EmpireMUD 2.0 beta 5

• New adventures: Guild of Adventurers, Permafrost, Monsoon Rift, Colossal Red Dragon (full update), Hidden Chamber of Neferkare, Volcano, That Damned River, Unstable Portal, and Lost Temple.
• Overhauled parts of the skill system including the option of adding minor skill trees, trees that can't be dropped, and a change to the low end of the Vampire skill to make it work more like other skills.
• Many new abilities including class abilities and skill abilities. Players now get an additional ability point.
• Skill swap allows two full sets of ability choices on each character.
• Zero-level abilities replace systems that formerly gave direct skill gain without using an ability, simplifying the skill system.
• New optional approval system for players.
• Multiple archetype categories to support features like Race or Culture.
• The fight code was updated with combat meters, togglable messages, and improvements to timing.
• Major improvements to the scripting system.
• Reduced game lag with overhauls to territory management and map evolution.
• New data system stores important generic data between uptimes.
• OLC editor for socials.
• Major improvements to the quest engine.
• Better logging for immortal commands.
• More complex resources and building maintenance.
• Newbie islands can now be "naturalized" automatically each year (this defaults to off).
• Eliminated virtually all of the known bugs, including major crash bugs.
• Added repeatable daily quests (including ones that appear around a player's city).
• Improved how the scripting system assigns unique IDs to things, to increase the time until the mud runs out of ID-space each uptime.

Beta 4

Major improvements in EmpireMUD 2.0 beta 4 include:

• Tagged ascii playerfiles (with converter)
• New world map handling that allows more tiles to be un-loaded from memory
• Augments (including an overhauled "enchant") which are various ways to modify items
• Completely overhauled vehicles as a new concept, combining ships, canoes, carts, and furniture into one type of thing
• A full quest engine with scripting support
• OLC editors for abilities, archetypes, augments, classes, morphs, quests, skills, and vehicles
• Resource overhaul to allow crafts and buildings to have more complex requirements, including components
• Component objects so that there can be more than one type of lumber, brick, nail, etc.
• "Solo" class role allows players to get more of their class abilities at the same time, but only when solo
• New tutorial zones including quest chains for the Empire and Trade skills
• Scripting support for empires, including empire variable and data
• Additional wild crops and adventures
• Fixed memory leaks and improved stability

Beta 3

This is the third beta release. It contains many bug fixes, new OLC editors, game balancing tweaks, and some new abilities. People running older betas should read the update document (see docs directory) and will need to run a playerfile converter.

EmpireMUD 2.0 beta 1

This is the initial beta release. It is stable and runnable, but is notably lacking:

• Game balance
• Most class abilities