GodWars

Not to be confused with God of War (franchise).

GodWars is a family of MUD engines derived from Merc,^[2][3] created in 1995 by Richard Woolcock, also known as "KaVir".^[4][5][3] GodWars' setting is influenced by White Wolf's World of Darkness.^[6]

God Wars 2
God Wars II logo
Developer(s)	Richard Woolcock
Series	GodWars
Engine	custom codebase
Platform(s)	OS independent
Release	March 10, 2002[1]
Genre(s)	MMORPG
Mode(s)	multiplayer

In 1996 the code was illegally released and advertised on a website for free download.^[7] After fighting extensively to stop the illegal use of his codebase, Woolcock later released the code publicly.^[8]

The original GodWars was later renamed Dark City then Last City, with added wilderness code.^[9]

Since 2000, between 28 and 84 derivatives of the God Wars code have been active,^[10][3][11] including Vampire Wars, which is based on White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade and won the October 1998 Mud of the Month award at The Mud Connector.^[12]

God Wars II

MUSHclient screenshot showing a typical dungeon in God Wars II.

In 2002, Woolcock wrote a new MUD named God Wars II, a conceptual sequel to GodWars,^[3] with a more personal dark fantasy universe.

Combat System

The game relies heavily on player versus player combat, like the original GodWars, and features a deep and complex combat system where the player has to manipulate the limbs associated with the attacks, creating combos when the commands are stringed together.^[13][14] This combo system is inspired from the tabletop game Spellbinder, of which the complexity is comparable to chess and go.^{[citation needed]}

The combat system was prototyped in his earlier Gladiator Pits MUD,^[3] which won the maintainability award in a public coding competition, the 16K MUD competition,^[15][7] and has been called "stunning".^[16]

Other Features

God Wars II is also noted for its war mini-game (a strategic poker variant) and its helpful graphical MUSHclient interface. This interface includes a map that the user can click to travel faster and mechanical shortcuts. The game has a large world, without rooms typical of MUDs but using coordinates, and a process for advanced character customization.^[3][14]