Ancient Anguish, abbreviated AA, is a fantasy-themed MUD, a text-based online role-playing game. Founded in 1991 by Balz "Zor" Meierhans and Olivier "Drake" Maquelin, it opened to the public on February 2, 1992. It is free-to-play, but has been supported by player donations since 1994.
Ancient Anguish is based on a "map-coordinate" system rather than linked areas, which contributes to the immersive feeling of entering another 'world'. Areas are then placed on the nearly 10,000 room "map" and tied into the geography and history of the fantasy world, called Oerthe. In addition, the mud strives for a "describe-all" policy for all areas, whereby any item/object/feature should respond to as many of the senses as possible, which adds to the immersive quality, although not all older areas conform to current balance and describe-all policies. It is noted as incorporating adult themes into its gameplay.
Administration and site history
In the early 1990s, most MUDs were housed on university mainframe computers, either illicitly or with tacit approval from the computer science department (many of whom played or created the games they hosted). In late 1993, Ancient Anguish faced the threat of being shut down by the Swiss university that hosted the game, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, for excessive bandwidth usage. Hundreds of players made donations totalling more than US$7000 and bought a SparcStation 2 workstation, relocating the MUD to Washington, D.C.
At the same time, Zor (who functioned as God, or chief administrator, at the time) abdicated his singular authority over the MUD and turned over control to a newly created Senate of Wizards, with Amante serving as the Senate President. The Senate appoints Archwizards of Law, Balance, Quality Control, Education, Mudlib, World and Map, and Driver. The Senate consists of the Arch Wizards of the different functional administrations, plus additional Senators at large. In 1995, Amante abdicated his role as Senate President and the Senate assumed complete control over the MUD, and has continued to administer with 9 to 12 members who periodically change.
Over the next decade, Ancient Anguish was hosted by a number of access providers: Mid 1995 to 1996: Pacific Rim Networks in Bellingham Washington Mid 1996 to July 1997: Chaco Inc. in San Jose, CA July 1997 to Feb 2006: InReach Internet in Stockton, CA Feb 2006 to August 2008: LocalLink.net in Michigan August 2008 to current: Colocation America in Los Angeles, CA
Though its population has never been as high as some other MUDs, it remains one of the more popular LPMuds on the internet today, despite facing stiff competition from commercial and/or graphical MMORPGs. Ironically, Ancient Anguish has been cited by original EverQuest designer Ryan Palacio as being heavily played by the EverQuest development team. It was also the basis of one of the earliest ethnographies of virtual worlds, and was further explored in a master's thesis on the sociolinguistics of virtual worlds. The lead designer of Ultima Online, Raph Koster, played Ancient Anguish for inspiration creating LegendMUD. Various aspects of LegendMUD later shaped the design of Ultima Online.
Development
New code is continually added to the game by a team of volunteer "wizards", or coders. Players can elect to become a wizard upon meeting three requirements: 1.) achieving a minimum of 1 million experience points; 2.) completing a number of the quests available; and 3.) earning a number of exploration points (sometimes called "Gaius Points", after the sage who provides hints to guide players to find them). Players may elect to solve more quests and fewer exploration points, or more exploration points and fewer quests.
Exploration points are generally completed through exploration, prodding, touching, and otherwise investigating a given area or room, or completion of a mini-quest. The hints provided by the Gaius character are generally vague, and no direct statistic is available to players.
New wizards go through an educational process where they learn about coding enhancements for the game, develop an idea for a new area, and proceed to build it. The system was designed to provide guidance both to experienced programmers and those with no experience. These new areas go through a process of validation to ensure they meet the thematic, quality, and balance/playability requirements of the game, and are then opened to all players.
In late 2005, player levels were expanded from 19 to 50.