Over the last week or so, I started checking out a few of the top muds just to see what they are like. And while trying Achaea this last week, ingame I was reminded twice to "Do My Achaean Duty" ... to vote.

Now, I never turned this option on, and I couldn't find a way to turn it off. Which, seems like a violation of the newer clarified rules about voting, this site, and bugging players.

Please understand I am not trying to start a flamewar ... those are just stupid. But I am posting something here for a few reasons: it affords me a small amount of anonymity while playing on other peoples' games; and as was stated in that last thread, the owner of this site probably relies on self-policing by it's members.

To clarify, this reminder was originally turned on but you could turn it off with CONFIG. After the changes it seems IRE disabled the reminder, though some people are still getting the message. It's a bug, and I will point it out so it gets fixed quickly. Thanks for pointing it out, I hadn't noticed it personally.

Yeah, those bugs can be really annoying - I'm actually having similar problems with a bug on my mud which randomly lags players who haven't voted, while giving bonus exp and better item drops to those who have. I've already apologised to my players about it, and told them I'll try to fix it in the next few weeks.

I think you're misunderstanding the rules. You're allowed to remind people to vote, and they don't need a way to turn it off. That allows mud admins to do things like shout "Please vote for us now!" where the reception of the message has nothing to do with whether you've voted or not.

If, however, you send our reminders to people based on whether they've voted or not, it must be an opt-in system with a way to easily opt-out.

In our case, the system simply reminds everyone to vote, which is perfectly legal, and which would be nearly impossible to patrol for anyway (imagine the accusations, "On 12/20, an admin on MUD Y shouted, "VOTE!!" to everybody in game.")

--matt

Heh, Kavir, you're too cute.

I have a gag script on the mud client I use, it makes it easy to ignore annoying events, or people.

Rules are rules, and lines need to be drawn, sure. But--is it just me, or are shout-out reminders only a very small step away from from autoreminders, on the continuum of lameness?

I am not sure how shout-out reminders violate the rule or the spirit of the rule.

We have no automatic reminder system at LoK. We're grateful to anyone who takes the time to vote, but we neither reward such voting nor penalize those who do not.  We do a single gecho once a day, giving the website address and thanking folks for choosing to vote.  If that violates a rule or spirit, we'll simply stop doing it.

Shout-out reminders do not violate either the rule or spirit of the rule, don't worry. The rules were specifically crafted to allow global messages to people about voting.

--matt

I’m confused.

If this is all 'perfectly' legal, why then is Hajamin referring to it as a bug, that will be ‘fixed quickly’?

Beats me, though it looked to me like Hajamin misunderstands the rules as well as what was going on on Achaea.

--matt

Probably in relation to this comment:

Lanthum: "I never turned this option on, and I couldn't find a way to turn it off."

Which is covered here:

"...Such a system must also allow a player to easily opt out of it at any time, also with no positive or negative effect, and it must be off by default".

I'm unsure what your point is, insofar as what Lanthum is talking about isn't the kind of system covered by the rule you quote.

--matt

The rule I quoted states:

"You cannot have a system that ‘nags’ a player about voting in response to whether they’ve voted or not unless participation in the system is totally voluntary with no tangible positive or negative effects for a player choosing to use or not use such a system. Such a system must also allow a player to easily opt out of it at any time, also with no positive or negative effect, and it must be off by default."

Could you please clarify in what way exactly the system Lanthum described is not covered by the above rule, and provide a reference to the appropriate exception clause in the rules?

I already did, in my first post in this thread. Go read it.

--matt

It is not covered by the rule because it does not distinguish between players "in response to whether they’ve voted or not". In that sense, an automated message that gets sent to everybody is no different from a global shout by an admin, and is perfectly in accordance with TMS rules.

Does it disadvantage muds that refuse to nag? Sure. Is it against the rules? Nope.

I guess the reason why I, and apparently others too, where confused is that the rules were modified twice in as many days.

Ok, I understand what Matt is saying. And that makes sense. I was misunderstanding - though not the rules, but his system. I thought it was something that was "nagging" me, because I "did not vote".

But I still have the question of why Hajamin said he doesn't see them. It sounds as if SOME players are getting them, and others are NOT. And that would be (should be) against the rules.

It's not illegal for some players to get them and others not to get them. It's only illegal if you're basing who gets them on whether someone has voted or not.

So then how do you decide who gets them and who doesn't.

Well, I'm not really sure what you're asking, since from early last week until today, we just broadcast global messages every 3 hours while we waited for Adam to decide what he wanted the rules to be.

Now that he's decided, we'll be creating a more sophisticated system.

That was my misunderstanding, I didn't realize it changed to go out every 3 hours and just never notice it myself as I log in and out constantly all day. Sorry for the confusion there.

Well, I shall have to see to it that that does not happen, then.

*crackwhip*

From Lusternia.

ANNOUNCE NEWS #492
Date: 12/24/2005 at 1:11
From: Roark Libertas
To  : Everyone
Subj: Config Voting

You can now use CONFIG VOTING to set reminders on voting for Lusternia
at TopMudsSite.com. By default it is off. You can opt-in with CONFIG
VOTING ON or CONFIG VOTING PROMPT. The first option will send you
periodic reminders until you register a vote on the site, and then the
reminders will end for about 13 hours. (TMS only registers duplicate
votes every 12 hours.) It will also show you where Lusternia is in the
MUD rankings and how many more votes until we reach the next level. The
second option, "PROMPT", will put the voting in your command prompt
rather than using periodic messages.

Exposure on the TMS site is very important for Lusternia. It is a great
tool for attracting new players to the realm, giving you new people to
interact with and growing the game. So if you appreciate Lusternia,
please turn on one of these reminder options and vote for your favorite
MUD!

(See HELP VOTING for a full explanation on TMS voting and what it means
for Lusternia.)

Penned by My hand on the 15th of Urlachmar, in the year 136 CE.

I still believe the "Top MUD" list should be broken up into more-regulated categories because ultimately, it's useless to potential players for finding quality (most of the "top MUDs" are of the same type, and most of the MUDs listed blatantly lie about their nature).  Instead, it's just a listing of popularity based upon how pathetically fanatical the playerbase is or how creatively unethical or ahead-of-the-rules some of the MUDs out there can be.

I realize that the traffic is the incentive for TMS's format, but it really is a useless feature for introducing people to MUDs that probably does more to hurt the MUDding community than help it since it doesn't reward quality, something that would go a lot further in helping every MUD (ok, the total crap out there is probably beyond hope, but if you make it easier for quality to compete with quantity, you cause/inspire both to improve).

Make one of the categories, "most fanatical playerbase" if you like.  That'll probably preserve the Top 20 as they are now.  But it'd be nice if there was something a bit useful about the TMS page too.

Take care,

Jason

It's useless to players trying to find a new MUD? Weird. If that were the case, one would think that we'd have no players from TMS, instead of the literally thousands of players we have that came to us because of TMS.

Some people consistently seem to want to attribute something to TMS that it isn't. They want to turn the top lists into some sort of subjective rating system, or whatever. TMS works great: You send traffic, you get traffic back.

--matt

It's not useless if you're a player from a MUD looking for a new MUD, just less useful for finding a good MUD.  It's also useless if you're new to MUDding altogether, since those potential players aren't being exposed to the best, and may not be aware how the rankings are determined.  As there's no front-page explanation, they might actually think the list is objective....

Correction, some of us would like to see it turned into an objective rating system.  As it is right now, it's not objective.  It's dominated by the Viagra MUDs, themselves filled with players who have an invested monetary interest rather than those who appreciate quality.  Additionally, it's primarily dominated by MUDs that have repeatedly demonstrated that they aren't interested in the welfare of the community, ethics, etc.  Not surprisingly, these are primarily one of two kinds:  utter crap or commercial MUDs (sometimes both apply).  I've tried all of the Viagra MUDs a couple times.  They're all inferior in quality to one or more free-to-play MUDs offering the same features but which do not get as much publicity or players.  Sure a few quality MUDs manage to make it into the front page, but most don't.

The "thousands of players" you've gotten from TMS probably didn't go beyond the Top 20 before settling on playing one of  your MUDs.  Some of course have no interest in doing so, since the MUDs offered allow them to use money to advance.  Others, they think that the higher the rating, the better the MUD.  Had they explored a bit more, they'd have found better games, less popular but better, in the lower ranks.  And that's why the service if flawed.  Why bother to even rank beyond 20 since the majority of players seem to stop before they've gotten past page 1?  Just show the top 5 of various categories.  If a Viagra MUD can't make the top 5, it's doing something wrong since it's got legions ("thousands of players") that have an interest, beyond quality, in promoting their MUD.  If they don't vote enough to make the top 5, what's that say about those MUDs?

Would I and others like to see TMS do something more?  Yes.  Why?  Because it'd be better for the MUDding community as a whole.  It'd be nice to see Top MUD Sites be more objective but it's not an easy (or probably even possible) proposition.  But at least it could offer more to those looking for something other than Viagra MUDs.

Take care,

Jason

You can not say the top 20 are not the best MUDs for a specific player. What makes a MUD "the best" is a personal thing and therefor fully subjective.

Or they may think it is subjective. Do you have any real data to suggest that a strong majority of people who come to this site view the MUD rankings as anything more then subjective?

For what purpose? How would you even go about doing such a thing? What makes "the best" MUD? There is no way to create an objective way to say one MUD is overall better then another or that one feature is better then another or one MUDs way or doing something is better then another MUDs way of doing something.

Because those who invest money into a game can't appreciate quality? Personally I don't think I'd invest any money into a game that didn't have qualities I enjoyed. And yes, the fact that one could spend money to advance could be a quality that I value over other things and that's just as valid as any other reason to play any particular MUD.

How does an interest in the welfare of the MUD community have anything to do with how well the MUD is in and of itself?

Do you fully understand the difference between a subjective and a objective observation? The objective observation is when you see the exact same(or similar enough) feature on both a pay and free MUD. The subjective observation is saying a pay MUD is inferior to the free MUD.

Which is not nessisarly untrue. A high rating MUD may very well be better for that specific player as what is a better MUD for a player is a subjective thing.

The service works exactly as intended as far as I can tell. The service ranks MUDs based on player votes. The more players vote for a MUD the higher that MUDs ranking is. The only thing the rankings do is tell a perspective player that a particular MUD seems to have players that vote. The flaw would be reading into the rankings any more then that.

Any solid evidence to suggest that most potential players stop at page 1? And if they are doesn't that suggest that they have found a MUD they enjoy within those first 20?

A person's concept of quality is based on their preference. I think popularity is a very good indicator of how good a mud is. It's been stated a million times on these forums... everyone has different preferences of what they look for in a mud. If a mud has a lot of votes, generally they have a lot of players. And if you have a lot of players, then a lot more people like that mud, and the chances of new mudders or experienced mudders liking that mud are a lot higher, if you follow me.

Every mud will claim to be the best; it's a shame they all can't fit on page 1. TMS might as well show a random 20 each week on page 1.

I'm not against an objective rating system; however, I do consider it to be impossible and pointless to argue for it.

I agree completely that it'd be incredibly hard to implement a fully-objective rating format. But the present format is completely subjective and MUD-player demographics heavily favor some types of MUDs over others. For example, it's amazing that two of the three RPIs in existance are on the front page, yet I doubt there's any way all three could consistently hold Top 20 spots. There probably aren't enough RPI players in existance to do this if even 20% of the players of other types of MUDs voted. A shame really since the three RPIs are all of some of the highest quality available out there (and in my personal opinion, ranked in the exact opposite order of quality, a reflection no doubt of the lesser emphasis on role-play on the most popular one and a greater emphasis on role-play in the least popular one which allows the former to appeal to a broader range of player than just role-players but less-so to those specifically seeking RPI-niche traits).

Perhaps the best thing that could be done, as I said before, would be a greater monitoring/regulation of the way in which MUDs on the list advertise themselves. We're already seeing numerous attempts by MUDs to skirt around voting rules and false advertising is so blatant that it makes one want to puke. Holding MUDs to a greater standard of honesty would be a good thing. I can't tell you how many times I've run searchs on "level-less" MUDs only to find that more than half of them have levels. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've run searches on "historical" MUDs only to find that half the list have no historical tie-in whatsoever (my favorites in this example are MUDs with futuristic original worlds that turn up on "historical" searchs). Greater regulation of how MUDs classify themselves, a wider array of "Top 5" lists (Commercial, PK, RPI, H&S, science-fiction, fantasy, etc), plus a "Top 5 Most-Popular" to satisfy the top beneficiaries of the present system would make TMS a greater resource to all MUDders rather than just a resource to those MUDs which can lie, cheat, bribe, or just sit back and enjoy the fact that most people don't really understand how the present system works.

Take care,

Jason

I'd love to see the voting split into two segments: Commercial and Non-Commercial.

Note, I did not say "for profit" and "non profit," nor did I say "free vs. pay to play."

Commercial = if they accept real money in exchange for ANYTHING other than (perhaps) a credits page on their website thanking people for donating. Whether it's a monthly fee, a donation system, a pay for perks system, whichever. If they take money and give something in return *within the game itself* then it could be considered commercial as far as this mudlistings site is concerned. It wouldn't apply to accepting donations in exchange for out-of-game perks, such as coffee mugs and mousepads.

Non-Commercial = if they do not accept any money in exchange for any in-game perks, whether it's a monthly fee to play, game coins, credits, levels, armor, RP points, etc. etc. etc.

And then...

Allow everyone to cast one vote, per month, in each of the two categories. At the end of the month the list is reset. So by the end of the month you can get a -general- idea of which commercial game people are willing to use their ONE vote for, and which non-commercial game people are willing to use their ONE vote for.

If a month is too long, make it 2 weeks. Make it a weekly system. Or a daily system. It doesn't matter really, as long as it's clarified at the top of the page which is being used and when the site is scheduled for reset.

To be perfectly honest, I used to visit this site daily (if not more) back when I bothered to vote for my favorite MUDs. Unfortunately, my favorite MUDs were the "free" ones, and were (and still are) continually shoved further and further down the list by commercial games. By now, I've lost almost all interest, except returning to read the occassional post.

While there is nothing inherently evil with commercial games, they are a different breed, and I strongly support segregating them from "free" MUDs. They are simply a different calibre of game. You wouldn't put a boxer and a sumo wrestler into the same ring with one another.

I am perplexed as to why this idea would receive so much resistance, by either the community here or the 'Giant Head' that controls everything with its psionic powers of moderation and deletion. It would actually, in my opinion, be a step towards friendlier public relations, since it may do a little (very little) to appease the bad karma that rose up out of the diku-license mess and a lot to help MUDs who are owned by people raking out their own cash for the sole sake of entertaining others.

Jazuela wrote (Posted on Dec. 26 2005,07:48)
So would a lot of us.

It has been suggested many times before, and it always ends up rejected, probably because the big commercial muds that pay for banners on the site so vehemently oppose it. One has to wonder why they are so afraid of the idea.

My personal opinion is that that the first Mud List that shows the integrity to set up these parallell lists would really do the Mud community a good turn,  because it would provide a service that many are looking for,  and it would allow the Non-Commercial muds to compete on somewhat equal terms.

Once per month makes no sense in that it would reduce traffic to TMS to the point of it being useless. Being ranked highly is only worth something because of the amount of traffic you get back. Just being ranked is meaningless unless there's traffic going back out at you.

What you want is people to vote often, not rarely.

--matt

Nobody's afraid of that happening, but on the other hand, it reduces the value of TMS by allowing MUDs who do less for the site to benefit equally to those who do more for the site.

What does it matter whether a MUD is commercial or non-commercial? Pk or No-pk? Bashing or social? What TMS does is reward a MUD for sending traffic here. From that point of view, can you understand why it makes little sense to give up valuable screen/promotional space for a MUD that does less for the site vs. a MUD that does more for the site? It makes little sense to use -any- metric besides "How much does the MUD help TMS by sending traffic here?"

I mean, fundamentally, when you send traffic here, what you're doing is exposing your players to other MUDs. There is no point in doing that unless you're getting something reasonably commensurate in value back. Those (like a certain poster) who claim that sites below the top 20 don't get traffic are pretty clueless. All one has to do is look at the list beyond the top 20 and you can clearly see that the ratio of 'out' to 'in' is not substantially different from the top 20. In fact, although I haven't run any sort of analysis, from just looking at them now, I think the MUDs below the top 20 may actually enjoy a BETTER ratio of 'out' to 'in' than the muds in the top 20.


You're placing all this value on being in the top 20 per se, but the value is in the traffic that is sent back to you. If a MUD doesn't send much traffic to TMS, why should it get much traffic back?

--matt

Then we should enforce what muds actually call them selves and get rid of a lot of those tags that mud owners give to themselves, even though they don't have.

Then, when a person logs onto the site, they can pick which traits they want, and the site can show them a top 10 list of those sites with qualities they like.

The idea of seeing the list split into two categories is appealing, especially to those of us who used to regularly make it onto the first page and are now lucky to make it to the fourth.  Please note:  I do not begrudge the success of those who are now "always on the front page", not by any means.  The profile of the marketplace has changed, and that's just a sign of healthy competition and market share.

I can also see why there might be resistance to change to a split system.  Where does TMS get the staff, time, funds, energy to police and patrol the split, make the necessary changes to the entire place, write the new webpages, write the code, and arbitrate the predictable gripes about who goes on what list and why?  

Without opening the usual can of worms by mentioning specific names and fueling yet another flamewar... from all I have heard, the instant a ROM/Diku MUD were to place itself on the Commercial list, they essentially wave a red flag at the license police: <span style='color:cyan'>Here I iz, folks, taking money for boon!  </span> Something tells me the Commercial list will be occupied by a small list of games jostling with each other for top slot each day/week/month/whatever cycle is chosen. And that's ok too.. until the namecalling starts.

Almondine War:We've seen similar dropoff in voting at TMS and some months consider ourselves lucky to get enough to make it onto the fifth page.  Ironically, we are almost always able to get onto the Top Ten at MudMagic early in the month and hold a good position consistently, which would invite a comparision between the two voting systems, if we had all day to address that.  I prefer their method which allows the game admin to choose which vote method into which their game falls.

The MudMagic system has its downsides as well: a person must be registered before he can vote, and crossvoting (voting down the competition with a very low score) is countered by banning at the domain level.

But this is meaningless. Whether you're on the first page or the 100th page isn't what matters, unless this is an ego trip for someone, in which case I'd say "grow up" to that person. What matters is how much traffic back to your MUD you get relative to how much you send to TMS. Has that ratio changed?


It's easy to get into the top ten on mudmagic because there's not much traffic to the voting list. Few of the biggest MUDs send traffic there.

Look, to emphasize how irrelevant what page you're on is, I would HAPPILY back a system whereby we somehow got all the big graphical MUDs (WoW, Runescape, etc) to join TMS. Not a single text MUD would be on the front page. On the other hand, the amount of traffic coming in if Blizzard decided to ask their players to vote on TMS would be enormous. With that much traffic coming in, being #25 would be worth more than being #1 is today.

Again, being on the front page or on top isn't important. Getting traffic back to your MUD is.

--matt

McDonalds and Burger King are popular. Do you think that's a good indicator of how good their food is?

No, the number of votes they have is nothing more than an indication of how many votes they have. It may also imply more voters, although that's not something you can be sure of.

Yes, a lot of people like McDonalds as well.

Point taken, the_logos.

We send very few to TMS, and receive very little traffic from TMS. But I don't see desiring a higher position as being ego-driven. Of course it feels great to have the visibility, but the majority of our new traffic comes from reviews and word of mouth.

The first page is what voters see after casting their votes.  Folks who just voted hunt for the game they just voted for.  If they find it, great. If they have to keep looking through pages until they find it, that's fine too.  But no matter what the intention of the listing is, they will remember how far they had to look before they find it.

I was not continuing the thread to bring forth objections to the current system or its participants, merely to point out that there are other methods and measures.

Uhh.. there's no direct relationship formula for it, but like I said, if they have a lot of votes, generally they have a lot of players. If you don't believe me, try it. For the most part each of the muds in the top 5 have more players than 6-10 which have more than 10-20, etc.

That's my point. And there are many, many, many players who care more about having players to play with in addition to having newer features, decent areas, and over all, just having fun than they do about playing in a "quality" mud with "original" features with complex stories or text clouds. There are also many players who do prefer quality written areas, quality deep stories, and maybe even clouds, but most of these players play a different mud (there are 100s of such muds) from each other because everyone's perception of quality is different from the next.

So let me get this straight. You believe that "how good a mud is" is based on how many players it has rather than...how good the mud is?

Does that mean that if someone opened up a stock Diku and it had ten thousand players online at all times, you would consider it to be the 'best' mud around?

KaVir, I thought we already had one of those. <3M

---

And in response to reading this thread, I'll shoot my support to KaVir on this one. There are many MUDs out there that lack the funds, the amazing web-design, or other general flashiness that can sometimes attract lots of players (much in the same way Graphical MMORPGs do); many of those MUDs have quality staff, decent-sized playerbases, and code/gameplay that doesn't crawl, is unique and fun, and does things that no other MUDs do.

I won't go as far as to say that large MUDs can't reach the same level, because that's obviously been proven not true - however, I have played many places, and I do believe most large player-based MUDs sacrifice some of their creative energies on the flashiness and community aspects of their game. That does tend to attract many more players, true - however, it is not necessarily a direct reflection on the quality of their gameplay itself. The most innovative and creative MUDs I have ever played, nearly all probably had lower playerbases than 100 avg(which for most MUD owners, would still probably be a dream.)

Back to the subject of the post; I do not find it wrong to encourage players to vote, but I do not think it should be hard-coded into the game to remind players that it is their duty, or the sort. A simple attachment to whatever equivalent of a "Message of the Day Board" saying 'You can vote for us at xxx!' is as automated as I would ever feel personally comfortable with.

Yes, I do. I believe it takes a good mud, to get and to keep players. And having players makes it better, at least for me, because I don't like to mud in a dark corner of cyberspace with only a couple of players. Of course you don't agree with me. That's fine. What do you think makes up a "good" mud?
Diku stock would obviously never reach ten thousands, and not even ten, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

No, but then, McDonalds and Burger King are also very cheap compared to what most food critics would regard as "good" food. Most text MUDs are free, and thus competing on somewhat equal footing as regards the sacrifice (time/financial/etc) the player is expected to make in order to play the game.

There is a very strong correlation between # of votes and # of players in a MUD. It's hardly a perfect correlation, but I'm sure you'd agree that if we went down the list of MUDs on TMS and mapped votes to population, we'd see an indisputable trend whereby the MUDs with more votes have more players than the MUDs with less votes.

--matt

Here's something I did for the past hour, and that I will look further into later tonight.



Aardwolf: IN(206), OUT(88), RANK(1), PLAYERS ON(451)

*Achaea: IN(186), OUT(62), RANK(2), PLAYERS ON(249 visible)

Midievia: IN(131), OUT(111),RANK(3), PLAYERS ON(619)

*Lusternia: IN(122), OUT(42),RANK(4), PLAYERS ON(82)

Threshhold: IN(70), OUT(51), RANK(5), PLAYERS ON(?**)

WoTMUDIV: IN(65), OUT(23), RANK (6), PLAYERS ON(62)

*Aetolia: IN(55), OUT(25), RANK(7), PLAYERS ON(119)

DiscoWorld: IN(51), OUT(9), RANK(8), PLAYERS ON(154)

Armageddon: IN(44), OUT(15), RANK(9), PLAYERS ON(?**)

*Imperian: IN(41), OUT(14), RANK(10), PLAYERS ON(126)

NewWorlds: IN(39), OUT(49), RANK(11), PLAYERS ON(79)

CarrionFields: IN(38), OUT(20), RANK(12), PLAYERS ON(42?**)

Solace MUD: IN(32), OUT(19), RANK(14), PLAYERS ON(12)

Icesus MUD: IN(30), OUT(8), RANK(15), PLAYERS ON(105)

Daedal Macabre: IN(25), OUT(11), RANK(16), PLAYERS ON(10)

Shattered Kingdoms: IN(23), OUT(11), RANK(17), PLAYERS ON(24)

The Eternal City: IN(24), OUT(11), RANK(20), PLAYERS ON(?**)

Awakened Worlds: IN(17), OUT(18), RANK(26), PLAYERS ON(32)


*Iron Realms Entertainment
** Unable to harness a statistical number, due to roleplaying blocks




This is just a small sampling I took between the hours of 4pm-5pm EST today, logging into each of these games to find the sample of logged-in players. Where possible as an option, I checked to make sure the current number of logged on players did not stray more than 30% from the Max Number of the Last 24hrs.

I will return later tonight and do some basic stat analysis and maybe draw some graphs to see if there's anything interesting we can get from this information, but I'm sure if you take a look for yourself, you can see that there is. I will note that many of these MUDs had message-reminders ingame for players to vote, and all had a special place on their website for players to vote. I have also noticed a trend while watching the votes change in the past day or two - the trend is for the larger MUDs at the top to garner 30+ votes in a very short period of time, then slow down. This has even managed to happen with some much smaller MUDs on the list, though I will again save all of this for a more in-depth analysis after I sober up tonight. <3

For the record, you might as well list us as "??", since there's no way for a new character to see a sizable percentage of the players who are on, and you'll thus get inaccurate readings.

Valq - done, bud. I was pretty sure I asked a staff member for the number on your MUD, but I honestly cannot be 100% sure that my memory is correct, and so **'d it as asked. I did go out of my way to try to receive the full numbers for the MUDs surveyed, though.

---

Well, I got home too late this evening to do any real stat-work, and I'll be travelling tomorrow, so here's a brief(not-so-brief) glance;

Just a few things to take note of are tendancies between 'Ratio of [Total Recent Votes: Players Logged on] between 4pm-5pm'. Just at a glimpse, it would seem that the average trend for this is probably 2:1 at this particular time frame. The more interesting things to note are the MUDs that sported more total votes than their players logged-on. This infers repetative, dedicated voting by a small playerbase.

Other trends can be seen, also - with most of the larger MUDs filling the top slots (except for a few MUDs like RoD, etc), and then some comparatively small MUDs(Solace and Daedal Macabre, for instance) holding consistant slots in the top 10-20(they still hold those slots now, 12 hours later).

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One suggestion I could make, and I am unsure if this has been made before; perhaps go to a system more akin to MudConnector's, where there is a verification code required for every vote. It is possible to create bots to vote, and while it not might be a large contributor to the top 5-10 slots, a small group of players using bots could easily affect slots 10-25 voting-wise. Couldn't hurt to require some sort of verification, no?


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While having a large playerbase that you remind often enough to vote is likely to help you receive more votes/hits to the site, you can see around 1/4th of the top voted sites appear to exist outside of this rule, relying instead on smaller, dedicated playerbases whose populations have a much higher percentage in voting, and who are more likely to vote again-and-again-and-again.

My assumptions would be that physical reminders(both in-game and website) seem to be the primary instigation for voting(duh). Also, an enthusiastic playerbase who is dedicated to voting for the MUD also seems to prevail, and this is especially true with around 1/4th of the top MUDs on the vote list. While you could argue that MUD quality tends to co-incide with voting pattern, I can say that my immediate reaction to the majority of MUDs on this list that I either revisited today(had been a player before), or visited for the first time today is this; I've seen better MUDs, with no recognition on this voting list. Some of these listed are amongst the best MUDs out there, yes - in no way, however, would I say that the voting list or playerbase sizes of some of these MUDs are an accurate rating of which MUDs are the best-of-the-best out there. Some of the most amazing MUDs I've ever seen do not even have one vote. Of course, this is all glazed over by the great fog of subjectivity, but I think you can see where my conclusion would be pretty on.

Reader's Digest: The Voting is mostly affected by 1) ingame/website reminders to vote, 2) playerbase size), and 3) percentage of voting-dedicated players, in that order. Reviewing the MUDs at hand shows instances of none of these attributes necessarily being a direct reflection on game quality.