MUD Reviews
 

IN the quest for a new MUD (still not there yet), I am using TOP MUD SITES and MUD CONNECTOR as my guide. Both these sites are very high profile.

When I want to play a game, invest time in it, and before I invest money I like to see that the long term game is as interesting as the first impressions. Every computer game that is released invariably has a review.. could be good, bad, indifferent, but a review nonethless.

From a previous posting, I spent a lot of time on a new game recently only to find that it was not all it seemed, and would have prefered to read a review (one not 6 years old) about it first.

I am amazed to see that the games in the top 20 are actually able to specify whether or not they accept reviews. If a game makes it to the enviable position of top 20 (something I am sure has a major impact on applications), reviewing should be enabled by default. I want to see what long terms players say about the game before I invest my time in it. Just the same as virtually every other single product in the world.

There are a lot of players 'hunting' for muds if posts on these threads are anything to go by, and reviews help make that decision.

Good, Bad, Indifferent, when I come to a MUD site, I should be able to find a review of a game.. to me no review accepted means something to hide, and quite possibly an infingment of my consumer rights :-D

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Hehe, I think you'll find you may have just stirred up a hornets nest...

Basically, some will argue that reviews are pointless because they're either written by fanbois who won't have a bad thing to say about their favourite game, or by people who are annoyed at the game for one reason or another and have an axe to grind. Therefore they turn them off to prevent horribly skewed views of how their game actually plays.

Others argue that everyone knows this anyway, and the enthusiasm of current players is at least some indication the MUD has some good points worth looking at.

At the end of the day the only really useful system of MUD reviews is one conducted by a staff that plays each MUD for a week or so and then writes a review based on their initial impressions, before moving on to the next one. Unfortunately, with the large amount of MUDs out there and the relatively limited number of people willing to do such a task, it's extremely difficult to get such a system up and running for more than a month or so.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I'm of the camp that sees little useful in the reviews and am of the opinion that they do more harm than good. There's been some talk about allowing admins to respond to reviews, but even so I would rather not spend my time defending against review trolls.

In any event, if you want the opinions of other players, most MUDs have forums which are a great place to go to get the PROs and CONs of that particular game. Unless the forums are tyranically moderated to remove posts that dish the game (most aren't), you will find many players willing to help you decide if that game is right for you. I know for a fact (much to my chagrin!) that in the they wouldn't be shy to point you to Armageddon if they felt you'd be happier there.

Good luck!

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I can take or leave MUD reviews. Some are just admins or game fans. Some are just disgruntled ex-players. Some are legit, unbiased looks at games. I don't know that they do more harm than good, but I like having the option available.

I agree with Estarra, though - you can learn a lot just by checking out a game's forums to get a sense of the community and how it operates.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Speaking of MUD reviews, I've been thinking about the review system. Some of the needs we had:

- Let people post a review, but only after their details are verified.
- Allow others to respond to reviews.
- Show most recent reviews on front page.
- Allow reviews to be ranked.

In one of those "that's so obvious I'm mad at myself for not thinking of it months ago" moments, we already have something that meets all those needs, it's called the forum.

Is there really any need for anything other than a "Mud Reviews" forum that has its own "most recent posts" on the main page and a separate search for just that forum?

Re: MUD Reviews
 

If you want to create a section on the forum for MUD Reviews, I strongly suggest coming up with an acceptable policy regarding their postage before doing so. Otherwise it's going to descend into a bottomless pit of flaming and malicious lies, and us poor mods will have a hard time keeping up with it...

Still, you're right. The basic mechanics are already in the forum. How would you link said reviews to their relevant MUD listing though? Just rules about what the topic name could be (Review of <insert MUD name>) and instructions on linking to the DB via BB code?

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Reviews were abused a lot. 90% of any given mud's reviews gave a poor impression of the actual game, by being excessively positive or negative.

When somebody likes the mud they play on, they'll want more players. There's no exception that I know of, every single mud out there needs (or would like) a bigger playerbase. So players who feel positively about their mud will write flowery reviews where they proffer their mud as perfect in every aspect, hoping that it'll attract some players. I don't think it works, both because such reviews are usually rather transparent, and because most mudders can quickly gauge just how true this is after a short time of playing.

When somebody dislikes their mud, usually due to some petty dispute or the fact that they can't be the best player, they'll slander and degrade the mud in a hateful review that displays a long list of purely negative points. While some of these points may be true, there is no mud without negative aspects, and if one simply lists them all then it's easy to make a mud look bad. And it's equally easy to tell that the review was written by some disgruntled pubescent sore loser.

Finally, reviews were all but destroyed when spambots showed up and filled many review sections with promises of willing girls and cheap medication.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I think this is basically true:


95+% of MUD reviews are either fan raves or disgruntled player hack-jobs. However, I disagree that this makes them useless.

There's a lot of information in a group of even crappy reviews. (Note: This assumes the reviews are crappy and not wholesale inaccurate. If I review a MUSH and then paste that review for GodWars, obviously that's just inaccurate and moderation is necessary to take care of that.)

For example: if reviews argue about how balanced the PK system is in a game, I can tell that PK is probably an important part of that game (something the limited different choices for PK in the current search/listings doesn't do especially well). Based on the kinds of things people are saying are great or bad about it I can get a sense of their assumptions. Does PK imply a roleplaying context for them? One on one or group on group or anything goes? What kind of restrictions are there? A lot of this is going to come out one way or another if half a dozen reviews for the MUD are up. You can tell a lot in what they say, and in what they take for granted.

If reviews mostly rave about features I know are fairly standard in that kind of MUD, I can guess that it probably has a playerbase that hasn't played too much of the competition. If reviews allege a kind of staff abuse that really bothers me, I know to at least look for another side of that story before getting too invested in the game. Reviews can help convey a sense of the game's RP culture, PK culture, feel in general (i.e., is this the kind of game where people stay logged on idle even if they're not doing anything? Or is this the kind of game where that'd be stupid dangerous?)

Any given review can and probably will be crap. A lot of them will be written by disgruntled newbies who tried the MUD out and really were looking for a different style of game. A lot will be written by players that don't much know better. Taken together, you still can learn a lot that's hard to learn quickly any other way.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Wait a minute... you're saying I could have willing girls and cheap medication instead of being here talking about MUDs? Why was I not informed of this earlier?! :o

Re: MUD Reviews
 

All the more reason to use a forum. I think we can set it up so that new posts in a forum require moderator approval but replies to it don't. If not, I can code it that way, just takes longer.

Obviously mod approval would be based on some quality guidelines rather than whether or not we agree with the review itself. It might be a huge can of worms putting ourselves in the place of deciding what is a quality review and what isn't, but I'd rather try it than abandon the review section completely. Review mods wouldn't necessarily have to be existing forum mods either.

For your second question it would have to be via a 'submit a review for this MUD' link from the MUD listing or search.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Don't do it, I just spent a year looking only to find out the spambots were lying :( If it wasn't for them, reviews would have been working a year ago. Well, that's my excuse...

I did meet a nice lady in Nigeria who is going to send me some diamonds once my check (cheque for those back home) clears though.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I definitely agree with this because I could easily write up some very legitimate looking reviews trashing MU*s I've played for barely more than 15 minutes. The problem with reviews is if you don't have a review staff with specific guidelines, the system is very abusable and are extremely inaccurate. Also, if you're using a verification system, then the admins of the muds involve will have to commit the time to doing this. For some of us, having no reviews is much more time efficient than having to police the reviews.

A lot of people seem to forget that MU*s who turn off reviews don't get the GOOD reviews either. Some choose to sacrifice good reviews in order to not have to police the reviews at all. That means that they are giving up the good press that other admins get by allowing reviews. And perhaps some players will simply not play games that cannot be reviewed. That's just what games that don't allow reviews get. That's the sacrifice they make in order to save time by not having to police the accuracy of the review system and waste hours defending their games from people with a vendetta, people who are bored, or people who simply feel that they can write a decent review about the game after playing for very little time. There are MANY good reviewers out there, but it only takes 1 or 2 people to eat up a ton of time.

I honestly believe that if the site is sponsoring a review system, it needs to either be done professionally (by staff), or games can opt out.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Yes, it would be great to have a new one or one in the Forums. I think we've have that "negative" player review for our game on the TMS front page for a year now. While fun to see and even using the old advertising adage "who cares about what someone says, as long as they spell our name right," it can be a misleading to what one really finds.

What I fear about forum reviews is the back and forth arguments between a stalwart player and a disgruntled x player of a game which sometimes ends up childish and personal.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I've used to go through the whole list of ranked MUDs on TMS and try them out as well as through the search engine on TMC. Overall, I tried about 900+ MUDs (I'll be conservative here even though it may well be more than a thousand) over the last 9 years, most for probably 2-3 hours average (the really bad ones less than an hour, and I mean REALLY BAD). I've played 50-60 of them for at least 10-15 hours each and about half of those for more than 100 hours each.

At one point I considered writing short reviews of most and longer reviews of the ranked ones. I submitted some reviews to TMC but quit because the problem I most frequently saw was that admins would simply lie in response. One once claimed "it used to be that way when Jason played but it's changed since then". I had last played only 2 days before posting the review. As the problem with that game was a massively vindictive and immature playerbase who'd sooner harass and drive off new players than help them ("newbie-friendly" my arse) and a staff that used their positions to make changes advantageous to their own characters, they'd have had to replace most of the people playing/imming in 2 days to alleviate the problems I had mentioned. In other words, the admin simply lied.

It would be nice to see more oversight in the community but it'll be a hard and thankless job for the reviewers. There are hundreds of MUDs and the vast majority of them suck like a White House intern. Even the "average" ones are often pretty difficult to stomach. Heck, of the Top 20, I'd only give 2 or so of them anything higher than ** out of ****. With admin responses, a review system would be crippled even worse. We've seen how resistant a few games can be toward greater honesty in search engine options. Imagine how many games would be resistant if they couldn't spin honest reviews that didn't paint a rosy picture of their game?

As almost always with the MUD community, the lack of quality control is too institutionalized. Would be a massive job to reverse that but I for one would love to see it happen.

Take care,

Jason

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Oh man, that was classic. I wouldn't mind you spending some time on NW and writing a review good or bad as long as it made me laugh like that did. Hell, I wouldn't even critique it. Maybe your review is the one that has been up there for a year.:rolleyes:

Re: MUD Reviews
 

That rather reminds me of the (now long defunct) Game Commandos mud review site - I recall hearing that they received a great deal of hatemail in response to their reviews. I got a fair taste of it myself just auditing muds for TMC, and that's done mostly anonymously...you'd have to have really thick skin to create public reviews.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Moved the thread to Bugs & Suggestions, since it seems to be more about whether/how reviews are implemented on TMS rather than a newbie question :) The link from Newbie Help will expire in 1 week to give people who wonder where the thread went time to adjust!

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Yes, and that's the other problem with these review systems. Admins can lie just as well as anyone. In fact, we encountered an incident a LONG time ago where two admins were basically posting false reviews about each other's MUDs on MMPOD (I think) because of some on-going feud. They were going as far as to ask their players to post a negative review for the other MUD, and unfortunately, they both had knowledge about each other's MUDs because this was another one of those cases where one side claimed that the other side stole their codebase. (Does anyone else remember this?) Anyway, from what I recall, players on both side, sick of the arguments and just wanting to play, blew the whistle on the admins. Of course, both of them denied posting and asking for negative reviews to be posted about the other MUD.

So, with a review system that is not written by staff, you have the dual problem of quality control and misinformation. Even if you have staff review, you have problems in that a PvP player would have issues with an RP mud, or an RP staffer could simply enjoy a very specific kind of RP and declare another MUD to be "fluffy and light". I personally detest some of the MUDs that I have tried, but I know that there are others who LOVE their mud. I could write a very convincing review about why I hated it and have it be accurate as well as thorough. Normally, I don't bother to write a review. I will email the admins with my opinion if I feel that there are game-breaking issues, and then I move on.

Anyway, with most systems, I think the GOOD reviewers can get shafted as much as the MUDs. The difference is the reviewer can just choose not to review and not waste their time on lying admins. In several sites, the MUDs don't get that option.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Woah, a lot of responses. I think the crux is noone can really get a feel for a MUD without playing for a long time.. and for casual players, thats a serious investment of free time to realise first appearances were not all they seem.

I think we have to remember that most people who read reviews will make up their own mind, and are intelligent enough to filter dross.. but MUD's are games, and games get reviews. Yes, allow admin to refute LIES through a procedure if necessary.. but between the Die hard fans who will say the game is best in the world, and disgruntled players who may still have a genuine point we get a picture of the MUD.

I played the top games.. hundreds of points ahead of the rest , and believe you me I put a lot of hours into some..and I must have missed something cos they were not that great and I played one of the lowest ranking and was blow away by how superior it was.. so I want to read what I was missing, have someone to tell me why they think it was great. I dont mind investing days and days if I know a whole new 'something' is going to spring forth.

Reviews can be rigged? Yes, but its not as easy as rigging the voting if you had a mind to do it. If a MUD is in the top 20, I, as a casual gamer would like to know why and have real reasons why I should try it as opposed to a statistic. If your game is Good, have faith that reviews will show that.. if you think they will be bad, then sort out your game and shame on you for hiding it behind a tick in box assuming thats what it is :-)

As one of the most recognised MUD sites, with a lot of mud-affecting-power, i just think that it is the most informative thing to offer than a table with numbers.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

So rather than start a completely new thread, this seems like a good thread to ask what would people like to see in a fair and detailed review? What are the guidelines? Are there a minimum number of hours a reviewer should play? Do they need to play long enough to remort if a mud has a remorting system to give a fair review? How many classes would they have to play? How many races?

Just to talk specifics, let's take four muds, Carrion Fields, 4 Dimensions, God Wars II, and Achaea. What in your mind does a reviewer have to do to give a fair review of each of these games?

Here are my general thoughts on reviews. No reviewer will ever be totally impartial -- in fact it would be a dull reviewer who had a completely neutral perspective. However it should be possible to write a fair and nuanced review of a game, that is enjoyable to read, that can help a player determine if they would like the game, and that would give feedback to the game itself on what it's doing.

A 'review site', or a review section of a site, shouldn't just focus on full detailed reviews either. I think I would like to see regular full reviews along with 'capsule reviews' that are more like teasers, which the player will know is not a full review, but still retains the fair perspective that the longer reviews have.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I think if you were going to do an honest review you'd need to spend around 10 hours or a week playing the game, whichever would be longer for you. Because of the hugely different game mechanics in MUDs (like the remort system you mentioned) you would have to limit the review to certain categories such as impressions of character creation and the options available whilst doing it, amount of newbie help available, possible options in the game (remorts, end-game content etc), the general feel of the game, and the general view of the playerbase you managed to garner whilst doing the review.

Some of those sections can be helped by looking at a games website sometimes, as they'll often list things that happen later in the game you can include in your opinion of the options.

The major thing in my mind is to make sure that the reviewer is a fan of that type of game. Just like games magazines don't generally put someone who doesn't like RTS in charge of a Command & Conquer review, you can't really put someone who loves PK into a pure RP MUD and expect to get a fair review of it that would be of use to people who DO like that sort of game. For a review staff you'd need to make sure you had enough people to cover all the bases so you never end up sending someone who is immediately going to dislike the game because they have a different playstyle.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I liked the style of the Mud Connector reviews - it gives a fair amount of information about different aspects of the mud, often including both positive and negative. For example:

I don't think you can expect the reviewer to play the game all the way through with every class or race, but I do think they should clarify how much of the game they've played, even if it's just along the lines of "I played this for 10 hours as a human warrior". Perhaps 10 hours isn't enough to get into the meat of the game, but if so it can still give valuable insight into those first 10 hours.

To give a fair overall review of God Wars II I'd expect the reviewer to class (which takes most players around 10-20 hours the first time around), complete a few tasks, and train sufficient powers (ideally 100% potential at age 100) that they could start experimenting with different builds. I guess we're talking around 30-40 hours of playing time - which isn't going to happen unless they're either an active player or an ex-player, in which case the review will likely be heavily biased.

However I wouldn't mind simpler reviews, as long as the reviewer made it clear how much of the game they'd played - such as the 'capsule reviews' you mentioned. I think it'd be pretty nice to have a selection of one-hour reviews, whereby the reviewer had spent an hour playing each of the games before writing up a summary of their experiences (and once again, they should make it clear that they've only played for an hour).

An hour obviously wouldn't cover the meat of the games, but it could still provide an informative introduction - a summary of what you can expect in your first hour, from the perspective of an experienced mudder. Most newbies who aren't going to hang around will drop out long before the 1 hour mark anyway, so a well-designed mud should have sunk its hooks in long before this point - if there's nothing good to say about the mud after an hour of play, then that is also valuable information (not just for the prospective player, but also for the mud admin).

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Ha! 10 hours would barely get you out of immigrancy on NW, you wouldn't have even joined a guild yet. Must be some pretty easy muds out there. What you could find out in 10 hours is likely some of the mud style, mechanics, limited combat style, limited powers and if you were good a lot of roleplay. We get a lot of new players, but I think only 1 in 3 actually make it out of immigrancy.

Will we change this? Probably not. Why? Because that is our weeding out process of good roleplayers. Works like a charm.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Heh. I have to agree with Newworlds there.

Every review of the first 10 hours on OtherSpace would probably go something like:

* Read a lot of information in the Wiki.
* Talked to some people about the latest happenings in the game universe.
* Answered 20 questions about my RP experience and thoughts on good sportsmanship. I DIDN'T KNOW THERE'D BE A TEST!
* MAYBE submitted a bio.
* Waited for the bio to be looked at.
* Still waiting on that bio to be checked out.
* Dum-de-DUM, still waiting!
* OMG, will they ever read my bio?
* CRAP! They just told me it sometimes takes 48 hours to look at these things!

And then it either ends with "The wait was worth it!" or "They're elitist snobs who didn't like my orphaned warrior bent on vengeance!"

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Not 'easy' - but 'exciting', 'entertaining', 'challenging' and 'fun'. The first 10 hours (even the first 1 hour) should be enjoyable and stimulating, not boring and monotonous. If you're expected to put up with hours upon hours of dull repetitive activities before the game becomes enjoyable, then that's the sort of thing I'd like to know before investing the time myself.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Can't argue with that!

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I've got to agree with Xerihae here.

And even a 10 hours playtest would mostly show the basic mechanics of the game, give a hint of the quality in the zone descs, and - given who you interacted with - possibly of the roleplay and player-base in general. A short-term review like that would basically just measure the game's level of Newbiefriendlyness.

Not that this is unimportant. If care has been taken on the design of the game in whole, the developers will also have put some care into the Newbie introduction and the easiest zones. If the experience during the first 10 hours is a pleasant one, chances are high that the rest of the game will also be well designed, challenging and entertaining.

Chances are even fair that the actual game will be a lot better than what you encounter during the first hours. Newbie zones are mostly frequented by newbies, and newbies rarely excel in roleplaying. Most Muds also grow in concentric rings, meaning that the zones closest to the core will be the earliest created, and probably the quality of the zones will have risen over time. Many Muds even leave the design of low level zones to their least experienced Builders, (which I personally think is a mistake). But in any case, the real complexity and depth of a game only unfolds after you have played it for quite a long time.

Still, I think the potential of 'professional' reviewers is a bit limited. The really knowledgeable reviews of a game could only be written by its most experienced players, since they are the only ones, apart from the Admin, that know it in depth. This is one reason why I think it's important to keep the Player reviews, and I also belong to the people who think that it shouldn't be possible for a game to turn off reviews. Even if the majority of them would be fan-boy praise or disgruntled-player flames, reading through a number of reviews still gives a hint of what you can expect in the game.

The Player reviews on TMC hold a considerably higher standard than the ones here on TMS, and I think implementing a system of the same kind here might raise the quality. If the reviewers have to use a valid e-mail, and the reviews have to be checked and approved by some Staff member before getting accepted and published, this would weed out the most blatant cases of total bias. It shouldn't weed out a review just on the grounds that it contains mostly criticism however. This too is valid information,. and if the Mudowners are given the option to respond to reviews, they could refute any blatant lies that might have slipped through the control. The people doing the initial check could be either the moderators or a separate team of members that volunteered for the task.

The more interesting things apart from the voting list that this site can offer, the better chances would be of attracting players rather than just Admin. And reviews are one of the things potentially interesting to a player in search of a new Mud.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Nicely written Molly. Kudos.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

So why do you require, Players borg-through 10 levels in-order to become guilded and truly induced into any roleplay that isn't molli-coddling?

Re: MUD Reviews
 

To weed out the type of players that only use combat to advance (not saying that is horribly bad, but you miss alot if you do that). There is a secret way to skip all that if you roleplay. Apparently you didn't :cool: or you never really played the game that much.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I only read the first post. Infringement on your consumer rights huh? What rights exactly would this website be infringing upon?

I really hope you're kidding. I mean really. You have no "consumer rights" here.

Sorry, I can't add anything else, because I just couldn't get past that.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I assume the game-mechanic you are making a reffrence too is playerbonus.
Timed, player issused roleplay bonus's and a pittance of XP offered on introduction.

Given that each bonus is less than a 1/10 of the requirement for each level, They don't provide a nessceary alternative to borging. A fact that your playerbase has raised time and time again and you've been unable to address.

Now it isn't an easy issue to address, However You can't then claim that forcing charcters to borg through 10 levels of play before they achieve a real goal which will induct them into real roleplay and also put them in a posistion to actually aqquire those for-mentioned bonus's is a means of deteriant and a barrier of entry.

Because your guilded merely end up consisting of borgers and those roleplay fanatics who exsist soley of bonuses
are still ideling in there guilds of entrance in order to aqquire there time based bonus.

Because players don't bonus people, If they can't get a bonus back. Perhaps not how the systems designed or intended to be used. But its seen and heard to be the case. Immigrants don't get Booned.

Moreso, Bonus's are so few and far between with players only giving them to there friends and inner-circle for 'humorous' roleplay. That immigrants and Serfs rarely see them.

So, I did play the game plenty, I did roleplay just fine and more so, because of this. I know Borging is the quickest way to get yourself into a posistion in which you're taking seriously and not looked upon as just another newbie-twink who needs his hand-holding.

Charcter-forming in the sense of peer recgonition only takes place after guildhooding.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

No, I wasn't refering to that, and no I disagree with your assessment of roleplay on NW and almost everything you post here. Moreover I wonder at the motivation behind it and more so after reading the following:
Considering, you were advertising for builders and creators on your own mud a year ago, I find it strange that you would be posting a rant against NW in this fashion. Not that I mind. I welcome your opinion, and if I thought it true and actionable, perhaps something would be done to correct your grievances. But alas, I find it shallow, transparent and off topic as this topic is reviews. But please, continue to posts if you wish, I will only correct you as needed.

There will always be those that attack other or competing muds in this fashion, which I find sad.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Your disagreement dosen't really concern me. More so, I was forced to chuckle at the fact that because I'm a peer in the sense that I'm involved in the development and construction of muds. My opinons held in less-regard than a player.

Alas... My post wasn't a rant but an analytical breakdown and explination of why, Borging+time != Roleplay.

;)

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Having read his opinion and some of the reviews in TMS, it seems to me that RP cliques are probably one of the worst problems in your MUD. This makes good sense, knowing how a socializer-heavy game can be vulnerable to such cliques. What I'd like to hear is how does your game adress the problem of cliques?

To stay on topic, I think that commentable reviews are a good thing. Personally, I think that this discussion about New Worlds that has taken place in this thread is a good example of how such commentable review should work. From the discussion, people can get some idea what the game is about and whether it is good game for them to try. If they have open questions, they can post them in the review thread for the game admin or players to answer. Personally, I think that the games getting this kind of attention would certainly benefit from it as their target group of players could find the game based on it.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Clique forming normally happens with a game that has clans/guilds/religions/politics. This won't go away. The discussion on how NW deals with this could be a five page response, but in short, the only way is really up to the players: You can't administrate effectively who a player roleplays with or adventures with. That is the fun of a game, deciding for yourself.

I will say, however, that the ability to join any group or become anything is very wide road and open even to the lowest level, non-guilded player. I've seen immigrants wield more social power than guild masters, when roleplayed properly and effectively.

Any advertisment is good advertisement as long as you spell the name right.

Still, the trouble with the fellow that complained about having to kill for coins is that it seems old and out of touch. I'd venture to say this person hasn't been on NW in a year or more and likely isn't an rp buff as stated by the "I'll go borg, this is the way to do it" attitude. One forgets that anyone can press for levels or advancement and make it to a high power player only to find out that they forgot to roleplay along the way and gain support and now sit at the top alone without an ounce of social or political strength.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Given that this is a thread about TMS's review feature on the "Bugs and Suggestions" board, you're getting pretty far off-topic. The fine details of NW's mechanics aren't terribly relevant to that discussion. Please take it to PMs.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I've thought about this a little bit and came up with following idea:

Make two forum sections for reviews. One for reviews themselves, which would allow anonymous posting of non-registered users but would be also moderated in a sense that the posts don't show before a moderator has reviewed and approved all of them. This would allow reviews compactly in one place and without clutter, and from players since they don't have to register to post a review. This subsection would not allow discussing or commenting the reviews. One thread per MUD, would pile the reviews nicely in one place.

The other forum section would be for discussion about reviews, where admins and players who have registered to the forums can discuss the reviews and ask questions that arise from them. This subsection wouldn't have reviews themselves, but rather, the commentary and discussion based on the reviews on the review board. You could also discuss features of a certain MUD, mostly in light of reviews.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Not a bad idea, but I think if there's any point allowing comments and discussion of reviews at all, they need to be right there with the review itself.

The reviews get linked to much more than forum posts. I've even seen quite a few links to TMC and TMS reviews as "external references" on Wikipedia listings for MUDs. There could be a link under each review saying "Click here to read comments on this review", but if we're going to do that then again, they might as well just be there.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I think the only problem with the reviews at this site is that they don't get pre-screened, people just post whatever, and that's bad.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

So what's happening with player reviews? It's kinda wasted space if we aren't using them.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Well I guess I didn't post any suggestions here did I.

First of all they might as well be called "comments" not reviews. They need to be linked from the mud's listing i.e. "read comments about this mud", in threaded forum post style layout so easy to just read through the author's comments and only read followups if that comment was a juicy one.

I'm thinking of the way pages are displayed over at php.net, with comments that give you more information about the game. We have vote buttons for rating muds...right.. we dont really need reviews too for that. If you want to find the most popular rp/pk muds, you can just do a search. * But commentary would still be handy for both players and staff.

Speaking of voting, a new review/comment should not bump the mud name onto the front page without moderation -that leads to people posting them for the sake of it. I'm serious, go look at them. "AWESOME MUD!!!!!" etc. It should only be there if its worth reading for someone looking for a mud. Oh, I guess I already said that.

* search should display the highest voted muds first if it doesnt, in order for me to have a valid point

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Wow.. ummm.. when catching up with this thread I seem to have offended a senior poster

I refer you to the evil comment they didnt like

Just going to point out the end of that sentence

and just in case you still aint seen it

Glad we got that sorted, the comment was not serious, but I didnt want to insult everyone by actually pointing it out hence the smiley. Ah well.

All said and done, if someone want to review a MUD, the can always add it as a new computer game to CIAO or DOOYOO the consumer review sites. Just would be nice to see them here at the site which actually points us to them.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

What about having both? For example (and this is more of a random thought than a serious proposal):

When you choose to write a review, it opens up a special page which contains several text boxes - for example it might include sections such as "introduction", "atmosphere", "gameplay", "good points", "bad points", "summary", etc. You'd have to fill in every section, and then submit it under a registered username. Perhaps these reviews could even be moderated to a certain extent (either by the mud owner, TMS moderators, or by regular TMS members via an Amazon style "Do you find this review useful Y/N" - depending on what the reviews are supposed to represent).

In particular, I think the separate text boxes would provide a good way of forcing reviewers to format their reviews in a consistent way and cover the different aspects of the mud, while requiring people to cover both good points and bad points should encourage them to write more balanced reviews than most of the current ones.

You could also a "Reviews: #" which is displayed under "Posts: #", with the option to view all reviews by a particular poster. It might also be nice to tie this in with a reputation system (probably not the current one, or mud critics would soon end up with really bad reputations), and factor it into the reviews; once again I'm thinking of something along the lines of Amazon's "Top 100 reviewers".

In addition you could just choose to write a comment, which would work much like the current reviews, except in a forum style so that other people could respond.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Well if it absolutely has to be reviews too then..

5 fields-
longevity (rate from 1-5)
gameplay 1-5
appeal 1-5
community 1-5
overall 1-5
final field for comments

Then just bung their average category ratings over the top of their comments, and individual comments. Like ratemyprofessor.com :) that's a great peer review site.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Yes in a perfect world where love-cakes grow on trees and the rain only falls just after you've left the grove and the fairies give you magic dust that doesn't cause a deviated septum when you snort it...

mud reviews will be fair and worth reading and actually contributory to a website such as this one.

Unfortunately, there are these really pesky little creatures called trolls and gnats and griefers, who for vile and evil intent (I love how vile and evil are comprised of the same four letters as live, don't you?) will post reviews that aren't reviews in the reviews section.

I can't tell you how many times I've taken a gander to the reviews section and seen something like this:

This game is teh awesomesauce on lollerskatez! It has 20 clans!!!!!!11111 and 400 races!!!!!!!!1111 You need to play it it's freeeeeeeeeeee!!!!111111oneoneoneleven!!!1

and this:

This game is teh sux0rz teh imms ban j00 4 ne reason or no reason play my mud instead its teh awesomesauce!!!1111

and this:

I did not ban u 4 ne reason or no reason i ban j00 4 u are teh sux0rz and j00 ch33t and hack mah server!!!111

oh and I especially like these:

Hey I just found this place, glad to be here! You might find -this- site interesting too: viagra.biggerisbetter.com

It's because of any and all of the above that some folks prefer to just not allow reviews on their games, because there is no way to prevent players (and even game admins) from posting ads for the game instead of a review (apparently the vast majority of people who write these things don't know the difference between an ad and a review), or griefers posting JUST to tell everyone about how they were completely innocent, doing nothing wrong, and admin pwiped their account, or spammers on a rampage with viagra ads.

The reviews section on this website reads more like the back pages of a fashion magazine (special offer, free trial just circle #13 on your mail-in card now and SEND!) than actual reviews. I don't blame any admin for not wanting -their- game to be represented in such a way. If Lasher ever decides to do something about that, maybe something like how Mudconnector does it, perhaps there will no longer be a need to reject reviews. But without any moderation or approval system of reviews then the mud admins need to retain the option of simply not allowing THEIR muds to be dragged through the OTHER kind of mud.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Are you serious, Jazuela?
If so, could you please provide us with some links, so we can have some more laughs?

Your 'review' examples are certainly entertaining, but do they really exist?
I can't recall ever seeing anything nearly as sub-par as those. And as far as I've heard, spam adverts get nuked pretty quickly too. In fact, I cannot even recall ever coming across a player who talked like that, but maybe I just play the wrong games?

Sure, the reviews here are usually no literary high-points, and sure, many of them are just fan-boy praise or disgruntled-player flames, but is it really necessary to paint things out as worse than they are?

Re: MUD Reviews
 

There are too many to link. You'd see that for yourself if you actually took 20 seconds to check the reviews section. It's easy, but here are the directions for the "it's too easy for me, please make life more difficult" types:

On the main topmudsites page, left side, there's a menu. Click on the "Reviews" section. It'll open to the most recent 50 reviews. Of those most recent 50 reviews. 20 of them are NOT spam. One of those 20 that I actually read, was not a review of any sort at all, but rather a copy-paste of a mud's website telling readers what the mud's theme was and how many clans, races, skills, etc. it has. Absolutely no review at all, not even so much as a "try this out, it's great!" at the end. One of those 20 was a response to someone else's review, which I couldn't find, discussing something that "he" said and how "he" was just mad because "his" account was banned.

Of those 20 that weren't spam, I did random checks and found 2 to be actual reviews. I checked on 6 more and found them to be rebuttals to people who posted in the reviews section saying they were banned and how the game sucked. I checked on 3 others written (supposedly) by three different people, all in the same week, using the exact same spelling and grammar errors to tell readers to try their mud because it was awesome and we will all love it.

That's just the most recent 50. 30 out of 50 were spambots. ALL of the spambots were written for either of two muds. So out of 50 most recent posts, 20 of them were at least SOMETHING about the muds they were theoretically supposed to be reviews for. Thirty had nothing to do with muds at all. Of the 20 that were mud-related, the majority of the ones I actually read weren't reviews at all.

There are over 1500 reviews available for viewing. If you want to do some random checks on each set of 50, feel free. The first 50 was convincing enough.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Not to imply that the reviews are high quality editorials, but the first few pages are the worst to take a sample from and not representative of the overall list. Those are from when the spambots took over/broke the review system in the first place. I actually thought I'd gone back and edited those out, guess not.

Addressing the area of spam, however reviews are done they will definitely require a forum account to post and moderator approval before they are actually listed. Overall I'd say we've been quite successful at keeping spammers off the forums. Occasionally some get through, but they are reported and removed quickly, so not concerned about the "get ur viagra here!!!!" type spam when reviews reopen.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Thanks for your kind directions, but, as I already have stated, I don't doubt that that a majority of the reviews are poorly written, and either flames or ads. It's also quite possible that the spambots have taken over lately, I haven't really checked that section after the reviews were turned off.

What I reacted to was the Twink spelling and '!!!!111111oneoneoneleven!!!1' in your 'examples'. I just don't believe that people would express themselves like that in a review, unless it was meant as a parody. Which is why I asked for a link.