Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

I have been meaning to make this offer ever since the "" thread sparked up again recently.

About 2 years ago, I started doing some freelance writing on a technology web site called . With as much time as I spent posting my opinions about games on forums and blogs, I figured I may as well get paid for it! Fast forward a few months, and now I am the Managing Editor of the entire .

What I would like to offer to the mud community is the opportunity to get reliable source media attention for their mud. Bright Hub is a professional web site with paid writers whose articles undergo a three stage editorial process. It is currently ranked as top 200 most popular web sites in the US, and it receives 40 million page views from 10 million unique visitors per month.

I would like to publish some newbie/starter guides for various MUDs out there. These guides would include factual or historical information about your MUD, basic information on how to start playing, and anything else of particular interest to new players. Links to official game forums, wikis, online documentation, etc. would be included.

A lot of this information would come directly from the MUD staff who would pass it along to the writer that was assigned to write the guide. The writer would organize it into publishable format, review the information against their own experiences playing or studying the MUD, and note that some of the specific information came directly from the MUD operators, web site, wiki, etc.

My only concern is whether or not these guides will generate enough traffic for me to justify publishing more than a few experimental ones. To that end, I'd ask that any MUD pursuing this offer promise to promote the guide enough to their playerbase that the guide will generate at least a couple hundred page views per month. That's really not that much since the guide is likely to be at least a couple pages, and a single person could generate (30 * the number of pages) page views in a month.

Ideally, this would be a great way for MUDs to get reliable, third party publication of information about their game.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

If anyone is interested, please post here or send me a PM. Also, if anyone has feedback to share on the idea, or suggestions for a better way to do this, lets hear it!

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

I think the idea is a good one. Most of us have complained about Wikipedia and their requirements so this is one step to meet that as well as become listed.

Will NWA participate? Maybe. I have to have my staff look into it and see whether we are inclined to do so. But regardless it is worthy of note and a way to move forward with legitimate writings on our games.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

I'm certainly interested.

I don't think I could promise the page hits, though. I can certainly encourage our players to visit and read it the once, but I don't think I could ask them to go back and re-read the same articles (or even just do a page hit) after the first.

I would be happy to encourage them to read any new articles about different muds, though. Even if we do loose some players through that (hopefully the other games would be equally sharing, so we'd just mix playerbases, rather than "loose out" - and the players will end up in games that better suit them, meaning a win for all.)

What sort of information would you be looking for? Or would you be asking questions that we'd answer?

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

A basic guide of how to log on and get started would be great. This would be passed on to the reviewer. If you have a very newbie guide, this would also help as then the reviewer would spend less time fumbling around and more time on reviewing the actual game and gameplay.

A summation of your mud's history (when you started, etc.) and pertinent details about what is required to log in and such would also help. The reviewer will verify what you list and go from there.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

History is your MUDs historical creation dates and so forth right, not fantasy history?

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Alter Aeon is definitely interested. I'll start getting together the guide materials, can you give me information on how to get it to you?

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

I'm sure Threshold will simply PM or email you, but he said you can PM him directly here or go to his user information and emailing would likely work.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

If you are seriously interested, and think you have enough people to make sure the article gets at least a couple hundred hits a month, then go ahead and PM me and I'll try to get the ball rolling as fast as possible.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Right. That's the kind of information that can only be received from people who created the game.

Fantasy history is not usually that much of interest to people reading reviews. We only highlight the most prominent parts of any kind of fantasy world.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

For a game guide, a lot of IC game history is not very useful. A little bit might be nice, but more than a few sentences is wasted in a guide. The history of the MUD, however, is something a potentially new player might find a tad more interesting.

To make sure the article generates long term attention and traffic both for itself and for the MUD it is about, a newbie/general guide is the best way to go. Reviews just don't cut it long term, and they tend to be incredibly divisive.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Good luck with this idea. It sounds like it could be pretty positive for the community and even if we don't follow the game that a particular article might be about I hope we'd still have a good turn out to just check it out and show some support for muds in general.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Thanks! I'd love to get 3-5 going this month and then observe how well it works.

But perhaps more importantly, having editorially reviewed articles from a major web site about one's game could really help lend it legitimacy when seeking attention elsewhere (be it Wikipedia or some other media source).

The weird thing about media attention is to get some, you need to already have some.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Would definately help for Wikipedia, I'd think. As for the media catch 22, that is frustrating.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Good luck, seems like a wortwhile project. Looking forward to checking it out in a few weeks and see how it's progressing.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

I've PMed the interested people with how to get the information to one of us. If I missed you, my apologies and let me know.

Thank you!

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Just one thing: when you have these pieces done on yourself, use developers' real names, 'kay? Nobody outside your MUD cares what Superdeathblade did in 1998. If it's Joe "Superdeathblade" Smith, it achieves actually potentially the slightest bit interesting.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Yep! That's a given, Chaosprime, but thanks for the advice. I don't expect that any of the writers will leave that kind of information out when writing about any of the games. They'll treat it like any other game.

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

First article published as part of this effort:



Check it out!

Re: Need Reliable Source/Media Attention for your MUD?
 

Anonymity of the article's author is a strike against credibility for some of your intended purposes, FWIW.