Ranking History
 

It would be really neat if we could see the ranking history for each mud on the listing. To be more clear, if there were a page which we could see how many total votes a given mud received each month for the past year.

Re: Ranking History
 

Interesting thought, but might I ask why? Would a year ago ranking number give you a reason to try something? Or not try something?

Personally, despite the ranking of NWA, I feel you should try the game you find exciting based on the layout and feel and description not based on what other players think.

And, as I always do, I recommend this link if you are seriously searching for a good game to play:

Re: Ranking History
 

The best site I've seen for aggregate statistics on muds is . They don't have voting totals, but they do track position on the various mud ranking sites.

-dentin

Re: Ranking History
 

How does the site determine the default rankings do you know?

Re: Ranking History
 

It uses a crawler. It uses MSSP when available, otherwise I believe it uses various different methods (such as logging on and checking the who list).

Re: Ranking History
 

Except their terribly inaccurate for Wotmud.org, as we have a 3-sided race war, each with it's own who list.

The reason I'm interested in this is for tracking purposes regarding how many votes the mud I play has received each month over time. Whether they've gone up or down. Mostly a curiosity thing, but possibly using it to compare to our average monthly players, it could be useful to help convince non-voters that voting does indeed make a difference in gaining new players. I could do this manually or with a script, but it would be nice if I didn't have to.

Re: Ranking History
 

You should consider adding MSSP then, otherwise they'll continue listing WoTMUD with a smaller playerbase.

Re: Ranking History
 

I'd be interested to see if the Voting process is done fairly, or by players voting through their alts from different machines (Library Computers, Workstations or through a friend/family computer)

Darren Brimhall

Re: Ranking History
 

i'm just a player not an admin, so that's beyond my reach. even if i were able to do such, it still wouldn't show or track the monthly vote totals over time.

Re: Ranking History
 

I believe MUDstats does track traffic over a given period (will need to check to be sure).

What you can do is suggest to your Game's Admin's to give MUDStats a try in this reguard.

Darren Brmhall

Re: Ranking History
 

This has always bothered me too. How does a game with 20 average players have enough votes to be in the Top Ten here? We all know everyone doesn't vote everyday on any game, yet here is Avatar Mud with over 1300 votes and Isles of Aedin which is supposedly in BETA with over 900? Anyone else think someone is cheating to get their game noticed?

Re: Ranking History
 

Accusations of cheating without facts bother me. When quoting numbers, you have to understand what they mean. I am one person. I can vote 2x daily. I have 2 votes per day for any given mud. Over the course of 24 days, I can personally generate 48 votes. Over the same time period, 20 dedicated persons can easily generate 960 votes. Do the math. Total votes divided by 2, which quotient is then divided by the number of days passed in the voting period.

Avatar Mud: 1300/2=650/24=27 persons voting twice daily.
Isles of Aedin: 900/2=450/24=18.75 persons voting twice daily.

What you have here is a small base of very dedicated voters trying to get their mud noticed.

Re: Ranking History
 

Accusations of cheating without hard evidence in this circumstance don't bother me in the least. Alter Aeon has a solid 50 person playerbase, and a great percentage of them are extremely dedicated. Getting them to build thousand rooms areas? Sure, no problem. Getting them to vote every day, day in and out, even when provided timers and tools to track it? Almost impossible.

That's not to say that real, dedicated voters don't exist, or that they don't have an impact. However, I have virtually no doubt that the games with grossly high hit counts for their size have those hit counts because one or two dedicated individuals has access to a remote server farm for automated voting. It's not like it's rocket science.

-dentin

Re: Ranking History
 

In the long-term, sure - Alter Aeon has been around since 1995 after all. But Isles of Aedin is barely six months old, the players probably haven't been burnt out by all the voting yet.

Re: Ranking History
 

Here's a possibility, though unproven--and I say that to be fair and not as an assertion of what's occuring. And an even more simplar one following this.

The MUD in question can be played on a wide varriety of systems (IE, Firefox, Safari, Netscape(which is Firefox nowadays), and can allow for the creation of up to six characters (Alts) and Accounts.

(side stepping)
I myself have actually carried three other players on my Credit Card at Marrach without trouble. So name doesn't matter, only account number of the card. Plus, there is an option for month and yearly pay by check or money order. So addidtional accounts can be made using different cards, or by Mailed in payments.
However, the first month of an account is free. So technically one can concieveably create numerious limited time accounts under numerious names and addresses.

(back to possibility)
Now, since the IP address of the computer is already known by the Voting site, would it be then possible for the player to use another computer (or blackberry like device) to relog and vote again. Or, as I have come to learn, utilize a program that alters their computer's original IP Address, which can fool the Voting site and allow another vote (or many from the same person).



Other possibilities can be Voter Apathy, where they just don't bother voting, or Players of other Games can access TMS.com by other means.

Again, I say that the first Possibility is yet to be proveable either in theory or fact.

Darren Brimhall

Re: Ranking History
 

This thread has gone way off topic. Perhaps a mod can move all the posts from on to a new thread in Tavern of the Blue Hand, or perhaps even add them to the 2-year-old thread ? Incidentally, this old thread was also started with accusations of several muds cheating by Ajanas, only one of which actually panned out.

Re: Ranking History
 

Would something like work with TMS?

Re: Ranking History
 

Isles of Aedin (of which I have an account) had a whopping 14 players on yesterday as I watched them vote 100 times to keep them in 3rd place on the top page. Give me a break. You can excuse them all you want, but let's call a spade a spade. Even if every player voted every 12 hours (we know that doesn't happen) they would need to all vote from 4 different IP's, because they had the 100 votes within 24 hours.

STOP the cheating Isles of Aedin.:mad:

Re: Ranking History
 

Not to defend cheating, but be really sure of your allegations. I'm not really pro or anti Isles of Aedin, but I'll often vote for a mud even when I'm not online. TMS is set up to receive and calculate votes the way it does. Every mud is in the same boat. So take the voting results with a grain of salt. They're not a measure of how good your mud is. They're a measure of how many unique IP addresses within a specified time increment over a specified length of time clicked on a voting link. People aren't rushing out the door to try Isles of Aedin or any mud based on the TMS ranking, expecting awesomeness because it was ranked #3. Pretty much every mud on the first page gets plenty of hits, and most people around here try muds due to word of mouth.

Re: Ranking History
 

Hi there, folks.

First time posting, so first a small introduction. I am the coder behind the game "Isles of Aedin". I've been playing MUDs for... well, an embarrassingly long time and have voted on this site among others for numerous games while being a player. Aedin is my first venture into the realm of MUD design and running. Plenty of ups and downs, mistakes learned, etc. but it's a fun hobby and we have a great little community going. Is it perfect? Not even close. Are we going to compete against the likes of Achaea and Aardwolf? Probably not. Are we having fun? Heck yeah!

Anyway, I signed up to post here because someone directed me to this thread where we are apparently facing allegations of misconduct. I thought I'd drop in here for a couple of reasons.

1.) Hello! It's good to be a part of the gaming community. I have lurked around here for a while and have enjoyed the friendly atmosphere and general sense of help. When people can recommend game A even while working on game B, it shows a solid amount of maturity.

2.) To the best of my knowledge, nobody on IoA is cheating on the votes. I have made posts a couple of times making sure people know that voting through proxy is illegal. If TMS admins determine that some of our votes are coming from proxies, I would sincerely urge them to remove those votes from the count. If there are particular suspicions, I would be more than happy to help investigate them to make sure that everything is on the level. We're a small game being run entirely as a hobby just for the love of MUDing and have nothing really to gain by cheating our way to the top.

3.) In terms of number of votes, right now there are 41 players on IoA, excluding staff while I am typing this. An interesting point to consider is that there is also no multiplaying which inflates the size of some games' who list (not that there's anything wrong with that, just important to note in this metric). That's above average, but 30 isn't unheard of. We also have a number of people that vote rather fervently, though I suspect that this won't always be the case.


What I would like, however, is to see some clarification on voting from different locations. My take on it is that it is against the spirit of the rules, though not the letter. I would be naive to believe that nobody is voting from smart phones as well as their computer, as well as probably voting from work as well as home. If I have missed this somewhere in the rules please direct me and I will be sure to pass it along to our players as well. In the interim I have essentially told them the same thing and asked them to keep the voting on the level.

Thanks for reading, guys. :)

Re: Ranking History
 

You are allowed 1 vote per 12 hours. Not 1 vote per machine, per ip, per proxy, per smartphone per 12 hours.

To Anjana,

I personally do not care if Aiden Island is is ranked 1st or 100th and you shouldn't either. There will always be new games that flash through the rankings or are new that somehow rank high or post alot or whatever. What is more important to me (when I recommend a game) is quality and playability as well as interesting genre. You shouldn't worry so much that another game is in the top 10 or top 100. If you have something against their quality or misrepresenting themselves go off on them about that.:cool:

Re: Ranking History
 

Who lists are pretty deceiving for estimating a games actual voting population, they vary based on time of day and day of week. Just because a player doesn't have time to log in and immerse themselves in the atmosphere of a game doesn't mean they don't have time to click a link to vote for their game, for example i voted twice on sunday yet was unable to log in due to time constaints. While daytime populations are usually rather low even on weekends prime time (7-11) est you can count on 20-35 players in game, topping out on occasion in the low 40's. people with limited time tend to use that time to log in when they know the most people will be online

Honestly though i don't think it really matters what place a game is although games on the first page probably get more views. If you have issues with Isles of Aedin your best course of action for people to take you seriously is to write a serious and well thought out negative review of the game. I am sure it would go over better than just bashing the game on the forums whenever it comes up or accusing it of cheating the rankings. The staff of IOA would probably appreciate the negative review as well as it would give them an idea of what if anything they need to address. Getting input from someone who didn't previously play Dragons gate would go a long way I am sure as just about the entire alpha player base was made up of former players and staff of Dragon's gate

Re: Ranking History
 

Okay new worlds I'll take your advice and just bash the game for garbage programming and the fact that it is crappy hack of Dragon's Gate. Also, you should drop by or at least review the website. They have hacked some of your game's style and even your guilds, races, and powers. Not suprising. I nearly laughed when I saw Shaman, Druids, and Warriors in the game. It is very likely the main coder or his lackeys played in your guilds as the powers are extremely similar. Just a thought.

Number of players never equals good game. However, I was on morning noon and night Sunday and Monday and never saw more than 20 people. Mostly 12 or less. Also you mention the "staff" would appreciate feedback. Really? How come the "staff" don't have accounts here or hide who they are. Who exactly is the "staff"? I tried to email IoA that just created an account claiming he is the programmer and he has the email blocked and doesn't have any information on who he is or any contact information. He says he has played numerous MUDs and this is his first project. What MUDs IoA? Is anything original in what was created or is everything from DG, NW, Achaea?

Re: Ranking History
 

You seem to dislike Isle of Aedin immensely but i can assure you the game has it's own unique code it only resembles Dragons gate in that the overall feel is similar. just familiar enough to make long time players of the game (dragons gate) feel comfortable. If you feel this is a bad thing then you should probably quit mudding because every mud on the list had borrowed some element of overall feel or design from a a previous mud whether intentional or not. in fact i wouldn't be suprised if some of them had borrowed elements from Dragon's gate or it's predecessor Aradath and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. As for specific classes, races ect... most of the races and classes in IOA are based either directly or loosely on well known fantasy staples given a unique setting and histories in the IOA world. you can call a dwarf anything you want (we call them Vorngar) it's still a dwarf , lizardmen, goblins, none of these are unique to any of the games that use them. same goes for classes, druid, shaman, warrior, it's absurd to think any Mud was the first place any of them appeared

i also find it odd that you claim to have been on morning noon and night on monday and the most you saw in game was 20 since there were 35 by 8pm and 41 by 9pm. If you are going to bash the game thats fine you are entitled to your opinions but if you are going to try and use data to back up your attacks it is better if you use accurate and not made up or intentionally deceiving data. You are correct on one thing numbers DON"T mean anything about the game, the game and experience each person enjoys is very different and a personal experience, numbers can enhance that but if it isn't there the numbers won't matter at all, it seems obvious you would never enjoy IOA even if we had 1000 players and it would be futile of me to try and change your mind. I'd rather you write a detailed review and explain intelligently what the problems you find with the game are and why you dislike it so much. this will serve two purposes. 1) individuals with similar views will not waste their time on a mud that is not suited for them and 2) the staff can fix issues with the game if there indeed are any

As far as contacting the staff there is a link directly from the games website and a link on the message boards for individual staff members and staff characters. the default here is to not allow e-mails from members, easy mistake to make when you are setting up an account to leave that as no. (not everything is some big conspiracy.) But if you feel contacting the staff isn't easy enough then thats feedback they'd be looking for and would want to know i'd be happy to pass that along for you. (which i have already done, making the suggestions for you that the contact button on the main website be easier to locate and that IOA set his account to allow him to be contacted via these boards)

My appologies for the large wall of text
~Esche

Re: Ranking History
 

Who cares if they did. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, no?

By the way, did they put up the author note: Original concept New Worlds Ateraan? That would be funny.:)

Re: Ranking History
 

Races, Magic and overall layout are pretty much generic D&D Clones.


Its what you do with it all that makes it either original, or simply another clone/rip-off/copy of.

Darren Brimhall