Mweor

Name: Mweor
Genre: Fantasy – cat, breeding
Members: 65,000+
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Mweor is a relatively new sim, I guess you could say. I suppose it is when you consider some of the other sims out there… I joined Mweor in January of its first year and I have had plenty of wonderful memories there. However, those are just memories and things have changed. Mweor started out small and has quickly grown in size. What was once a small, tight-knit community turned into the stereotypical sim: one that rather focuses on member quantity rather than quality.

The forum in the past was amazing. Most all of the members were polite and understanding. It is referred to as the “Glory Days” by some older members. I can understand why. As soon as the economy went downhill, the community did, too. Around the time the mweors (feline-like animals that inhabit Mweor) became of less and less value, more younger members joined. Many were the perfect definition of “n00bs”: users of chatspeak, short-tempered, and unreasonable. With their appearance, a rift among members was created. Suddenly it was as though the veterans of Mweor were shunning the newbies. Prejudice became abundant regarding account ID numbers and many older members left for good.

Eventually the hostilities died down. However, it was due to more and more veterans leaving or becoming more inactive. Things might have calmed down for one issue but, as always, more issues arose. Well, I believe them to be issues, but some don’t. It was the “uprising of n00bs,” as some have said. Here’s where I get to the point (finally).

Mweor’s current community is 80% n00b. Most of the posts are done in a combination of chatspeak and legible grammar and focused around “the prity mewor i just bred!!!” If a post isn’t a contest scam or a Warriors-themed role play, then it’s about a custom they want or a mweor they just bred. The un-Mweor oriented boards are cluttered with “clik mai eggs!” topics and “lol u wanna see a funny pic?” posts. They are fine in moderation, but it’s just being overdone.

Again, as I said in my FP review, it’s not Mweor’s fault. It’s not the fault of the n00bs, either. There are too many causes too blame and I’m sure you don’t want me rambling about in a review. So I’ll wrap up this section quickly. Mweor’s community is tainted with mindless threads. There are those that are a welcomed sight for chatspeak-stained eyes, but they are outnumbered. COMMUNITY: 4 pts.

Mweor is a game that focuses around feline-like animals called “mweors” (MWEE-ors) which are the site’s namesake. There five different breeds currently in circulation: the lesser, the Fire, the Air, the Earth, and the Water, the elementals being addressed as “greaters” contrary to the “lesser” species. As you can see, each breed has its own specific image. There’s no image bank (yay!). In a style that has been seen before by most on other sites (i.e. Wajas, Pure Felinity), the base images of the breeds are layered with colors and markings via dynamic imaging (info can be found here). The colors are limitless (or as infinite as hex codes can be) and there are currently over thirty different markings and mutations. A full list can be found here.

There is also the use of items. There are over forty items in the game, some which are more rare than others (full list can be found here). These items can either serve a purpose or just act as decoration. Common effects can be aging, quicker pregnancies, and extremely durable toys. Among these items, there doesn’t seem to be one that directly affects an… “important” aspect of the game: sparring. Sparring is, to put it simply, a contest. Contest meaning that you enter your mweor(s) into a sparring match (think of it as a show on most sites) and the next day you see the results of said match. Your mweor earns points and you earn money depending on how well it does. It has been hinted that the points will one day be used for something, but the feature has yet to be added.

Also in Mweor, there are simple genetics. Genetics can be found in the game when a mweor has markings. If you’ve taken a biology class of some sorts, you should remember things about alleles, genes, genotypes, phenotypes, recessive traits, and dominant traits. That all comes into play with the markings. There are recessive markings (also includes all mutations) and dominant markings. I could go into full detail about the subject (I do so love genetics!) but I doubt you want me to get too off topic, right? Anyway, with all that explained, I can really get into some hardcore opinionating.

Mweor’s gameplay is simple. You come onto the site. You go to your cattery and you can see quick details regarding your mweors’ happiness (which is affected by its needs to play, eat, and drink). From there, you can feed all your mweors and give all your mweors water. Although, you have to go to each of their pages individually to play with them and their toys can break and you’ll eventually have to replace them… Depending on how many mweors you have (you can have an unlimited amount), the whole process can either take a few minutes or up to an hour. However, there is an upside. Mweors don’t die, so you don’t have to take care of them.

Once you take care of your mweors, you can enter them in sparring matches. This is a relatively easy process that doesn’t have you navigating furiously through various pages. For your convenience, all the matches are set up on one patch with easy buttons to press and a drop-down menu you use to select which mweor you wish to have entered. If you’ve played showing sims (like Furry-Paws) then you should appreciate the ease of use.

…Crap, I got off topic again. Wait, no, that does somewhat relate to the point I’ve been trying to make. Now that I’ve said that, I can tell you this: there isn’t a lot to do on Mweor once you do those two things (take care of your mweors and enter them in sparring matches). There are games you can play, but those are either limited to how often you can play them (or how often you receive money from them) or cost money in order to play. They’re hardly well thought out and are often discarded as pointless additions. They are useful for when you first start playing, but don’t provide much entertainment.

You can breed your mweors. Selective breeding and breeding programs are extremely common. There are several things someone can breed for: appearance, soundness, mutation, and just for the heck of it. Soundness is a stat all mweors have that affects their sparring score. The higher the score, the better sparring results, obviously. Mutation is a stat that can mean a mweor is born with a random mutation showing. Mutations are recessive, thus more valuable in the eyes of quite a few breeders.

Breeding does provide the members with something to do. Unfortunately it was something I could never get into. I stopped breeding early in the game, as well as buying mweors. I don’t like cluttered catteries or kennels and I hate to have ugly things associated with me, so I’m picky about what I have on my pages. Sure, I bred and bought things here or there, but it was rare and my breedable mweors have all become sterile. I’m not everyone, so breeding does encourage members to create their own goals, something that I wish every site did. Having an ultimate goal (such as “Breed the ____ with the highest ____”) is good, but allowing room for the members to decide their own goals (such as “I want to breed a _____ with this _____ feature”) is something that keeps them entertained longer, because ultimate site goals will eventually be reached (unless it’s ridiculously vague or made to be impossible, which is just cruel).

Still, some people just get bored period and that only leaves them with one option: the community. I hope you’ve caught on as to why I have the community portion of the review right above gameplay. In many sims, gameplay becomes dull and redundant, so players resort to the community being the only thing to keep them amused. Mweor is one of those sims and, as stated before, its community is falling apart. Anyway, GAMEPLAY: 5 pts.

Phew, that took long enough, didn’t it? Well, you guys can just skip to the diagnosis, can’t you? Now, onto the next part.

Mweor has a total of three layouts, which can be changed at any time the user chooses. The style between the first one (Old Blue) and the other two changes drastically. It was with the most recent two that Mweor got its official style. You know, the childish lettering and constant yellow thingies? When they were first added, people didn’t like it. A lot of the older members (me included) and some newer members preferred the first layout, which the new… “stylized” images did not fit. They went better with the newer layouts.

The newer layouts that are made to suit the current style of Mweor are undoubtedly cleaner than the older layout. It looks more professional, as well, which I suppose is good. There are constant elements among all three layouts. The first is the navigation, which I must say is one of my favorites. It makes it extremely easy and quick to get around with little effort. It was recently modified to give more detailed and organized links.

The other is it always being left aligned. Since the layouts are interchangeable, the constant properties are inevitable. I must commend Mweor, however, for most layouts done like this only change color wise, but these change in many more degrees. None are too alike, but they don’t differ in outrageous ways either.

The way Mweor is set up allows for ease of use. It’s simple to tell where one post ends and another begins. There’s little complication. The text is easy to read and in no way are the designs boring or bland. They’re not the most amazing layouts, but they have better qualities than many others. LAYOUT: 7 pts.

Something that I absolutely love about Mweor is the art. I praise it everyday as I think back onto its wonderful, glorious lack of an image bank. The images of all the mweors are generated based on various aspects (its parents, its custom design, etc) and all of the breeds are drawn by the same person. In fact, all of the art is done by one person, forcing everything into one single familiar style. It makes it even more amazing this way.

There are times when I believe they (the creators) got lazy. For instance, on the game Item Hunter, they just used a generic picture of Purple instead of drawing a specific one for her. Idess (the artist) is a busy person, I’m sure, but I still think it should have been looked into. However, the rest of the art found across the site (from the chat to the small dividers – even though those are just alternated images that were already done long before) is clean, neat, and suit the two most recent layouts fashionably.

The pictures of the mweors have clearly improved with each new breed. The shading becomes better, the anatomy more impressive, even if the mweor itself… is not the prettiest sight (the Earth mweor seems pretty butch, no?). Something that I admire about the artwork is that for each breed of mweor, there are three images: the kitten image, the male image, and the female image. Contrary to Wajas, the males and females have their own bases. The differences aren’t always easy to spot, but they are there. Like the smaller mane on the female Fire or the softer features on the female Air.

The items are unique. They’re not among the most impressive item images I’ve seen, but they do, again, fit Mweor’s style very well: childish, albeit mature. There’s not much else to say about the artwork, so ARTWORK: 8 pts.

Finally, the last part! We’re almost done; just hang in there for a little longer.

The Mweorian staff is one that I’m actually acquainted with. Having joined during a time when there where several mods actively conversing in the forum, I got a chance to know them. Unfortunately, there were moderators who were elusive. In fact, some original mods are inactive and haven’t been on for months. They are from Furry-Paws and I can only assume they are in Kahlem’s brain-trust as she did handpick them to join the Mweor Team.

Many of the Trainee Mods are the ones who are better recognized by the members. They have been more active and more welcoming than the other mods (not to say the others were discouraging or rude in the least bit). Unfortunately, there have been disputes regarding bans and warnings given to several members. To me, personally, those who complained either hadn’t the faintest idea what actually occurred or lack the morality to understand the nature of the offense. The mods acted by what was expected of them and though I’m not privy to the way the warning system works on Mweor, I do not believe the mods to be in the wrong.

Moderators can be blamed for the conduct of the players on sites. There are times when something unpreventable or unexpected happens, such as a spammer posting worthless crap or a zombie-post bumber. Those are just a few of the exceptions to the mods’ influence. In many cases, if the mods set good examples (such as maturity, impressive literacy, and a gentle sense of humor) the players will follow.

That is probably why that even with the annoyances of less mature players on Mweor, there are still many who strive to be helpful and kind to all. The new mods that were selected during my time were well-known for their maturity and fairness. Perhaps this is because I’ve seen them at their best upon many cases, but there are few who seem to disagree.

The administrators (Kahlem and Idess) are not ones to frequent the forum. They will post occasionally and Idess had a long running thread in which she answered any questions she was asked, but they were not the most verbose of admins. It is not a requirement that anyone of staff is sociable among the members, but it does create a positive reputation and a stronger sense of community, both of which are valuable.

Every staff has its flaws. There may be instances where a member was unjustly warned or a mod let their personal feelings affect their duties, but it seems that these are either rare or well-hidden on Mweor, both possibilities being amiable in its own right. Personally, I favor the staff of Mweor over many, many other sites. You must take into account that there is, in fact, a reason for that. STAFF: 8 pts.

DIAGNOSIS

Community: 4/10 pts
Gameplay: 5/10 pts
Layout: 7/10 pts
Artwork: 8/10 pts
Staff: 8/10 pts
Total: 32/50 pts
Rank: Good Game

Well, Mweor isn't the best either. What a shame. Well, on to the next sim...

Author's Note: This is a completely rewritten version of my Mweor review, done within the past twenty hours. There's still too much expository, but I couldn't stop myself from adding it in. Sorry for the wait, but hopefully you won't mind?