All Posts by roshaoar

Purely "pay to play" MUDs like this are a dying breed and have been losing playernumbers steadily over the last 10 years, that's the accepted view within the genre. Basically many people have realised that there's better out there that's free or pay for perk, so they're not attracting the numbers they used to.

There's no doubt they're good, but whilst having an income has advantages (you can pay programmers) it also has disadvantages (you have to pay progremmers). What, for example, the pay to play MUDs don't have is ex MIT computing professors giving and coding freely in their spare time, like we do at WoTMUD.

There are some true masterpices out there that don't charge a dime. Three I would recommend would be WoTMUD, based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time MUME, based on Tolkien't world and Discworld. I guarantee you won't be disappointed, they've been running 15 years each which is a tremendous amount of time to build up depth and detail.

Apologies, wjrasmussen, I looked in the "Off Topic Discussion" forum first and it had some thread about "increase your penis size" there, and in all honesty I thought this was of more relevance to the folks in this forum than the other one.

Thanks for leaving it open, it's not just an attempt to spam or troll but I'm genuinely trying to get some insight into what folk, and especially the MMO folk who are the new generation, think :)

The replies here merit a considered reply but it's very late where I am. In the morning, I'll do some explaining and so on - thanks for the responses, much appreciated.

Nass

lo, folks,

To introduce myself, I am one of the longtime developers of a multi-user dungeon. I've helped develop the game for the past 15 years, and I'm still involved with it. Back in the day (I hear you groan), they were the only form of gaming available on the net, and we were all WOWed by it as this sort of gaming with other users around the world hadn't been seen before :). But I digress.

I'm here hoping to persuade some of you to come and try out the particular dungeon that I'm involved with, and to solicit feedback - very specific feedback - about what puts you guys off the whole idea.

The only gain for us in this is quality feedback which, because it isn't a commercial venture but rather one put together for the hell of it by a bunch of guys who like their online gaming, is something we can't afford to do on a large scale.

This is the Wheel of Time MUD website, which is really your starting point. I'd hope that the explanations and guides offered there would be enough to explain what they are and why you should play. If not, please feel free to either respond here or in a private message.

What I'm especially interested in are the "dropoff points", ie the argumants inside yourself that persuade you to abandon the process of website => trying it out. In other words "this page made no sense" "this page put me off" "yuck, text" "too nerdy" - I really don't mind in the least as I'd love to have an honest assessment of what we need to do to convert some graphical players.

As an introduction, what MUDs generally bring you is a smaller but more adult community, and games which are more fluid. It's easy for us MUD developers to add in new features, quests, items - whatever. They bring faster PvP/PK because the graphical rendering isn't there, and they tend to bring more of depth of roleplaying feel to the whole thing. A lot of the above is because they're run by people like you and me, and even non-technical people can help run a mud by making things to enhance roleplay etc.

If you've ever used IRC or IM messengers before, you'll be familiar with using text across the web. MUDs are a bit like that, a glorified IRC experience in which you can roam a world and do your thing rather than being in the one IRC room.

Anyhow, please give it a whirl - as I said, your feedback would be hugely appreciated, be it through a PM or here on the thread.

Thanks!
Nass
WoTMUD.org, the Wheel of Time MUD

Yep. You forgot to add players who have played these games for 10-15 YEARS and who still keep playing today having returned to MUDs after forays into graphical MMOs. Sorry about the blatant promotion of the genre here, but just have a look at these to get an idea:

Why MUD?
Mudconnector

Originally posted by UNATCOII

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Originally posted by GreenChaos
In MUDs were they have always been.  Shame on anyone who though MMOs were the next step for MUDs.  They never had the pvp, roleplay and community MUDs have and they never will.

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Yeppers.

Most extensive worlds; with mindblowing storylines and quests; adult PvP (not a place for kids and women who like to be alchemists!); shops and crafting that could put nearly all the MMOs together of their goods in ONE MUD game (plus offer your own names and descriptions of what you crafted). It's all in the MUDs, just kids can't stand reading a book, and need eye candy to fight and show off their epics.

It's a shame that a MUD couldn't be made into a MMO, despite MUDs have very tight communities and all the OP craves, even today.