Our mud recently got a pretty poor review from a disgruntled player. Now, while I respect the right of this player to post their opinions, they're also pretty inaccurate and misleading. Yet TMS doesn't offer a way for me to comment on that review in the way Mudconnector does. So, my choices are limited to:

- Post a 'review', criticizing his review. This isn't right because it's not a proper review.
- Post a thread in these forums, which review-readers may never see.
- Ignore the review and get bad publicity due to one player's unsubstantiated claims.
- Request that TMS take down the 'review'.

This is not a very satisfactory state of affairs, and I'd be interested to see what other people think or recommend.

I would like it if they allowed replys to reviews in the review. Maybe not so that everyone and their dog could add a reply, that could get spammy, but at least so that the person that "owns" the MUD listing could reply if they wanted to.

On the other hand, I think people sometimes worry too much about a bad review. I've never been staff on a MUD, but I've been playing for years, and a single bad review has never turned me away from trying a MUD. I'm smart enough to know that every MUD with any standards whatsoever will have a few disgruntled players. A MUD that has nothing but glowing, sugary reviews gives me a toothache and makes me suspect that all the reviews are posted by staff or that people get in-game rewards for posting positive reviews. There is no such thing as a perfect MUD, so I -like- to see what players and ex-players of the MUD consider its bad qualities. Tyranical, hard-ass imm(s)? That isn't always a bad thing, and is better than sloppy, misspelled room discriptions. A mix of positive and negative reviews is good, reviews that mention both the good points and the areas that could use improvement are even better, but those are pretty rare. The only time that negative reviews worry me is when the majority of reviews are negative, and the few positive reviews are obviously advertisements rather than attempts at an honest review.

Don't worry, be happy.

Angela Christine

So get on it and send me the book!
--matt