Looks like this is the thing to do, so…

I'm Kunin, the Producer of Tears of Polaris by Iron Realms Entertainment.  I've been mudding for, well more years than I can remember, at least 12 years now.

I started mudding on a long gone CircleMUD, migrated to a few different ones before finding Achaea.  I stayed in Achaea for a few years, at one point playing both Achaea and Aetolia before sticking with Aetolia.  After Lusternia opened I went over there where I made my way to a full coder.  After Lusternia I gave my hand at starting a MUD from scratch, though Ilyrias failed (I was Baram for those that know of the project, the head coder but not the head guy).  After Ilyrias failed to see day, I was brought back to IRE to build Tears of Polaris, their first sci-fi MUD.

I've always enjoyed playing MUDs, and coding, so even as a teenager I always wanted to build my MUD.  My younger self considered making a MUD from scratch to be the ultimate test of ones programming abilities, and while I have many other types of programming experience under my belt, it's always been my goal to build a MUD of my own.

I believe MUDs are one of the greatest types of games there are, and like Orrin I hope to do my small part in expanding the player base once Polaris is released.  Working on a commercial project greatly helps in being able to do some of the things I would like, which I hope will help expand the knowledge of MUDs beyond the "small" community we have today.  Unfortunately I'm not in the right place to work on such ideas, nor to discuss them, but all good things in time.

I think Orrin is on to something here, and best of luck to him!

Tears of Polaris is doing well, could always be faster.  We're about to close up a really nice couple planets (Jekrito and Jemok) which are extremely dynamic and deals with the concept of slavery (with quests to help both sides, and to shutdown/open the trading), the status of the slavers has an effect on the type of commodities produced by the planet as well as the level of production.  Should have a couple more, not as dynamic, planets finished up soon too.  We have a little over 20 skills currently coded, each one housing between 15 and 30 abilities (those with 15 are normally branches, you start with a generic base skill and after progressing far enough can choose one of multiple other branches to complete the normal 30 abilities for a full skill).

The prospect of being paid is of course a nice one, but I really do enough coding and creating things for others to use.  I have a few other projects/games (web based and graphical, not MUDs) that I plan to do after releasing Polaris, some designed to help advertising for Polaris and others just for fun… all of them free of course (completely free).  I've also tried to address some of the complaints about the pay for perks model, without detracting from the commercial aspects of it, via things such as minor artifacts (mostly the same powers as the artifacts that are sold, but decay and are created semi-randomly via quests and mob drops) and a different skill system (you can learn the abilities individually, so to maximize the lessons you have).  Of course having credits, either purchased or gained IG, will still be the fastest way to progress but I've tried to offer more ways to balance that out as well as more customization between characters.

I know a little about the status of MKO, from what I know things are progressing fairly well now.  The new Producer, JT, is really talented and has a lot of energy to drive the project through completion and beyond.

Yes, Midkemia Online is a true Midkemian MUD IRE has been working on for quite some time now, though it's not the one I personally am working on.

If memory serves, at one point IRE also owned the rights to a graphical game but at the time did not have the resources to build one and thus the rights reverted back to Mr. Fiest.