Danny: 00:10 Welcome Moomin, leeches, Cro-Magnon, and... ducks, I guess one and all to the Titans of Text podcast. We are your hosts, Danny Austerity Nissenfeld. Eric: 00:26 and Eric Oestrich. New Speaker: 00:28 And we have with us today Matti and Niklas of batMUD. We're going to talk about batMUD's history, its gameplay and its virtually unique position of being a mud on Steam. Welcome to you, Matti and Niklas. Matti: 00:44 Hello hello. Niklas: 00:45 Thank you very much for having us. Eric: 00:48 All right. So let's get started with, one of the first questions we always like to ask. Why should I as a player want to join batMUD? Niklas: 00:57 So batMUD is one of the oldest and largest continuously running multi-user dungeons on the internet. So we got started back in April, 1990. So we're celebrating our 30th anniversary this year. On over those 30 years, we've had hundreds of developers. So volunteer developers, contribute to the game, you know, creating a lot of content, ,mechanics, different kind of systems. So there's basically an endless amount of things to do in the game. And that sets us really apart from, you know, many of the other MUDs on the internet, the absolutely vast amount of things that you can do in the game. We also have a very vibrant community, you know, bringing in a ton of players from all around the world and that creates its own unique flair to the game. You know, you can tell that by the fact that, you know, some of our players have been around for 20 plus years and they stay, we'll find new things to do and new friends online. Danny: 01:56 Tell us a little bit about how batMUD actually got started. Niklas: 02:01 Sure. And that actually links to over somewhat quirky name. So batMUD as an entity started as like a hobbiest project project in the Helsinki university of technology back in 1990 and one of the students at the computer science lab basically started a test experiment, if you like, using a mud engine. And they ran that on one of the lab computers called Batman. Yeah. Or they basically had named all of the servers in that lab based on superhero names. It gave more regionally, I run on a server called Batman and that's where the name bat comes from. You know, in the beginning of BatMUD. And then over time, you know, as people found it, it was basically in the infancy of internet, there wasn't a whole lot of gaming content on the internet back in those days more and more people, you know, found BatMUD, you know, joined the development effort or you know, started playing it. And it grew from there. And you know, within a couple of years it had basically outgrown the systems in the computing science lab and, and you know, the game acquired its own servers and then started running pretty much separately from the university of technology. Danny: 03:13 I am a little curious I've got a little bit of a followup here that's a bit personal. So I, I've been mudding forever as, as many of our listeners know. And one of the muds I used to play way back in the early nineties was a German mud in German. And I don't speak or read German, I just kind of bopped around as a kid. How international was your player base back in the very early days or was it mostly people that were in and around the university? Niklas: 03:42 I think during the first year it was pretty much dominated by Fins. So, you know, the Finnish university area. But quite soon after that, there was a bunch of you know university students from the U S who found the game, you know, some of them even joined the administration and, you know, started contributing code and so forth. And then, you know, we basically grew from there. So you know Americans you know, people from across Europe. And so fortunately we actually became international quite early on that I would say that within the couple of, you know, first years we already had, you know, 30/40% of the player base maybe, you know, were you know, non-fins and then it grew even more from there. Eric: 04:27 All right. So we heard a bit how you got involved in muds, Niklas, how did you get involved with MUDs Matti? Matti: 04:34 Oh, it was I think 1998 or something. I first heard about muds like in 96 or so. My friends were talking about it. It had these great stories about this mysterious game and I was not that interested at first, but two years later I tried the game just for a moment and I wandered around and I saw some places, but, which reminded me of the stories and I was very fascinated. It was about 98 that I'd begun to 22 years ago and I'm still there. Marvelous. Marvelous. Danny: 05:10 Since this is just, you know, to some people in the mudding world, you know, running a 20 plus year MUD is not, not the most interesting thing. The most interesting thing I think to a lot of the internal community at least is how you get on steam and maybe why. And why don't you take us through that decision that, that history of deciding to jump on steam. Niklas: 05:35 So we've been toying with the idea of, of you know, going on steam for quite some time and it, it goes back to the fact that, you know, I think roughly five years ago, maybe even more than that, we, we started our own custom client development. So basically we of course knew of the different mud clients that were available on the market. All of them, those of course still work with the game. But like, we decided that we wanted to basically create an even more immersive user experience for players by having our own custom game client that would, you know, feature a or support multiple windows and a little bit better graphical systems. So, you know, more colors and this and that. And you know, over til I must that that custom client effort grew. We decided that, you know, we're actually gonna turn this into a little bit of like a separate project if you like. Niklas: 06:27 So it's still, you know, supporting and working directly with the game, but you know, the development effort is a bit separate and that eventually led to a decision that you know, let's put this, this client up on steam, you know, in part because we of course see that there's quite a bit of attempts to attract players from other muds. That's quite common among, you know, mud administrators and so forth. But, you know, muds overall is a pretty nice environment and, and you know, we would love to see you, the overall player base of the mudding community grow. So we thought that, you know, well, if we can get this up on steam, that would be like a, a positive way of, you know, maybe introducing people outside the traditional, you know, muds to the mudding community and you know, get them more interested in, in, in games. Niklas: 07:14 And even you don't become aware that there are these kinds of text based mud games, they're still around and an operating. So we basically saw, you know, many positive sides of it, you know, part was what's worse, you know, to get people interested. Of course in our game and you know, mudding overall people who had never heard of you know, much [inaudible] apart is to basically promote the client itself. You know, the development effort has gone into it and you know, really trying to create a more modern experience if you like, that isn't, you know, entirely looking like running something on old telnet. Matti: 07:46 Of course a very, very vast majority of players nowadays have this steam client on all the time when they are on their computer. If you can see it as your friends are playing a game called batMUD and playing it a lot, you must be little bit curious; what is it. Perhaps you want to try. Perhaps we want to know more. And having such a platform at your fingertips is, well it's good promotion. So we hope. Danny: 08:13 On the note of steam. I mean steam has more than just a, your friend is playing this game and your friend has played this game and your friend just bought this game. And it also has I guess player created like mini communities with people sharing screenshots and all of that stuff, which ah, they recently brought even more forward on the game pages themselves with all of the guides and community posts and stuff. Is there anything like that for batMUD or are do people actually post things to steam in the community section? Niklas: 08:47 So we had been looking into it and you know, interestingly, we've also had some of our players, for example, run Twitch streams of, of, you know, their mudding sessions and so forth. But like, you know, looking at the steam part, one of the things that we find, you know, really interesting and that we probably will develop, you know, into the game is a link to the achievements. So basically as you do things inside the game, you know, you earn achievements in Steam that, you know, are visible to your steam friends and so forth as well. So we are looking at the, you know, creating even more interaction if you like, between, you know, batMUD as a game and steam as a platform. Danny: 09:26 One more, I keep getting into this theme thing because it's just so interesting. And, and of course I'm an avid steam user and hopefully you'll never accept the deal to be a Epic exclusive in the future. But besides that have you ever thought about you know, on the holiday things, the lunar new year, the Christmas, all that stuff? You can now, like they've settled on this, you earn currency by buying games and then you spend the currency on like backgrounds and emojis and emotes and stuff like that. Have you guys had talks about, you know, having batMUD emojis for for a holiday? I think that would actually be pretty interesting. Niklas: 10:09 That, that's sort of like fun concept and I mean we definitely run different kind of like holiday related events and so forth in game and you know, maybe we can, you know, do some kind of fly in there in general. I mean being an all volunteer effort pretty much we're generally not in the business of selling, you know, emojis and so forth. But you know, if we can do that free of charge or something similar like that, then that could be like a cool link. So thanks for the heads up. We'll definitely look into it. Eric: 10:36 Yeah, you got to get on the the steam card game as well. Anyway, so another a fairly unique feature of batMUD is the fact that you currently have a 160 players online, which is sort of a relatively unique thing in the mud space. Is this a resurgence or has it been pretty steady for the last few years? Matti: 10:57 Well, let's say that the player count has been stable all the time. Like we have had a solid player base for the last forever, for the last 20 years, 30 years or so. But with the recurrence of let's say world of Warcraft, etc. We have had a certain, let's say loss of players like every other MUD has and recently while we put the game on steam, it has definitely brought more players there. There is a quite good new generation of newbies potting together and exploring the realms together and it's been very freshening to see how really new players interact with each other in such familiar grounds and how they integrate with the game at large. Even though it's quite an old game already. So yeah, we have had some new players. Danny: 11:49 Are they kind of like, I'm not saying foreign as an international, like from a different country, but foreign to muds from steam. Have you, have you seen any players that are just kind of like LOL, what the hell is this thing that are just not used to muds? Do they, have you had trouble integrating some people to just the world of mud? Has there been any cultural conflicts essentially, Matti: 12:14 When people log in they usually just give their first reaction is that like, okay, this is really a text-based game and they might log out. But those who stay through the tutorial, it's quite, Let's say if you go through a tutorial, you get quite a good grasp on the game and those who actually completed being mudders or not, they usually stick around for a while. And we have had quite some players who have never heard of much before and have been surprised that we'll have games like this been they have. I didn't even know the existence of such games and they've been very active after finding the game. Niklas: 12:49 There's also been quite many coming to us through steam who have maybe, you know, played muds so 20 years ago or something. And then they suddenly saw something like this pop up on Steam and they've, you know, decided to try out batMUD and work, you know, really positively impressed. And that the fact that, you know, MUDs are still around and, and, and you know, they're getting back into mudding again. So basically we're turning them back into to, you know, modern addicts again. Danny: 13:14 That is one of the best things to hear. Bringing people back into the fold is always a good thing. I myself, even though I ran a MUD for a good decade and was very active in the beginning, I was absent for another decade from the mud community. Let's talk a little bit a little bit more about something relatively related to new players is you guys have a lot of weird races. A lot of them are very fantasy based and you know, some are rarer but very well known fantasy, like the various Fei like brownies versus faeries or Pixies. But you also have ducks and leeches to name two. How did you come by deciding to make such divergent races for batMUD? Speaker 3: 14:07 So it's not just the racist that are divergent. I think overall we'd like to follow a medieval fantasy theme, but we will also give them a lot of leeway to the volunteer developers to create their own content. You know, we don't enforce a very, very strict theme across the game. As long as you know, you don't start bringing in UFOs and science fiction stuff into it, into the game. And I, I think, you know, that's part of the beauty of it that, that, you know, we having over a hundred, you know, several hundred volunteer developers over the years, they'd been able to come up with some of the craziest ideas you could imagine into the game, both in terms of races but also in terms, also locations to visit and storylines to do and so forth. And I think that's kinda important. You know, when you are running a volunteer effort is to, to give people who contribute their time and their energy and their passion to create content. Quite a bit of flexibility to develop storylines and an idea so that that might be able to be unorthodox and then see, you know, how does that actually play out with the gaming community? Danny: 15:17 One of, obviously I've already mentioned it a few times very poignantly in fact. Oh, the fact that duck is a race. What about goose a goose goose geese I was about to say gooses these are are very topical right now. Have you considered adding a, a goose race that maybe has unlimited stun capacity with honking. Niklas: 15:41 Sounds like a fun idea? We can for sure look into it. I think the background behind the duck race is that one of these traditional tabletop role playing games you know, featured a duck as a playable race and they were excellent magicians or something like that. And probably one of our developers who were, you know, playing that particular role playing game a lot. Then he decided to take, let's turn this into a playable race, also on batMUD. Danny: 16:06 And I don't know that the audience would forgive me if I didn't ask ah what about rabbits? No, no one's decided to make a rabbit race yet. Matti: 16:16 Sadly. No, sadly, no. Danny: 16:18 Oh, wait. So are you a fellow, a Lagomorph, or are you into the Leporidae? Niklas: 16:23 So maybe we need to start introducing more and more, you know, furry animals as playable races or something to attract that like a younger audience to the game. I don't know that, that sounds like a potential plot. Danny: 16:36 I would worry that it wouldn't be a younger audience that you'd attract. It would be a furrier audience. Perhaps. Okay. Let's move on past, past these, these silly questions. What, makes batMUD unique? Mechanically? We've, we've talked about unique other things. What are some of the more interesting systems, mechanical systems that set it apart? Matti: 17:04 Well, that's a lot. That's a long question. Let's think about it. You can have your own castles. You can build your own ships. You need to have a merchant to build your ship, it actually takes a long, long time to create all the necessary skills to actually build it. You need to get the materials, you need to do the work and you need to know what you are doing. You have such many guilds with such different ways of playing the game that it's, I'm not sure if this moment is enough to go through all of them. The game is truly 30 years old under constant development. So that's quite some ways to play it. Oh really hard to beginning even. Niklas: 17:52 Well, one of the things that I'm personally quite passionate about is developing map systems and, and you now, when you think about the text based game, you know, how do you represent three dimensional, you know, maps for example, just in plain text. And you know, we were one of the first and we're definitely the largest, you know, game that is featuring a very complex and advanced map system. So as people move around the game, you know, they see themselves on maps and you know, that links into, you know, how we've integrated also the bat client that they're able to see themselves on a graphical map as they move about, you know, the areas. So you know, we have a fairly ed volumes you know, world system, you know, the way that that maps work and you know how you can see yourself and your fellow players move around and you know, as you encounter hostile monsters and they start running off to you, you see how they move around in the game and so forth as well. So that's one of the cool features, especially from like a coding perspective. It's, you know, one of these things that you know, are, are really fun to tweak with them and work with creating line of sight then and then that kind of, you know, code. Matti: 18:54 One of the things that make the game unique is that for many of the wizards, administrators in the game. They have played the game themselves, some of them for many years. And some of them have went through the normal content and after that started to, let's say, get involved in the creation of the game. And by doing that, you're kind of, you were able to build upon the successes and mistakes of others through your own experience as a player. When you iterate through that through years and years, you'll get quite a good depth into the content. Niklas: 19:32 Yeah. Actually I'd love to expand on that. That, you know, we've been talking a lot about, you know, the play or experience, but a part of the beauty of, of muds overall is the fact that the, the barrier to getting involved into developing muds is much, much lower compared to like commercial, traditional MMOs and so forth. So for example, in batMUD, you know, we all, we constantly have dozens of active developers who can handle and help new developers, you know, as they start creating new content on the game. So it's not just that we have like a library player of community. We have, we have a lot of active developers and that, you know, are there to mentor new people who haven't, you know, necessarily that much experience writing code or, you know, toying with their ideas to see that, you know, how would they actually play out in a multiplayer, playable environment that, you know, are there potential abuses and ways to cheat with the mechanics. So if there are people who are looking for a home where they could, you know, contribute with their creativity and, and, and, you know, would like to toy around with, you know, learning to code muds and so forth, we're more than happy to provide like a fertile ground for, for people to grow and develop their skills in that area as well. Matti: 20:44 I can give an example for that. At 98, when I began playing the game, I played the game extremely actively for about four years and managed to go through most of the playable content in the game. At that point, I remember that I was whining about stupid things to the administrator at that point. And the administrator told me that dude you have already went through the content of the play. True. Most of the content in the game you may be, you're just frustrated for stupid reasons. Now you should perhaps consider joining and creating the game instead, and I thought about it for a while that okay, I have a zero experience in coding and I have so much to lose by I was thinking that losing the play character was like my life's changing experience or something, but I decided to, okay, let's do it. It was year 2002 and I had basically zero actual coding experience. I have to ask for help all the time and doing that for a decade or so I realized that actually coding is quite easy nowadays and in the end it turned into a career as well. So it can have a very positive real life effects as well. Matti: 22:02 One of the things as well, like many much have a good society systems like that or houses or guilds or whatnot that are play around basically. But the equipment. Like if you have a good party, like you are going and going against an encounter, the preparation and the level of the encounters is something that is very, very hard to find from any other mud I've tried. Yeah, you might, even the players who have played it for a long, long time still have challenge of them. It might take nine people considerable amount of time to complete an encounter and they might still fail if they are unable to perform like not through their character but by their abilities as players, by their reactions on the things that you encounter. It's, I have seen very good raids or encounters in other muds as well, but nothing really that compares to the depth that we have. Danny: 23:01 Are we talking like a complex puzzles or is this more like a, you know, like raid combat content, you know, like, like raid bosses or raids and Dungeons in like a World of Warcraft or something like that? Speaker 4: 23:16 I was referring more to the encounters and raid bosses, but the puzzles themselves, there are plenty of content that you can just solo or that you need a party to and you must solve a puzzle. And some of them have stayed unsolved for many, many, many years and some very sought after raid bosses. Only two people in the whole world know how to actually get to the raid boss because of some puzzles that are the way and the puzzles after you've solved them, they are perfectly reasonable. But they are just built in a way that in a way, let's say that makes them challenging for the mind, not for the character. Niklas: 23:59 I think one of the more fun raid bosses, or I'm looking to disclose the names so I don't spoil too much, but you know, we've been fighting to bridge the gap a little bit between the really high end players who have maybe been, you know, with us for, for a decade. And I mean, some of the newer players. So we have, you know, one of the raid bosses. Essentially, you know invulnerable, you can't kill him unless you sacrifice a bunch of players first. So that forces like the highbees to basically coordinate with you know, younger players that they, we need you to help us with this encounter and you know, we're going to give you either, you know, in-game money or, or, or you know, some, some equipment or some of the loot, you know, from the boss if you help us take down the this encounter. So, you know, we've been able to do a little bit of experiments to say that, that, you know, how can we narrow the gap between, you know, highbees and newbies and, you know, give newbies a social responsibility to feel really valuable, you know, in the efforts of our board, more seasoned players on, you know, maybe for some friends. Since that point, Danny: 25:02 I'd like to take a brief moment out of the episode for a word from one of our many sponsors. Have you ever wanted to relive the tales written in our history of mudding? Look no further than the new radio drama style podcast Lore of Yore. At lore we strive to bring to life the stories we have forged together in our years of mudding. Sit back, relax and enjoy the immersion of full stereo sound. Just go to https://loreofyore.fireside.fm/ Eric: 25:41 So continuing with highbees as you've, as you've called them is that what, like what else do you do to keep people who have been playing for 10, 20, maybe even 30 years at this point? Niklas: 25:55 So we're, we're constantly introducing new content to the game, you know, to keep the game fresh. We have what's known as societies in the game, which allows players to create their own virtual guilds, if you like, where, you know, they can coordinate parties and raids. I mean, it gives certain, you know, endgame benefits and, and we also have what we call a house system, which allows seasoned players to basically sponsor certain newer players. And as those newer players grow in the game, then you know, that also rewards the more seasoned, you know, owner of that house. So it's a way to, for you know, more seasoned players to be able to coach and mentor newer players and you know, feel that they are getting something return for that effort as well. Niklas: 26:45 But a lot of it, this will be built around the community. So, you know, we have a very fun, vibrant player base intuiting, you know, opportunities to meet up around the world in different kinds of real life events. And I think, you know, the fact that, you know, our online community works so well and you know, people have been able to forge really lasting friendships. So I think that you know, a lot of our players go on of course come back, you know because the game itself is fun. But all of them also come back simply because they really enjoy spending time with you know, their, their fellow players. Matti: 27:17 One of the things that we have that is unique that is that I find missing from many of the, let's say modern games is the rain Carnation system. When you level up a character and play it let's say for however long you want and if you look at board even for a while you can always reincarnate and when you are reincarnate your, all of the experience that you have saved is you can spend it again. Basically you are back to level one with all of the experience you have already gotten and you can reallocate it to some other guild. So you can play through the game and try different classes many times and many different combinations. So it is one of the most sought after and let's say features that keep the game fresh for a long time for players because there are so many combinations of guilds to play and to master that's there's always new things to try. Niklas: 28:18 Maybe at this point I should also mention that we're, we're actually running a second copy of that mud called hardcore batmud, which works with slightly different rules. I mean the content is quite similar, you know, featuring the same locations and so forth. But we have, for example, play or death is permanent [inaudible] and, and that of course raises the stakes significantly and creates quite the different experiences. Players have to be very, very careful, you know, as they go to into new locations and so forth. Then some of our more, you know seasoned players have found that to be a particularly, you know, fun way of, you know, trying a slightly different kind of approach to it. That, who idea to try to go and, you know, feel that monster, which me and my two friends, because if I, you know, suddenly die doing that encounter, I'm going to loosen all that progress that I made with that character. So we've been, you know, playing around with these kinds of things to see that, that how can we make different ways of playing the game. You know, that might appeal to, you know, people who you know, like the feeling of danger and potential of over real loss. Danny: 29:21 So speaking of different ways to play. So we've heard a lot of, of what sounds like PVE type content. Is there any PVP in Batmad? Is it on, I imagine on the hardcore it would be a lot more tenuous, but is there a PVP at all in either of them? Niklas: 29:38 So our position on PVP is that it's generally discouraged, so we don't entirely prevent it. We do feel that there are legitimate situations where, you know, somebody is really being really obnoxious to you. And you know, one way of getting even used to basically kill that player online. But if that becomes, you know, abusive, then you know, somebody constantly going off to another player. I'm making that person's life miserable and so forth and there is no real good reason for it. Then we would get involved and you know, and stuff that we also have what's known as blood bath. It's an end game event that that turns it into a little bit off a battle royale kind of situation where it's, you know, free for all to kill anybody and you get points for, for murdering other players and so forth. But it's, it's a know fairly short span event that runs I think every 14 days or something like that. That's when announced in the, in the game and you know, there is no loss in participating or getting killed during that event. So there is a small element of PVP there, but it's not something that, you know, we are heavily focused on that we do to make sure that, you know, nobody's life becomes utterly miserable because they're getting killed over and over again. Eric: 30:53 So I guess speaking of staff policing what do you, what do you guys see as the role of the staff? Is this, do you typically do a more hands on style? Matti: 31:02 As little as we can. We try not to meddle with the mortal issues unless it's necessary. It's better that the paper handle these things by themselves. But of course if there's an issue that needs supervising of course with do out best to resolve the issue, Niklas: 31:24 Yeah, it would be, depends on what the matter is about. If it's like an indie game thing that we generally try to focus on on, you know, supporting people. If there's like a clearly a bug situation, something causes or something to become not responsive. But then when it comes more to community matters and so forth, then of course they are certain lines that you know, we don't like people to, to you know, cross and we are upfront in terms of, you know, policies about acceptable behavior, harassment and so forth. And if we see that, you know, somebodys crossing those lines, then then, you know, we assess administrators would have a responsibility to step in and, you know, give the person a warning and, you know, make decisions from there. So we do of course try to keep the experience as fun as possible for, for, you know, all players involved. Danny: 32:11 And speaking of, of staff and what you can control that must MUD has been around for a while. Is there, are there any systems, are there any, any features, even a race that at this point you kind of sort of regret having made a, something that you would change if you felt like you could, but at this point it's too late. It's too big, it's too integrated. Niklas: 32:37 That's a good question. I mean, I'm sure all of us admins, we have our own particular things that erk us in the game that, that, you know, looking back in hindsight, you know, we wish we would have done differently. Yeah. For, for example some of the map systems that we built, you know, originally when we launched them, we created way too large scales for things. He was, you know, it's quite time consuming to get to different places and so forth. Over time we create the mechanics that make it easier for people to, to move around the world because nobody wants to spend, you know, two hours getting from point a to point b. In terms of thematic things. Yeah. personally, some of the races that we have, you know, I, I don't get all of them. I think some of them are just plain, right silly. As an example, at one point, you know, we have, we had a race called monolith, which was basically a massive piece of rock that couldn't move anywhere. How'd you know, he was hilarious for a while. But you know, there is absolutely no game mechanics that would support, you know, just having a stationary object and you as a player can never go anywhere. So that was maybe a little bit, you know, overly silly and you know, we're not really using that anymore, but Hey, it's all part of the having fun when you're developing things. Eric: 33:49 So what's on the horizon for batMUD? Is there anything cool and exciting in the near future? Niklas: 33:55 Yes. So as I mentioned in the beginning, we're celebrating our 30th anniversary this year. So imagine that a game on the internet that has been around for 30 years and he's still thriving and as part of that, you know, 30th anniversary where we're actually going to be celebrating it together with our player base. Niklas: 34:13 So we have a couple of, of real life events, you know, coming up, you know, we get togethers, parties, one here in Finland and then we'll probably schedule one in, in Las Vegas towards the, the, the, the summer period. So that's going to be quite awesome to bring in you know, the hundreds and hundreds of four players that enjoyed the game and know are active in the game and so forth together in a few different locations and, and you know, we get to meet you and meet each other and you have a fun time. So, so there is a lot of you know, work and planning all going at the moment, you know, to pull those, those parties and events together in game. We're constantly looking to you know, introduce new content, new Guilds, new mechanics. We are working on some things specifically related to our anniversary celebrations at the moment, you know, new you encounters, some old encounters have been gone for a while that will come back in and slightly modifies format now and so forth as well. Danny: 35:04 And what what's the date of the official 30th anniversary day? Niklas: 35:11 So officially the game opened or was created on April 14th, 1990 and, and you know, we'll be celebrating it in big style with the, you know, big birthday party. And in Helsinki, Finland on April 18th. So we have a, a really awesome venue booked for us and let you know, I'm going to be able to fit in, you know, many a hundreds and hundreds of players and we'll have some bands and food and drink and so forth. So Saturday, April 18th, this is the big date when it will be celebrating. Danny: 35:43 So we're going to close out with a question kind of inspired by the last episode we had with Alter Aeon and their infinite fountain of wood. Do you have any, has anything happened in bat mud that's just so phenomenally weird or, or notable that just everyone knows this story. Everyone likes to hear this story or are there any truly Epic stories out of batMUD? Matti: 36:17 But there are several of those. Well, let's see. One of the greatest thefts, we have a castle system in the batMUD. And you're gonna have a castle and do you have a go upstairs that are an NPCs that you going to hire and you can, you're going to have chests there where you store your items, etc. One of the great highbee's of that time had good, excellent, majestic castle. It was guards at many rooms full of max level guards that it was basically. Well fundamentally impossible for players to break into his castle and steal his items. You can set the direction where these guards, he only blocked outside. So a very curious, play a test, run into the gods and run through them because they didn't look inside. They only blocked outside three or four rooms full of these guards. None of them looked outside inside. So you could just run into the chest rooms and take everything from there. Nowadays, the castle raiding is not the thing anymore. But back in the day it was. Niklas: 37:29 We had one quite Epic events on some years ago. One of the demigods you know, in the game you know, an NPC monaster if you like we temporarily made him kill a bull. I, you know, he was one of these evil demigod days. You know, you our Pantheon and, and you know, he has a bunch of cultists or so we basically stage a situation where part of the player base is, you know, vanquish this, this, this demigod and part of the players are trying to boost them, support him. So basically you have cultists versus you know, adventurers kind of situation. And that was quite Epic, you know, especially as an admin to watch how that plays out. Then, you know, the intriguing and the, the, you know, PVP being and the threats flying around between these different groups and so forth. That without, that was awesome. Matti: 38:15 I remember at the year, was it in the bathmat years, six, six, six, all the lakes were turned to lava and the river was filled with lava and portals open there, demons spawned through the portals all the ground was colored with Ash and it was, all the terrain was turned in the hellscape. And at some point the huge demon arrived from these portals and set its course towards the Guild of Nuns that is a secluded guild that is enclosed by mountains. The mortals did their best to try, try and stop the demon from destroying the nuns guild. And by destroying the great demon the event finally ended and world was turned normal again. Danny: 39:02 How long did it take the mortals to actually vanquish the demon? Matti: 39:08 I think from the beginning of the event it's, it took like 10/11 hours for the event to end. But the big end monster of course, so-called raid boss did not appear immediately. The players just logged into the game and everything had was changed and they were wondering many hours that what is this? What is this? And as the story unfolded, they finally met, their maker and did their best to stop it. And they, it was very, very, very close for them. But they finally did to vanquish the monster and manage the save the world of goodness from the evil forces that be. Niklas: 39:46 So. So, so we have, you know, different kind of memories. Some of them created by us as administrators. They just kind of like content-related things, but there's like thousands and thousands of stories from our players and usually, you know, some of them are quite silly that, you know, I remember a situation back in five years ago and somebody made a really stupid mistake or one of the bosses and you know, of course the whole party too wipe. Always, you know, generates laughter and hilarious situations, you know, doing this kind of player meets when they replay some of those stories, and the stupid things that, that they've done during some of them that their parties on runs. Eric: 40:21 All right, thanks for coming out Niklas and Mattie. Niklas: 40:24 Awesome. Once again, thanks for having us. And you know, we wish you all the success sweet to meet the future episodes of this series as well. It's, it's great to see, you know, the people pulling for the mudding community and, and, and you know, really trying to to keep it front and center and you know, getting people interested in MUDs. So thanks a ton for, for, you know, featuring us and having us here and, you know, looking forward to talking to you in the future as well. Matti: 40:50 A thousand thanks from me as well and keep doing what you're doing. You're doing it great. Thank you. And good bye.