Time flies, when I'm writing this I've been around BatMUD since 1996. Thats seven years. Ior and Tuite got me started and I quickly got to know some other  players from my hometown that also played BatMUD. Those were Demerzel, Souc, Continuity, Smeagol, Avienda, Orcrulez  and Matriam. I started out has a total newbie and I had no clue and was easily lost just wandering around in BatCity church. After some time I got used to this textbased environment and made some slow progress. To begin with I had a few other characters before I took my name that I've been stuck with  since then. I can only remember Singoalla and Lagwagon. Singoalla might have  been my first character, doubt that I got past level 3 with her thoughh. Then I created Lagwagon and that was a fine choice of name, since I was lagged as hell. Remember playing from my school and the whole school shared like one 28.8k modem! Remembered that we played chess one wednesday afternoon after school and it was like that I typed the directions to the monks in the church and the kill command then I went to play one game of chess and went  back to the computer again to see if I had done all those commands when I came back.  So ok I didn't really have any chance to create a good character when I had to deal with all that lag.

All that changed when the young scientiest society 'Omikron 42' got sponsored with a computer from our school and we got hold on some old black and white dos terminals (they seriously just had  floppy disc and memory). We installed Linux on our brand new computer and used it as a server for our terminals. Actually I dont know how they managed to do that (I wasn't involved in that, none of us mudders where), but it worked and we mudders had our own basement with terminals to mud from all night long! We used the school internet connections, so everything was free. Those sure were my best muddings days for me too (See Souc's homepage). We used to sneak up to the teachers room and steal coffee from their machine and by the cheap pizza a few blocks away. I went home with the first morning bus more then just a few times. Me, Souc, Demerzel and Ior usually partied together (Smeagol, Matriam, Orcrulez and Avienda came later. Tuite never started playing for real and Continuity was everyones mentor and to high level to party with us). We quickly made a lot of friends and 9 man parties with just <lvl 40 people was not uncommon for us. Darshan, Torpid, Geten, Namhas, Maribor, Spid, Moss, Kato, Gildron, Druff, Dazzt, Doughnut and many more ... (sorry for leaving you out and sorry if you don't think you belong:))  Well thats what mudding is about, to party with others and don't worry to much about rate and how much experience you get. Maybe its just me not paying attention, but I dont think players seem to play like we did at low levels anymore. Which is think is sad, but well I will not ponder why they don't. It's simply their own problem. There's things in BatMUD you can learn that can't be measured by experience points and you usually learn those things from other players. My first reincarnation was Thrikhren mage, which I stayed until I got feed up by dying from water. So know I have to think of what I reinced next, I actually think I reinced into an ogre legioneer and whacked mines with Ior and Demerzel. Ior and Demerzel advanced above level 30 (looosers!) so I was forced to be alone in mines for a while, but I also eventually climbed up into the light. I stayed "def" tank until level 40 about when legioneers was merged into the crimson guild and everyone was forced reinced. The next reincarnation was gnome druid and the beginning of my most productive era. Must have made about 6-7M as gnome druid. It was not like I checked how much damage my spells did or anything, I just shoot. But at that time starlight (druid spell) was totally out of tune and made damage like golden arrows, so I dont think I was a very bad druid either. Even though I know now that druids aren't the best newbie guild. After buying two Spinning Ice Maces (Hey they look cool!) from Qurp for 50k I reinced into a cromagnon barbarian. Wasn't very happy with my  reincarnation, since I simply sucked. I had about 10M experience and I really thought that I would be able to kill Rolf in just one round without dying. Well I couldn't do that so shortly after that I decided to follow in Souc and Ior trace and become a wizard. After several tries,  can't remember how many, I became a wizard. When I wizzed I had less then 20 days gametime and an explore count of about 70%. Newbies makes the best wizards!

After spending one summer taking  my driving license and doing some coding after my driving lessons my first area came into the game autumn 1997 and sevaral other areas followed during the years. A big thank you to the wizards that showed an inexperiences coder how to code, hope you think it paid off:). Names that come to my mind are Shadowjack, Argon, Blitzer, Souc, Namhas, Aarugotti, Duke and Elwod. Well Shadowjack is probably the one that helped me the most.