Spoiler Alert/001

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For today's article, let's start at the beginning...

Why are we no longer ChronoMUCK?

Issue 001: October 20th, 2015

As many already know TwistedMUCK was originally ChronoMUCK. It was a very theme-strict setting that only allowed canon or original Chrono Trigger/Cross characters (despite a few that lurked in the shadows). It was really popular for about three years but as our in game clock got closer to our 1005 AD cut off things got complicated. According to Chrono Cross in 1005 AD the Kingdom of Guardia is involved in a huge war that burns the kingdom to the ground and most of the main Chrono Trigger cast are killed or go into hiding. We knew from day one that this was something we'd have to deal with and we thought it would be fun to play off of.

...and then when Chrono Cross characters started showing up from 15 years in the future having been displaced in time, it got complicated.

Meanwhile from an admin stance we had another problem. We'd actually built out the maps from various time periods. 65,000,000 BC, 600 AD, 1,000 AD, a bit of 1,020 AD, and the End of Time. We'd even built an alternate version of the Kingdom of Zeal to fill in for 1,200 BC. These where almost all full maps with all of the cities and towns. We wanted it to be as close to the games as we could get it - and it was, but we paid a heavy price.

Someone hanging out in one city on one map couldn't easily explain leaving that city to go across the globe or across time to go hang out with someone else on a whim. We tried to correct this by restricting the time periods and by briefly creating a cataclysm that locked characters to a single continent.

...and it still kept happening. The more we cut away, the more it stopped feeling like Chrono Trigger. In a last ditch effort we collapsed the time periods into one map with "broken time" areas that overlapped each other. Sure it kept that feel of time travel (to an extent) but it wasn't a very fun place to role play long term. A solution needed to be found and it came rather unexpectedly.

While all of this was going on Cale's player had started building what he called the Twisted Street. It was originally just going to be a place for him to say his characters camped out between games and gradually the idea was expanded to include other homeless characters from the rest of the staff and players. The idea of a multiverse hub built around the Twisted Street and the Usual Restaurant (which itself already existed on multiple games) was a good one and soon became more popular than the chaotic and often changing maps of ChronoMUCK.

Something had to be done about it. We couldn't run two games at the same time. Our efforts needed to be focused on one or the other. As players on Chronos dwindled into the single digits and players on Twisted increased into the double digits, we realized what we had to do. On December 1st, 2007 we officially rebranded the game TwistedMUCK, and the rest as they say, is history.

In the next installment we'll discuss what actually happened ICly to the planet of Chronos and what it's absence has meant for the world of Twisted and its characters.

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