Hey, Brywing! I liked the question a lot, but didn't want to have my answer tacked onto the end of an old thread about player wipes. I hope you don't mind me ripping it out and putting it into a new thread!

I started playing when I was a freshman in High School, and at the time, Internet gaming was a new concept to me. I was amped because we had just gotten dial-up at my folks' house, and I finally had a PC that had 16 MB of RAM so that I could play Warcraft II with my friends via modem (at that point there wasn't any battle.net, so you just had to connect to a friend's computer via modem). Clearly, Internet gaming has changed a lot since then, and we have MMOs and all sorts of other things to distract us.

Anyway, a buddy of mine had an older brother that was in college, and he had seen him playing Tempus at home over the break. It was free to play, could be run over a telnet client (I used Anzio Lite at first), and was a ton of fun. I logged on, rolled up a ranger named Guerrand, and found a fine longsword in the donation room, and was ready to rock! I had a ton of fun grouping with people, taking down the elven champion, and exploring new zones. The draw for me was the interaction with people in Holy Square, and the excitement of discovering new zones to level in. As a newbie, I ran the chessboard and the haunted mansion south of the quiet monastery, and then eventually upgraded to fighting elves. I died a lot, lost a lot of equipment, and hit several DTs. I never had eq that was particularly awesome, so it didn't bother me too much. I had a lot of fun trying to find stuff to use to re-equip.

But, truth be told, the real draw were all of the people (awesome and not so awesome). I joined up with the clan Ferrum Angel, and soon thereafter got pkilled and looted at least once a week. It was frustrating, to be sure, but, I kept coming back. I learned pretty quickly that if I wanted to go anywhere outside of Holy Square when Mels or Broken was on, that I should probably bring some friends…so that's when I got most of my high school friends to join in with me. Narcissus, Nocte, Adragan, Ithorn, Sabu, and a bunch of others that I can't remember all started playing, and we had a blast grouping with each other, finding zones to level in, and trying to watch each others' backs.

It was a struggle to be sure, and I'm certainly not the best/most effective leveler out there. It took me about two years to get my first gen on the game, and it wasn't even with my first character. The highest I got Guerrand up to was level 48 before I stopped playing him in favor of a thief (named Storm) and an evil cleric (named Feril). Three things remained constant during that time, though: I DT'd all the time, had crappy eq, and loved to explore. Most importantly, though, I had a ton of friends that I was doing it with, and we were having fun.

Sorry, forgot to add Brywing's original question: "For anyone who was there when Tempus first started becoming popular in the 90s, what was the draw? What made it fun?"

this is not a short post :P

The 90's, when Warner Bros. predicted that Elmer Fudd would be hunting Buggs Bunny with a Laser Blaster… ah yes…

I remember not understanding how people not playing with Anzio lite, but with 'Zmud' could stand playing with all those pesky 'colors'.

Oh the horrible changes, and triggers and stuff, it sounds so complicated, how will I ever learn all this new stuff, what if I never do, what if it's a waste of time and I play worse because of it, oh worry worry worry.

I started out hearing about Tempus while eating lunch in a high school cafeteria, school lunch, soup, chocolate milk, sub, mixed fruit medley relay, ect. It sounded badass, hearing about the shananagins going on, I decided to check it out,

Anzio lite was free-cheap-and easy, (insert your own joke here) That mud client didn't do much, it basically let you play, Heard about Zmud, but it was 'new', 'strange', 'exotic', confusing and I didn't know how it worked, or how it would work. What if I was bad at it! Used it, loved it, don't know how I got along without it. **

I started out, made a mage, mucked around, killed some cocks, got killed by a holy defender, got a level, got a few more piece of eq, sold some stuff, moved to another zone, made another char, was barely able to take out a halfling guard, was an epic battle, got a few things of halfling gear to sell. Asked what 'toughguy: yes' meant on gossip, got pk 10 seconds after that, and quite frequently after that :P - got a few more levels, was able to make it to another zone, decided to make another mage and use a different name (not the one I came up with before logging on and seeing others names the first time). It was easier with my mage the second time around, late night sleeping over at a friends house, playing at 4 in the morning running hobgoblins, burning hands, hell yes! Then the Mud was Wiz-Locked, all remorts were set down to gen 1 level 1, and morts were left at whatever level they were.

Taking time to learn what skills work best when, what skills work better with others, which skills to not use in certain situations, paying attention to how mobs respond and react, thinking creatively about how to handle things. You get a level, caps go up, get more power, and more of the mud opens up. Starting out most of the game is cut off, just knowing that more of the game is open with each level you gain helps.

I always had fun goofing around in HS or just being social, it always made my leveling slow down and suffer, but it was a break from the exploring and fighting. Once I got a 10th gen, I took a week just to do nothing but screw around, which is when I learned some of the most looney things you can do on Tempus when you're just screwing around.

Friends made it fun. Someone would get rowdy with yourself or a friend, and it was time to suit up, go get some. Hell even some friends I had pk'd me, such dicks - but HILARIOUS. I've killed some of my friends on accident a few times, and sometimes they wonder about those 'accidents'.

Tempus is a great game to screw around on. It can be blast.

I don't know about stagnated, I of course like to see new things always added to Tempus, and I'm always greatful when the Uppers that be have time to do such things, it's not exactly a high paying job, and the complaint department is always busy :P

I instantly rented out my char and rolled up a Bard the second I saw one on the who list.. and when I see new skills/spells ect. get added, I check 'em out. It gave me a reason to redo classes again after the second wiz-lock, aka this time around. Rangers with Thornskin, sweet, Physics with slow and haste and new remort things, sweet, Psionics with feedback/shockwave, ect.

If I had taken statistics in school like Singer/Disaster did (at least I think he did) I could probably break it down like he would have, so I'll use the mimic technique (not as effective) - I believe there have more additions to the game from '04-00 than from '98-04, so to the extent of looking at the game and stagnation like that, then no, there isn't stagnation. Nothing was going to redo some stuff, and some people had the same reaction I had when I first thought about switching from Anzio-lite to Zmud, or the same reaction people had about the Nintendo Wiimote before it came out. People were losing their minds, you'd swear the earth was about to open and starting gobbling ppl whole.

It's still a fun game, and if a new class comes out, I'm sure I'll roll one up. And I'm sure it won't take more than a month for people who don't want to roll up a new class char to start bitching. I'm sure in a bizzaro-world it's unfair for me to just roll up a new char cause I've played all the classes, and so I don't hafta play all the other ones before playing a new one. Or how is now pissed cause their mojo, that they spend years to get, doesn't look as cool compared to this new class. And I'll get to hear all about how this new class is cheap, lame, insane, dumb, weak. New stuff usually goes in a few cycles, 'Fear the new thing', 'Hate the new thing', 'Kill the new thing'. First nobody wants the new thing out of fear, then nobody likes the new thing cause it's new.. "that class X is so cheap" , then 'Kill the new thing' - ppl try their hardest to get new class/skill turned down. The "kill the new thing" has part of it that is carried on in forums, old threads get brought up, and people cite a 4 year old post as a reason to turn something down or validate their dislike of something. New skill/class comes out, naturally it very well might come out needing tweaks, which happen. Putting something into the game isn't like making 'Tang'. After the proper adjustment, others will still walk around not aware of this, and act like no adjustments were made. Further more they'll begin to attack other parts of the skill/class cause it's new and doesn't have traditional lines already set (ie. psiblast does a certain amount of damage, nobody questions that amount, but if you were to put in a new skill, 'mercenary assault tactics' {allows the mercenary to go into assault tactics mode, dealing x3 damage from gunshots, allowing for multiple targets to be shot by ricochets and shoot-throughs, and causing all mobs to take a 50% chance to hit due to the 'speical ops' nature of the storming of the compound.. flash-bangs going off ect} everything about that skill then comes into debate, should it do less damage, should it give less chance of being hit, ect to the point of people trying to kill it or water it down so it's like something already in the game).

If you feel like there's stagnation, we have no-one to blame but ourselves. I'll take some blame for it, I could have tried a lil harder to calm people the fuck down about stuff. Everyone gets so damn antsy about new stuff :P

I love playing Tempus for a ton of different reasons, but the first reason is always the most important one for me. My friends and others I've bumped into since playing(cool and suck). All of goofy things that have gone down over the years, (Hi MasterX! :x) they've been there to laugh about :P