[Lasher]

Originally Posted by Samson You'd be surprised how many school and college age kids these days have no idea what a MUD even is. Let alone the differences in all the codebases out there.

Agreed, which is why I think there's still hope for muds and potentially even growth. If they'd all heard of MUDs, all tried MUDs and written them off as boring that would be a different situation.

MUDs still have a lot to offer and while they will by no means appeal to the majority, it only takes 1% or .01% of MMO players to play a MUD and we'd all see a huge jump in population.

Which, of course, brings us right back to how to get the message out there...

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by Samson Many DIKU codebases are still actively maintained with a very public presence from their current stewards. Even if they happen to have taken over a project after the original authors left it behind. From my experience it seems that once an LP project is set aside by the original maintainers, it's a huge undertaking to revive it.

I have always wondered why so few LP projects get successfully passed on by the original author. It is a shame, because a lot of good mudlibs, drivers, and other projects died on the vine as a result.

Originally Posted by Lasher MUDs still have a lot to offer and while they will by no means appeal to the majority, it only takes 1% or .01% of MMO players to play a MUD and we'd all see a huge jump in population.

Good point.

Originally Posted by Lasher Which, of course, brings us right back to how to get the message out there...

Here's a very minor suggestion to everyone:

On the graphical MMOs you play, post on their forums. Have a link in your .sig file either to your favorite MUD, Top Mud Sites, or both. On most graphical MMO forums, tens or hundreds of thousands of people will see your posts. Surely some of them will be interested enough in the idea of text games to check out your link and learn about our community a bit.

[MikeRozak]

Originally Posted by Lasher Agreed, which is why I think there's still hope for muds and potentially even growth. If they'd all heard of MUDs, all tried MUDs and written them off as boring that would be a different situation. MUDs still have a lot to offer and while they will by no means appeal to the majority, it only takes 1% or .01% of MMO players to play a MUD and we'd all see a huge jump in population. Which, of course, brings us right back to how to get the message out there...

I think you're being a bit optimisic.

I'm not trying to flame you, but your response, light of the LPMUd extinction discussion, brings to mind the potential extinction of MUDs in general... which is probably better posted onto the end of another well-tread thread. (But I'll post here anyway.)

To use an analogy, it's like saying, "Even though most people haven't heard of clog dancing (Clogging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) , it only takes 1% to 0.01% of all night/dance-club dancers to jump in and there'd be a huge clog-dancer population"... which implies that the reason there aren't more clog dancers is largely because people haven't heard of it.

Yes, advertising will bring in some people.

But the fact is, clog dancing is no longer in vogue, not since the 18/19th century according to Wikipedia.

You can (a) admit that and live with a dwindling and aging population of clog-dancers (staving off the decline with clog-athons and other occasional advertising), or (b) change clog dancing so it fits with the times more.

(I'll post more about LPMuds and clog dancing when I get my world-toolkit functioning better.)

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by MikeRozak ( clog dancing comparison )

I was going to reply here, but that really warrants its own thread.