly identify their creators:

Saucer with cream - Cat the wizard
Book "The Scarlet Letter" - Hester the witch
Helpful diary - Innocent the witch
ACME hunting kit - Jillithe the witch
Black corset - Mistress the witch
Rotting cadaver - Pugsley the wizard
Small meteorite - Starfire the witch
Ancient astrolabe - Starquest the wizard
Stone tablet - Trefle the witch
Arch screwdriver - Viktor the arch-wizard
Dragon notebook - Zedd the wizard

Thank you all, wizzes and mortals alike, for participating!

June 11, 1997: THE SPRING CONTEST is now over. Results will be announced Wednesday evening at the beginning of the mobile bash. If you failed to submit your guess but would like to participate, please send me mail immediately and I'll see what I can do for you. Thank you all!

June 10, 1997: OUR SPRING CONTEST is soon over. In case you haven't read the sign in the Tearoom, the contest is about correctly identifying a variety of strange and unusual objects that pop up in the Land from time to time, each belonging to a different wiz. Answers should be submitted by e-mail (MUDmail) to Starquest or Viktor before the deadline: midnight Eastern time on Tuesday, June 10. The winner will take home (well, to the swamp) a fabulous prize, the value of which can be found out if you just VAL the chest that is on display in the Tearoom (yes, the prize is in it!) Remember: you have nothing to lose by guessing, so keep those guesses coming!

June 3, 1997: THE MAY PLAYER OF THE MONTH is Barf the warlock! Congratulations! The title of Death of the Month goes this month to Callisto the mage, who died to the vampire in a spectacular fashion one morning.

June 1, 1997: OUR NEWSLETTER IS HERE! Take a look at http://www.mud2.com/mud2/ABC9706/ for the inaugural issue of Admiral Bombow's Chronicles. For those of you with no World-Wide Web access a text version is available upon request; send e-mail to Viktor please.

May 24, 1997: OUR 'FRIEND' BELGARATH did his stunt again; this time under an assumed name, he made yet another attempt to flood the game with macros. Why, I have absolutely no idea, but I am getting really sick and tired of having to worry about him.
I wish to apologise in advance if his actions were to cause service interruptions in the future. He is obviously completely out of control, and if he feels wronged (as I assume he will, after I booted him out today) nothing stops his rage. In the long run, he will only be a minor annoyance but in the short run, he can cause some unpleasant moments for all of us. Sorry.
Belgarath, if you read this: go make someone else benefit from your presence, will you? I have no time for your childish behaviour.

May 16, 1997: MACLEOD THE WIZARD has returned. He was another wiz who made on the old system before persona records were transferred; unfortunately, my mail didn't reach him when the old MUD2 site was closed but he found us anyway. Welcome back, Macleod the Highlander wizard!

May 13, 1997: CREDIT CARD CUSTOMERS: please remember that all charges to your account will be administered by INCAD CORPORATION of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Thanks!

May 8, 1997: A MINOR UPGRADE of the MUD2 system has just been installed. This fixes a few bugs and, most importantly, allows us to open 'guest accounts'; accounts that are restricted to guest mode playing only but nevertheless sport saveable personae. Of course a new version, however minor the changes are, may also introduce new bugs; if you see any unusual software behaviour, please don't hesitate to let me know!

May 4, 1997: Our first monthly Sorcerers' Bash was won by Sepultura. Out of 5 opponents, Sepultura disposed of four personally, attaining the level of sorcerised necromancer (gasp!) in the process. Congratulations, this was some game play!

May 4, 1997: BELGARATH THE ONE-TIME MAGE is now back in the game, after a brief absence. The reason for this absence was that after he lost a 150K persona due to what he considered an 'unfair' fighting tactic, he took it upon himself to issue, and carry out, a variety of threats. Threats issued included a threat to sabotage our game using unspecified Internet programming techniques; to sabotage his opponent's Internet connection; and to participate in the operation of a pirate MUD2 site using an illegally obtained copy of the MUD2 system software. When these threats were followed up by a successful attempt to actually cause a series of crashes, his access to our system was terminated.
Since that time, I have received numerous requests from Belgarath's friends to allow him back in the game. Knowing how good a player he really is when he plays by the game's rules as opposed to trying to circumvent them, I was willing to lean in his favour. Having received a promise from him to play honourably in the future, I decided to give him one last chance.
Welcome, back, Belgarath. I hope you will not blow it this time and Belgarath the one-time mage will soon be Belgarath the mage again ... or who knows, maybe even Belgarath the wizard one day!

May 2, 1997: THE PLAYER OF THE MONTH for April is Tethys. Tethys joined our Land shortly after it came into existence at MUD2.COM and has shown great promise since. He also died a lot but hey, as we are so fond of saying, you haven't lived until you've died in MUD2! His biography can be found in Library 2, or by typing GO TETHYS at the main prompt.
The title of Death of the Month was earned by Belgarath the mage, who managed to die in a spectacular fashion due to an untimely force.

April 29, 1997: HEAR YE! HEAR YE! HEAR YE!
Our first ever monthly Sorcerers' Bash will be held Sunday, May 4, at 4 PM Eastern Daylight Time (that is 2000 GMT, probably 2100 in most parts of the UK.) During a Sorcerers' Bash, all participants will be "sorcerised" (your throwaway personae will be given temporary sorcerer status.) The Bash lasts until all participants are dead except the last one, who will be the winner of a fabulous prize. This is your chance to experiment with fighting tactics and enjoy the thrill of the hunt without risking your main personae!

April 26, 1997: PASSWORD SECURITY is what protects your accounts from unauthorised access. Still, many of you have not yet changed the password that was assigned to your accounts at the time they were created. You can change your MUD2 password easily, by typing /P either at the main prompt or in the game itself.

April 21, 1997: SORRY FOR THE UNEXPECTED OUTAGE: apparently, there was a minor hickup at our Internet Service Provider that temporarily interrupted our Internet connection. All should be fixed now, and at least this brief outage gave me an opportunity to upgrade the system to version 4E(31), complete with Richard's latest fixes. The nasty bug that caused us to revert to 4E(30) twice has been found and killed (and Richard specifically requested that I pass on his thanks to Pugsley, Starfire, and all others who helped to reproduce the problem.) Still, as before, if you encounter anything odd or seemingly abnormal, please report the occurrence to me. Thanks!

April 19, 1997: TIME FOR A NAME CHANGE: The arch-wizard known as Gandalf shall henceforward be called Viktor the arch-wizard. All of you know my real name; and my arch-wiz duties prevent me from engaging in extensive role-play. Therefore, I concluded that it's best if I use my real name; at least I will no longer need to sign my MUD2-related e-mail messages as Viktor/Gandalf! This change shall also reflect the fact that I am much more MUD2's administrator than a player of the game. Note that the name 'Gandalf' will remain reserved for some time, so as to avoid the possibility of confusing an impostor with the real me.

April 12, 1997: THE BAD LAG that many of you are experiencing is something completely beyond my control. It appears that some gateway machines between MCI and Sprint lose packets by the bucketful, forward packets out of sequence, even create some duplicate packets; needless to say, when packet loss reaches or exceeds 60%, chances are you will be lucky if you even manage to connect to the MUD box, and interactive gaming is completely out of the question.
Some of you (e.g., those with demon.co.uk accounts) may not see MCI even if you attempt to do a traceroute to the MUD box. However, a traceroute from the MUD box to your systems shows MCI hosts on the route. What this means is that the route is asymmetric; packets travel along different routes to and from the MUD box.
I have no idea as to when this problem might be resolved or even whether the Powers That Be at MCI or Sprint (whichever is responsible for this) are aware of the problem in the first place. That said, I am investigating the possibility of using another provider with MUD in the future; however, that will not solve the current problem and for all I know, this may be a solution that generates more trouble than it is intended to solve. For the time being, all I can do is ask for your patience; let's hope somebody at Sprint or MCI is is working weekends!

April 11, 1997: A NEW MOTHERBOARD has been installed on the server. I am pretty sure this will correct the problem; last night, as I was trying to fix the system, it got progressively worse until it failed to boot altogether even with all adapter cards removed. If that is not an indication of motherboard failure, I don't know what is!
So let's cross our collective fingers. MUD2 is back up and running again and I sure hope it will stay up so that I can go to sleep for a change!
Many of you replied to my mail that I sent out to the Internet address of all active players. (If you haven't received it, perhaps the address I have for you is obsolete; please let me know. A copy is available on this Web site.) Without exception, all your comments were very supportive; it really helped me as I was arch-wizzing with a screwdriver. Thank you very much!

April 10, 1997: FIRST OF ALL, I APOLOGISE for the repeated unavailability of the system today. As announced earlier, we have reverted to version 4E(30) after an attempt to upgrade to 4E(31) resulted in a series of nasty crashes. However, our problems did not end there; a few hours later, the operating system crashed several times, making me suspect the hardware. Whether in fact the 4E(31) crashes and these ones are related or not, I have not yet been able to determine.
I would like to request your patience for the next couple of days while I try and track down this problem. It is possible that we will have a few more crashes until I am able to identify the faulty component (if indeed, there is a faulty hardware component behind all this). Thank you for bearing with me.

April 10, 1997: WE HAVE REVERTED to version 4E(30) after a series of unexplained and nasty crashes that occurred today. Hopefully, the crashes WERE caused by the new version and this will clear up the problem! My sincere apologies for the inconvenience!

April 10, 1997: VERSION 4E(31) OF MUD has just been installed. Please report any bugs, problems, crashes, or odd behavior that you may encounter in the Land. Thanks!

April 9, 1997: JILLITHE THE WITCH is the Land's newest immortal. Congratulations on a quick recovery; barely more than a week after she was ambushed by the thief, Jillithe claimed her rightful place among MUD2's wizzes!

April 5, 1997: AMIDST THE FLOOD OF NEW WIZZES it appears I failed to properly carry out my duties: I failed to announce the ascension of Hester the witch and Cat the wizard. Belatedly, I ask for their forgiveness and offer my congratulations! And now we have another wiz on our hands: shortly after he earned the title of Player of the Month, as if to prove that the "POTM curse" is mere superstition, Hakuman crossed over to immortality and revealed his true identity: he is none other than Mudguard, one of MUD2's legendary wizzes. It is an honor to have you among us!

April 5, 1997: AN OLD WIZ HAS RETURNED: Runeblade the wizard, who earned his title before MUD2 was shut down by Kesmai, has come to reclaim his title. Welcome back, old friend! (For those of you unfamiliar with this site's beginnings: our initial player database was inherited from the Kesmai site which was abruptly shut down on January 31. All active players, wizzes and mortal alike, had their accounts transferred and were able to reclaim their personae if they chose to subscribe here.)

April 2, 1997: THE PLAYER OF THE MONTH for March is Hakuman. Congratulations! The other monthly title, the DOTM (Death Of The Month) was awarded unanimously to Jillithe, who was just a few thousand points short of wizdom when the thief took her life. Jillithe recovered from this setback with surprising swiftness and is again solidly on her way towards her goal of attaining wizdom!

April 2, 1997: SORCERERS' BASHES will be held less frequently. The next Sorcerers' Bash will be held Sunday, May 4, at 2100 GMT (4 PM Eastern Daylight Time). From then on, Sorcerers' Bashes will be held at the same time on the first Sunday every month. Don't miss the opportunity to improve your fighting skills and earn a fabulous prize!

March 25, 1997: MURPHY'S LAW must be at work: MUD2's Internet provider is recovering from a major system crash just as I am writing this. Murphy's law, of course, is that principle of nature that determined that this crash had to happen during our scheduled Mobile Bash. Needless to say, I am just as helplessly waiting for that system to come back to life as many of you doubtlessly are ... all I can do is ask for your understanding and apologise for the inconvenience.

March 20, 1997: THE SMALL PRINT HAS ARRIVED: please read our new Terms and Conditions document. It is available in the Library and also on the Web page (click on the Terms icon). There is nothing new in it that was not covered by the "plain English" version, but it spells out many things in far greater detail.

March 20, 1997: DALAMAR THE WIZARD has usurped Starquest as the newest immortal. He snuck in to wizdom in disguise as Lesk the mage. His last words to me as a mortal were "hopefully the next time I'll be a fellow wiz"; however, as he was still almost 30,000 points short of that goal, I didn't take his warning seriously!

March 14, 1997: STARQUEST THE WIZARD is the Land's newest immortal. After several failed attempts at immortality (and earning the Death of the Month title two times in a row) he decided to go undercover and sneaked in to wizdom as Quixotic. He has now reclaimed his rightful name. Congratulations!

March 14, 1997: IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CREDIT CARD CUSTOMERS: Please remember that all credit card charges will appear on your statement under the vendor name InCAD Software Technologies Corporation, of Ottawa, Canada. The credit card charge is $30 Canadian a month (converted into your local currency) or $300 Canadian a year. At present rates, this translates into approximately $25 U.S., or 15 pounds in British currency. Monthly charges will be applied on or after the first of each month, until you cancel your subscription. Annual charges will be applied on or after the first of the month in which you began your subscription. If your credit card information changes (in particular, if you get a new card with a new expiry date), don't forget to notify me immediately!

March 6, 1997: TO ALL WHO SENT PAYMENT ALREADY: thank you! May you enjoy every moment of your stay in the Land!

That said, many of you have not yet sent me anything. I would understand this if you had been away and didn't receive my e-mail (this is what the March 15 / March 30 extension was all about after all) but many of you play daily and still didn't bother to send me a note. If you are playing under the assumption that MUD2 is still free ... well, it isn't.
Beginning March 10, the accounts of those who play daily but have not sent me a note on payment yet, will be removed. Whether you are a 0-point novice or a wiz, I WILL NOT RESTORE YOUR PERSONAE! No pay, no play. The only way for you not to see this message is by not playing at all between now and Monday, in which case your account will not be affected anyway.
If you DID send me a note but never received a reply; please let me know right away. It is possible your e-mail disappeared somewhere and I certainly have no intention of harming your account.

March 5, 1997: A PROTOTYPE WEB PAGE for MUD2.COM has been constructed and can be viewed at www.vttoth.com/mud2.

March 3, 1997: MISTRESS THE WITCH is the Land's newest immortal: congratulations! In the meantime, wiz votes are in: this month's Player of the Month is Kelly, while Starquest has earned the dubious Death of the Month title for the second time in a row!

March 1, 1997: CONGRATULATIONS TO TABITHA, the Land's newest witch!

February 26, 1997: CHARGING WILL BEGIN March 1. An e-mail that provides the details has been sent to the Internet address of all registered MUD2 players. If you don't receive it within 24 hours (say, by the evening of February 27) do let me know and I will verify that your address is correct in my database and send you a copy.