The History of LotJ!

I think it’d be fun if we came up with a history of LotJ. The mud has been around for practically forever, but the early/earlier days are sort of vague. Avanga, Pez, Coya, anyone that’s ever bragged about playing in the Ghost/Raven days, I summon thee!

I started playing sometime in Summer 2004 and by then, Anna/Orion were already well in charge of the place. When I first started, the LotJ website was still the old school legendofthejedi.com Ghost production.

What happened to LotJ before then? When did Anna/Orion take over? When did the mud actually start? The prevailing story is around 1999. Was the mud originally known under another name? There are 1 or 2 super obscure helpfiles (can’t think of them at the moment) that refer to the mud by a different name. Was LotJ known as something else at one point?

I started playing late 2000 after jumping from Star Wars Combine at the request of a couple of the players there. When I started, there wasn’t really eras or timelines. The game kinda started with the Empire and RA then progressed into the New Republic and Remnants. There was always a third clan that usually was neutral/biased (Could be wrong on that.) I guess a lot of my memory is fuzzy. If I do remember correctly, Ghost left first due to college, then Raven kinda ran things alone. At least I remember a "TL" where Raven pretty much was around by himself. Don’t remember how Anna got involved, but Orion pretty much got involved by being around and being helpful.

If only I haven’t been through four computers since I started playing, I could probably give information…maybe I’ll try to reboot them up and check out my old documents and logs.

Oh, Anna took over 2001 I believe? And Orion came late 2002 or early 2003.

I honestly couldn’t tell you the year I started playing, I was smoking way too much pot back then. LotJ wasn’t the largest SWR at that point, I believe, but it was close. Probably had around 20 players at any given time? My early time on the MUD was spent screwing around so I didn’t get too involved with the people or plots until the "TL" (they weren’t really TLs at all) I rolled Avanga.

My memory concerning the Raven incident is a bit hazy, but the way I recall it he had his Jedi Master in a pubbie with the RA leader and I, an Imperial pilot at the time, knew who they were. I targeted their public shuttle, Raven immchatted me immediately ordering me not to shoot it down, I shot it down anyways, I was banned for like 6 months. I took the situation to Ghost, next thing I know Raven had vanished and I was unbanned. Anna came around shortly afterwards when Ghost’s interest in the MUD was dwindling away.

OH! A couple little things I am responsible for (your welcome/sorry)

* Jawas talking in a cutesy voice
* The old "Avanga points" thing (Markoth stole it from me)
* Squadrons (the concept/functionality of it, not the code itself)
* Holsters (Again, concept/functionality… I think)
* STATIC HP – I did the original Static HP chart for Ghost to implement (the 1000 hp for Humans, 900 for Jawas, etc. Before that, players gained hp every level like they do mv/mana, and it wasn’t uncommon for people to have like 10k hp). When we switched over to that, the weakest mobs had 500000 hp and hit for thousands of damage with every attack because nothing in the MUD had been adjusted aside from the player characters.

If anyone can get in touch with Cecil/Sankis, I know he had old logs from the Markoth TL and the one after that. That stuff was pretty great.

I started playing around 2005-ish I believe. A good friend of mine from school, Pyke/Koolaidman, suggested the MUD to me since he knew I played MUDs and liked Star Wars. I came over during Neru Bas debacle while the Supreme Galactic Order was still a major clan. My second character wound up being my first Forcer; a Jawa named Hari Ujina. Unfortunately, this was a point of time where nearly everyone had a Forcer and the asshattery between the Neru Bas and everyone else was peaking pretty high. Despite that, I’ve stuck around these long six years. I’ve had ups and downs with this game, but my experience has been mostly positive.

R.I.P. Sirroc… my very first character, a Verpine slicer in the New Republic… atomized by an Imperial Interdictor.

I forget when I first started playing since I played very, very sporadically (a few weeks every year) until about 2004. When I first started, though, Ghost and Raven ran things and Markoth was Emperor. Or maybe it was the time he ran the RA. Anyway, I remember Ghost and Raven being in charge. And then I was gone for months and months and then Orion was in charge.

I mostly kept to myself back then, didn’t talk on OOC much, didn’t do much of anything except level engineering by myself in the workshop. I remember that Coruscant was still laid out like the stock smaug starting town or something, roughly square with a central street and streets branching off east and west that had everything on them. Like the workshop was on the third street up, on the west side, and there was a fountain at the northmost intersection, and a food shop east from there. I remember making five-layer armor, I remember back when we still had a ‘normal’ who list that showed everyone and people used their titles to advertise on the wholist. I remember hanging out with Markoth when he was playing a tailor character, and he showed me some stuff.

The Chiss EOT was my first time really being involved in a mud-wide event, and I just sort of randomly stumbled into it. After that is when I started playing regularly and started being a little more well-known (infamous?).

As much as I hate to say it, I’m pretty sure Zimri came up with squadrons in 2001, Avanga. Somehow the NR and the IR had good leadership and division leaders, so some pretty interesting things happened. Military started RPing like military, battles occurred, blah blah blah. The TL was awesome and leadership actually talked with each other to have scheduled events and stuff. Not that I’m trying to troll you, Avanga <!– s:-P –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt="" title="Razz" /><!– s:-P –> I still love you!

Needless to say, I vaguely remember that incident with Raven. Do you remember another IMM from that time? I kinda vaguely remember one and I wanna say it began with an S. But I could be wrong…And it isn’t Sintaka. He came much much later.

Sorry…edited year and then added some stuff.

I’m telling you, man. I spent over a year suggesting squadrons to Ghost, every time he asked the MUD what they wanted next. Of course, I always wanted it to be controlled from a lead starfighter. -_- I wish I could get at some old logs or the wolfpaw forums, I’m sure there are piles of things I wanted implemented lying around.

OH. I thought you meant putting together actual squadrons of ships with character pilots. A full squadron was hard due to numbers, so he would use a flight wing and call that a squadron. It was actually really cool to deploy Green and Red Squadrons while Ghost Squadron would run defense.

Oh, god no. Being a starfighter pilot has always been suicidal. Way back I tried out a TIE Fighter pilot and they promoted me to a capship right away because I was too competent to risk letting fly a starfighter, lol.

This has been great and informative, thanks guys! The more info we can piece together about the Good Old Days(tm) the better

Mmm. Old guy thread.

I started in 2001-ish, working for Markoth as an Imperial Navy officer and picking fights with Saraen, who ran the Army. Ghost was in charge of coding, Raven was effectively what you call &quot;PR&quot; today. There were a couple of secondary coders, I think one of them was named Proximo. Good folks. Gameplay around this time was more complicated in some ways, easier in others. I remember pshield and pturrets being a pain, which meant that you had to insert a team on the ground to keep defenders busy and out of the turret room if you moved the navy in. Wampa blood made for sick grenades. Raven had a habit of making himself OP toons, but that’s fairly well-documented. RA-leading Jedi Master white Whiphids, etc. Ghost didn’t notice much because he was working hard on his Aliens v Predators hyper-PvP side project, but he did get around to canning Raven after Raven started driving people out of the game.

Anna would have to tell you herself, but I think she was around late 2002, early 2003. I remember I first met her when she was a mort. She ended up playing something rebel-like, not RA lead per se but maybe Chancellor of the NR or something. We got along really well. Orion came later, and they had the same dynamic – Orion coding whatever whimsical stuff he could, and Anna managing the pbase.

Not sure what else to talk about that’s super general and not just my old toon war stories.

i’ve been playing for almost seven years now and i still don’t know how to do space combat. hell ask anyone and they’ll tell you that i’m still a pk noob. i’ve had a lot of frustrations with this game, but i’ve also had a lot of good times with this game. there are a lot of times when i’ve lost fun, good characters due to the asshattery of some of the dbags who play this game, but one of the beautiful things is that even though it takes a little time, it isn’t too hard to bounce back and get right back into it.

despite dealing with the constant stream of people who are there to &quot;win&quot; the game, i think this is the one factor that has kept me trudging on here. i’ll ignore the dicks eventually, but making a character that i can seriously get into is what makes this game a real gem to me.