The Temple of Dagon

As part of our continuing effort to update and improve the MUD, some areas will be undergoing a series of changes in the next few weeks. I'll do my best to warn everyone in advance before making any significant alterations, as well as keep you informed of the ongoing status of the process. If anyone has any questions about the building projects currently being undertaken on the game, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

The first item on the list is the Dreamlands. On the MUD, the Dreamlands were first added in as little more than an afterthought. Some of you long-time players may remember a time when the whole Enchanted Forest was less than a dozen rooms, and that was including the zoog village! Over the years, a lot of different people have added new areas to the Dreamlands, occasionally altering it to meet their needs. Unfortunately, this has resulted in something of a patchwork result, with conflicting room descs, random roads and paths, and leftover bits and pieces of various areas that don't match. Ever tried mapping the Dreamlands? Trust me, it's a little confusing at times.

So we're going to go through the Dreamlands and reset it. Hopefully, we'll be able to provide a coherent feeling throughout the area that is not only more consistent, but also more true to the Mythos and established canon. I know it's annoying to have to go back through and re-learn an area all over again, but once this is complete, the Dreamlands will not only be cleaner and more organized, but it will also be prepared for further expansion in the future.

It's important to note that we are not planning on removing anything. All your favorite places, mobs, and objects will still be there. We're simply going to move them around a bit. In fact, we're going to be adding quite a bit.

Naturally, this process will take some time. Some areas will be closed off entirely while they are updated, but many will remain open. I will notify you before any areas are closed off, and I'll make sure to provide you with alternate ways of getting where you're going. We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding during this time, and we'll do our best to finish this as quickly as possible.

The first target will be the Enchanted Forest, which will be closed off during the process. Starting next week, there will be a portal at the bottom of the Steps of Slumber that leads directly to the zoog village. From there, another portal will lead directly to the northern gates of Ulthar. Everything in between will be closed. This includes:

- The Enchanted Forest
- Mount Hatheg-Kla
- The temple of Bast
- The villages of Nir and Hatheg
- The hidden entrance to the Caverns of Zin
- The southern entrance to the swamp of Zyneth

If you have any business to conduct in those areas, do it this week. Please do not attempt to enter the closed area during this time. Any players found in the closed portion of the Dreamlands will be removed by any means necessary. I hope to have the Forest completed within a week, so if more time is needed I'll let you know. Once the Forest is done, we'll be moving further south through the Dreamlands. We'll inform you of the exact locations and times before we start.

That's it for now. We'll do our best to keep you updated, and hopefully you'll like the end result of out efforts. Thanks again for your patience, and as always, thanks for playing with us.

Hi,

Just joined the fora here, and just recently re-joined the MUD after a many-year absence.

Are the changes you describe above the reason why the CthulhuMUD webpages, not to mention the MUD itself, appear to be down? Or is it just permissions on the access point I'm on?

Thanks for all the hard work. It's a great MUD.

No, I have no clue why the game's down at the moment. I posted the message, then went to post a similar message on the game itself, and ran into the same trouble. My guess is that Foxbird and Quanqued are having some kind of private party and the rest of us aren't invited.

Hrm, okay. Still down, as far as I can tell... *shrug* Oh, well.

The proposed changes sound good, by the way. I only spent a little time in the Dreamlands as my old character, and was a bit confused by the layout, so having a tighter realm would be helpful.

Please keep us newbies posted on any upcoming changes! I'd hate to wander into a forbidden area by accident. :D

I am excited to see the layout changes..

I was having problems with cthulhumud.com the other day, but I believe it was most likely a temporary DNS issue. The recent ip change probably took a while to be fully active across the net, but it seems to be fine now.

You can expect to see some changes to the CM website soon as well!

As promised, certain areas of the Dreamlands have been closed off for maintenance. The list of areas is listed above, so if you have things to do in those areas, I'm afraid it'll have to wait a few days. I hope to have this project mostly finished in a little over a week, but I'll be sure to keep everyone updated if that should change due to unforseen events, such as a car accident, winning the lottery, or the return of the Old Ones.

There are now portals in place at the bottom of the Steps of Slumber, the Zoog Village, and the northern gates of Ulthar to allow players to move back and forth between those areas. The city of Ulthar and eevrything south of it (Dylath-Leen, Oriab, Ebon Lake, etc.) are all still open for business as usual. Feel free to wreak your customary levels of havoc in those areas. Zyneth and the Caverns of Zin are also open, but the exits that lead from those areas to the Enchanted Forest have been removed, so plan your travels accordingly.

Thanks for your patience while we finish this, and thanks for playing with us.

-- UPDATE --

The project is going rather well, and it should only be a few more days until the closed areas are re-opened. There were a few minor glitches, but nothing serious, and everything is currently on track for being ready to open by the middle of this week. In fact, I can assure you that, barring massive unforeseen complications, those areas should be open once again no later than Wednesday night. (Keep in mind that Wednesday night in my time zone may not be the same as the rest of you.)

Once again, I really appreciate everyone's patience over the last week. Thanks for your cooperation and, as always, thanks for playing with us.

-- Ithaqua

I'm going to go ahead and post it here as I'm still getting asked about it after I've explained time after time in the hopes that people will have a permanent record of my public statement. Note: this may sound like I'm ticked at being asked, I'm not... I'm just rather worn down at the moment. The Hunting Grounds are on hiatus. I'll be doing what I can when I can on them as the inspiration strikes me for it. I'd prefer people didn't try to give me suggestions as the overall idea and feel of the area is well plotted in my mind, just the specifics are not and that's causing me no end of frustration. As people who's actually looked around in my previous area (Longhand) may have realized, I hate cut and pasting descriptions for cookie cutter creatures and room descs. As the Hunting Grounds are almost twice the size of Longhand and I've lost one of my inspirations that I had while I was working on Longhand, it has been a very slow process and very frustrating. You all have my deepest apologies for the time it has taken and one of my old issues for not working on the area is now gone (my HD fried in January and until a month or so ago my MUD client wouldn't accept a specific symbol that's nessecary for OLC.) The Hunting Grounds opening shall be announced on the announcement board on the MUD proper when it's completed, but there is no estimated time of completion at this point. Thank you for your patience and hopefully this area will turn out more beautifully gory and creepy than LH did.

Your friendly neighborhood Grim Reaper

I am sure it will be great when it is finished. I completely agree about the 'cookie cutter' room descs. It makes such a nice difference when the builder spends more time getting all the details just right.

Just out of curiosity, which mud client were/are you using? I often have problems getting Zmud to accept certain characters, but the trick seems to be temporarily disabling triggers (which also disables built-in triggers that zmud has). It may not be relevant, but I thought I would throw that in

Keep up the good work! And say hi to everyone for me, since everyone probably thinks Ale has died

It WAS MudMaster 2k when I was having the issue. I'm kinda wishing I could find my ancient copy of Mushclient... telnet on steroids.