I just don't like them, most are poorly written, if you're going to put effort into creating a MUD, then create an original one. We've all played the "Been there, done that" MUDs.

I don't mind stock areas, I know that a lot of muds use them to start out. What bothers me more is what Crystal said, many are poorly done and not in any particular theme.

I think the theme gets to me the most. I have a hard time with muds that want a midieval fantasy (which is common anymore) setting that's pretty strict rp, and there's smurfs or modern things running around that have been left over from stock areas.

This poll is not appropriate for the Advanced MUD Concepts forum, and thus has been moved.

On RoD we have a few stock areas left, but they have all been revamped and reworked many times.

People like the areas, and they are hard to remove without people getting upset.

Once you start with a stock base it becomes woven into the world and seriously hard to remove. I've been modifying the base stock for six years now and it seems to be a never ending battle. Our team has pretty much knocked it down to about 10 heavily revised zones from the stock circle and I applaud their efforts.

There are SOOO many Mu*s out there, I think most players are tired of seeing so much stock over and over again. I do believe though that certain areas should have a "familiar" flavor relating to the original theme so a new player is somewhat comfortable in it.

We don't use any stock areas at all in our mud, we took them all out right from the start, except for Midgard, which is needed by the code, so I had to rebuild that completey, using the old vnums. It's better to dispose of them right away, otherwise, as Illuvatar already pointed out, they get too integrated with your world and are hard to get rid of afterwards.

However, I object to the statement that the stock areas are poorly written. I took a good look at some of them before we removed them, and in fact most of them are a lot better than many so called 'original zones' on many muds with untalented and/or sloppy builders. Many of the stock zones, for instance Midgard and Haon-dor, are really well put together, with extra descs and all, which you rarely see in most new zones.

And since the people who built them very generously offered them to the public, I think it's rather ungrateful and bad form to call them badly written, just because they appear on too many muds. After all, that's not the fault of the original Builders.

I yanked every last area out with the exception of limbo and immortal ( and most definitely including Midgaard, which isn't necessary to have, you simply shift the items to another area and voila! ) and we started everything out from scratch.

What frustrates me almost more than seeing stock areas, is places which did such heavy revisions on stock areas, but obviously still is Midgaard hidden in there.  If you are going to put so much effort into revising and redoing an area, why not build something original in the first place???

I really didn't have the option of what to rip out or not originally. Yes, our Midgaard is heavily rewritten but it was a conscious decision to leave it with the original theme base for newbie familiarity. I could certainly have duped the original .wld map and rewritten the whole thing, but it's now over 600 rooms in grand total and that would be a little much.

Yet another move!

I think the author wanted to target everyone, not just builders, so I have moved this to the Tavern.

Neranz Laverani, Seeker of Knowledge

I think it would not be inappropriate to compare most Smaug (or any type) muds to the D&D novels.

The universe is set, there are exsisting guidelines, characters and places. Who here would expect to read a dragonlance book without reading at least one familier name. But it is up to the author to add to those mentioned. While a book can be set entirely in a familier city, it must have something new and unique. For it is the uniqueness that makes the novels and muds enjoyable, no matter how many stock areas.

And are muds not novels in of themselves?  The coders construct the universe, and the builders the cities. The players, however useless and annoying they may be, are the very characters whose lives we follow throughout the story. The stock areas are well constructed and decent places for the characters to explore, but if you choose to remove them you face an awesome responsibility. It is up to you to provide them with the areas to continue their adventures. Places descript enough to fully immerse a person into the very reality you (the builder) imagine. It may not be easy, but the end results can be far greater then you might realize.


Having said all this, I must first ask you to pay no heed to me and to second apologize for my insane ramblings. It is now 3:44 am, and I play on an rp-encouraged LPMUD with no stock areas at all.

Krotho