Wizards or Gods as they are known on different MUDs are 'immortal' in the sense that they cannot die in the game. They are no longer players or adventurers - instead their primary task in the MUD is to program new areas for players to visit. Wizards are often players who have reached the highest player level and are tired of adventuring. Usually, players have to complete a set of quests to prove that they are worthy of being 'wizzed out'. The promotion of a player to wizhood is usually done either by an Archwizard (a high ranking Wizard) or a God. Wizards have special abilities such as transporting themselves anywhere in the MUD in a single keystroke, checking the IP addresses of all the players currently logged on, going invisible so they won't show up on the 'who' list, and having a range of UNIX commands to view and edit the actual MUD files on the server.

Like players, there are many different levels for Wizards - the lowliest being a fresh Apprentice, the highest being the God or Admin, usually the person whose computer the MUD is running in. Wizards have the responsibility of programming (in LPC) new and original areas to add on to the ever-increasing MUD area. Some Wizards called Arches are in charge of maintaining law and order in the MUD, checking on cheating or misbehaving players and making sure the game runs smoothly.Other Arches review castles and perform quality control checks on new areas submitted by fellow Wizard to make sure it is up to par. When a bug is reported by a player, aWizard is usually called on to fix it. Wizards have the power to view your character attributes and change them, but this is almost always illegal.

Higher level Wizards also work on expanding the Mudlib which extends the fundamental functionalities of a MUD. Mud driver or parser code is usually only tinkered with by very high level Wizards and the Admin.

Wizards usually show up on the 'who' list as quite distinctly different from ordinary players. Higher level wizards have the ability to go invisible and are undetectable by the 'who' command. Don't disturb a busy Wizard unless you have a bug to report.

Last but not least, high level Wizards have the power to reboot the MUD. They can also dest(truct) your character or ban your entire site if you commit some dastardly offence in their MUD.

Oh and by the way, the title graphic here was inspired by Mark Baker's brilliant, short animation clip The Three Knights.

Back to the MUD tutorial

ArtemisWorks 1996