Citizens of Starmourn,
Well, as you are no doubt aware, Starmourn has never exactly had a thriving population of players. I dont
know if thats simply a function of launching a new MUD when it launched (we knew it would be challenging)
or if its a function of mistakes we made, but regardless, Starmourn has never really been a viable
business for us, and we kept it alive as long as we have partly because I just really like the idea of
having a sci-fi MUD as part of the Iron Realms stable.
However, we cant continue to really support it, and Im here to announce that Starmourn, as well as
Imperian, is entering what were calling Legacy Mode.
In Legacy Mode, the game wont have any real support other than keeping the server up, and purchases
(credits, arti packages, etc) will be disabled.
Neritus will stick around for at least a month to help implement the changes to take us fully into Legacy
mode, so you wont be without your familiar producer for some time yet.
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What does this mean for you as a player of Starmourn?
1. That as of now, the retirement values of your characters are forever frozen and retiring into Imperian is disabled.
2. However, you can also retire to Achaea, Aetolia, or Lusternia with the full 100% of your retirement value. But, you dont have to decide now or anytime soon. You can choose to create a character in either of those games and use your retirement credits there whenever you want. HELP RETIREMENT will tell you more about retirement.
3. Purchases are turned off as of this announcement, and the credit market is disabled.
4. Quite a few other changes will be forthcoming as well, such as Starmourn becoming a completely open PK environment, and others, that will largely be a result of trying to set up an environment that is usable without necessarily needing admin support.
5. One immediate question some people have is probably how were going to deal with players being abusive a-holes to each other. The answer is that its going to be a combination of encouraging you to use ignore on irritating players to a kind of f*** around and find out mentality, where if you make us spend our attention on you through egregiously bad behavior, its not going to go well for you.
Again, Im quite sorry to have to announce this. I was personally heavily involved with Starmourns design, designed all the original races (both player and non-player), the cultures, and the universe generally. Its one of my creative babies, and I even have pictures of three of the races hanging on the wall of my home office (female Jin, male Elgan, female Shen). Its personally disappointing to have to do this, believe me.
I hope you enjoyed the few years you had with Starmourn and that if you choose to use your retirement credits on another of our games that you find them welcoming and friendly.
Ive also got another post coming that explains how the universes of Starmourn and Achaea are actually very related - its info we had hoped to run an event around someday, but thats not going to happen now.
Thanks for being part of Starmourn up until now, and in the future as well if thats your choice!
Matt Mihaly
Founder/CEO Iron Realms Entertainment