Basically you have to be willing to ban people that don't fit the playstyle you're looking for.

That means, you won't have the numbers. That means you won't have 500 players on line. But hopefully, what it also means, is that you will have a group of people that -really enjoy- playing your game in the vision that you have for it. In fact, I've found that most fanatical supporters of muds tend to be of those who play games with strict rp standards. It's the same old quantity over quality debate that we go over time and time again.

Are you willing to be happy with 20 people logged on at peak times? Then by all means, be restrictive. It's made my mudding experience so much more enjoyable overall.

Once you look at your mudding experience beyond the 'game' and look at the story, accepting anyone who tries to make a character will not work. Plain and simple. Some say that's elitest. *shrug* I don't think that's a bad thing.

I found this posting from the begining a bit amusing. For the main fact that no matter what you do there is always going to be stuff like that happening guys. If I got killed and I had 10 friends that were in my same clan I would deff ask for them to go after them for revenge. If you decided to make it so they can only use in char stuff then you have them rping it out which gives the same results only it's not illegal. There is no 100% way to silence the chit-chat amongst players, in fact I encourage it, the more people you know and become friends with the less you will have to worry about. Unless your character which unlikely is the opposite of how you act. I also see taking out certain channels like ooc is a bad idea, because alot of players I know on my mud love to use ooc like in all RoT, RoM, Circle, and various other coded rpg's.