Taking another look at some MUDs
 

got me to reconsider , a MUD I played several years ago and quit because I hated it. This time around I thought that it was significantly more compelling than it was back then. There are still a few issues I have with the game, but it's not enough to make me quit (yet). The tutorial is slow-paced and designed for people new to MUDs and the particular system of advancement which Achaea uses, and I've found that accomplishing the scripted task of reaching level 20 is agonizingly slow in the newbie areas I was sent to operate in. I'm still not out of the newbie range yet and my player-run House seems dead at the moment, but I'll be back to keep the trickle of experience flowing (dripping?).

Because of my decision to look at Achaea again, I decided to try out some other MUDs that I visited long ago. I'll post a few remarks about each one here as I get to them.

: I forgot why I disliked this game so much until I tried it again a week or two ago. When I played I had a hard time remembering what my problem was with it; I had a lot of fun with the guild system (I played an Elven Mage) and I met and quickly made friends with people in the religious group I had intended my character to join. What stopped me was the steep price that every player is asked to pay in order to get the full experience: $50 US. Without this, I couldn't become a full member of the religion my character wanted to join, and it seems like there's other perks I'd miss out on.

The rationale they give is that many big budget games these days cost about $50 or so when they are released, so why not spend something like that to play Threshold if the MUD is enjoyable enough to stick around for? The issue I take with this is that not every gamer is someone who owns a PS4 and invests in the CoD-of-the-Month. I'm a budget gamer and I shop around for fun games that are free or inexpensive because I'm not prepared to drop so much cash on big-name titles, and then again on DLC that probably should have came with the original game to begin with. This is a major reason for why I often play MUDs. There are a lot of players of Threshold who ARE prepared to drop cash on the game, but that's their choice and it's their money to do with as they please. If Threshold needs money to operate, I'm sure its loyal gamers will come up with enough money to keep it going without the Admin passing the hat if they're already willing to spend $50 per head. Being told that the $50 is necessary to prove that I will stick around before being permitted to join player-run organizations only tells me that .

Other games I'll be looking at soon: Alter Aeon, Ateraan.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Any MUD of mine would be 100% free to play, but different people have different goals and I can understand folks charging for their games. It takes a lot of time and work to produce a quality MUD. If people will pay whatever to play your game, more power to you. A professionally engineered, implemented and administrated multiplayer text RPG beats the heck out of any MMORPG as far as playability and long-term fun, IMHO. I also understand it when people can't afford $50 a month to play anything. What I don't get is folks being willing to spend $20 to go see a movie with a friend, or $20 on drinks at a club Friday night, or $20 bowling, rollerskating, going to a play or a ball game, but being unwilling to pay $20 a month to play a MUD that they enjoy. This is not aimed at you, Acacia. It's been a pet peeve of mine for a long time.

A lot of things about Achaea really appeal to me. I gave it a shot some years back, several shots, as it took me multiple attempts to slog through the introductory tutorial. I really hate those things, especially when they are mandatory. I finally made it, but what I could not handle was an inventory system that used object numbers. I think Achaea is probably a great game, but there are a few details are deal breakers for me. I should probably go try it out again. It sounds like the newby intro stuff has expanded, though.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Paying money to do social activities with real, tangible friends is a much better investment than giving money to a faceless Internet denizen in order to play a text game. When my friends are around, the computer goes off, unless we're playing D&D together in which case I won't MUD.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Cool thread.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

You are still paying money to see those friends. You are paying to play D&D together (books, dice, etc). You are paying for the utilities in your house/apartment(heat, cooling, lights, etc), you are paying for the food and drinks. You are paying for the radio or listening device. You are paying for the phone to call them or text them.

Fact is, you are just against paying for anything you think should be free. Unfortunately, nothing is free in life. Nothing. You may be getting something free (like typing into this forum) but someone is paying for your ability to have that free service. Sort of like your friends sitting at your house. They sit their for free, but you pay for all services surrounding them. Make sense? I hope so.

Last thought: You get what you pay for, be it free or otherwise.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

You're trying to compare what is essentially DLC to real, flesh-and-blood friends.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

This is definitely an interesting thread. Personally, I love pay-for-perks MUDs. I like to play a MUD for free to try it out. If I really like the MUD and intend to stick with it, then I'm quite willing to pay a little bit here and there for perks. MUDs do themselves a service by being free to play and then selling various upgrades, especially in a wide range of prices. I agree with Dark Acacia that a big demand for payment like $ 50 should not occur too early or it is a big turnoff.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

It's not just the part about expecting $50 as if the MUD is entitled to it that bothers me the most--it's that there are features that remain locked out until you pay, and everyone who has already paid is encouraged to be a salesperson for paying money to the game.

If people are so enthusiastic about playing Threshold that they will pay for it, certainly Threshold can afford to make the payment voluntary. Let people get game currency and experience for paying, but don't lock people out because they don't have the RL budget for it.

I know I promised to look at other games, but I'm busy these days and I'm still poking around in Achaea.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Its a fairly new feature, but Achaea mostly supports the more traditional item management system you might be familiar with now (particularly for inventory manipulation). PUT sword#3 IN PACK etc should work and such, so if that was the reason you found it not to your liking, you might want to check that out.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

The inventory thing is a deal-breaker for me, but games that make me do busy work to gain my first X number of levels or skills or whatever drive me nuts. And maybe that was a misperception on my part. Chasing butterflies, though? Ugh.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to take another look.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Dark Acacia wrote:
There's nothing fundamentally special about 'people' or 'flesh and blood'. Someone can be uploaded and run in silicon and still be as much a person as another person who happens to run on organic hardware.

That said, DLC at the moment isn't nearly as complex or chaotic as flesh and blood creatures are, and certainly isn't yet self aware. Personally, I think that's a lot of the draw of games in general: they aren't nearly as difficult to figure out and/or work with as real people, and the consequences for failure aren't nearly as harsh. I can hardly fault others for wanting to go with the safer option.

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

It's all a matter of priority and preference. My point was just that people think nothing of dropping $15 for a movie ticket, a bag of popcorn and a soda, but staunchly refuse to part with the same money to play a MUD, even if they love the game. For a person who enjoys role-playing and virtual existence in general, a good online text RPG seems like a pretty good investment to me.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

I started playing Armageddon 15 years ago when I was a broke-ass teenager. Being free was a major plus to me and remains so today.

Why pay for a lesser product when Armageddon kicks so much ass for free?

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

elysium is a free mud , you should look into it :D we'd love to have you

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

I completely agree with you. That one night of fun costs more than the month subscription. When I first started playing Avalon: The Legend Lives it was pay by the hour (19 years ago) Then it moved to monthly subscription but is now finally free to play. Pay by the hour was insane but I never though a thing about it back then when I was pumping my credit card number in :)

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

The problem with giving money to a MUD is that there's so many moving parts in MUD gaming compared to going out to see a movie. At least with a movie, if it's a bad movie it's all over in 90 minutes or so; you only lost that amount of time and $5-8 dollars (no one buys movie theater food, it's way too ridiculous). You don't know how stuck up the MUD admins are, or how entrenched the cliques are, or how long you're going to stay with the game after you realize that it has no clothes. Offering optional premium features is one thing, but demanding up front fifty dollars to have full access to the game is outrageous.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Most pay games I've ever played give you the first month or so free. I'm sure there are plenty that don't, but they should. $50 these days is pretty outrageous; I'll agree with you there. But if you get a 30-day trial and the cost per month is reasonable ($10-$15), I don't see why it's difficult to determine whether or not you like a game before you invest much at all. You can quit any time. Now, not all games are worth paying for, but a professionally engineered and run text RPG is, at least to me.

Lots and lots and lots of people buy theater food, by the way.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Comparing a mud to a movie is pointless. I can watch a movie for free on my computer or TV, without ever leaving my home. It's built into my internet and TV package with Xfinity. I might have to wait for a first-run to become a third-run, but that is how I can afford it, and so that's how I do it. I haven't sat in a movie theatre in around 15 years and don't plan on going any time soon.

Dinner out - no comparison. I have to pay for food whether I eat it out of the house or in the house, because I don't own a farm and grow/raise my own.

Vacation: I spend a lot of vacation, but it's a special treat that I can't just up and do whenever I have spare time. It's something that has to be scheduled, I have to take a week off from work, make arrangements for hotel/ship/air/excursions, etc. etc. And something like that is once a year, if that. The last time we actually went on vacation away from the house was three years ago. So that can't be compared to a mud.

I used to pay for muds, back in the day when I had no idea they existed outside the handful available on Prodigy/AOL/CompuServ/GEnie. At one point they were free with online subscription, at another point you had to pay per hour. But then I realized most muds are free. Only a very small handful charge for the privilege. I also realized by playing both pay and no-pay games, that the sheer variety of no-pay games gives you a better shot at finding a better game than the pay-games you thought were the only ones in existence.

Considering my personal likes and dislikes, I can say there are no pay-games worth me paying for. I signed back up for Gemstone because they started letting people play (limited) for free. I wandered around looking for just a smidgen of roleplay (I had low expectations) and found none (the game couldn't even meet my low expectations). They put more work into their fancy web-based front end than they did in the quality of the roleplay.

I played New Worlds for a couple of days (it's free to start playing, there are costs involved at some point down the line). There was nothing about it that made me think "woah this is totally worth paying for." I encountered three people the entire 5 hours I played (an hour here and there, different times of day, making sure to spend some of each visit in the main area of congregation). I left wondering what the point of the game was, and didn't bother going back to find out.

I played Inferno when it was free and when they charged and in fact I was one of the builders for it. It was a better game when it was free. It was more fun to build when I wasn't pressured to give players their money's worth, and it was more fun to play when I knew the staff was doing their jobs because it was fun, not because they had to generate income for the game.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

@Jaz:

You and I have been going around about this stuff for long enough that I think we both know how this will go, so I'm just gonna say this:

Everybody has preferences and priorities, and within the law of the land, what people choose to do with their disposable income is never wrong. My only point is that I don't get peoples' staunch unwillingness to pay for a text game even though they love it. I can understand not wanting to fund someone's hobby. But if a game is well-engineered, professionally administrated and you enjoy it, isn't it worth paying for?

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Quick addendum:

I think willingness to pay for quality text games would only increase the willingness for developers to put time and money into building quality text games, and that could only be good for the genre and those of us who love it.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Therein lies the rub, Mal. Quality is subjective. I don't think anything Simutronics puts out is a "quality" text game. Inferno was quality. Armageddon is quality. LoFP was quality. To me, GS is like - the Burger King of text games. It sucks, but it's a convenience for cheap, because you don't really have to invest much of yourself into it. So you can "win" the game by buying and selling items and characters for real money, and if you learn to script efficiently and multiplay, you can even come out ahead a few bucks at the end of the month. It's a trading card game. There's nothing quality about it.

If paying for a game is all you need to qualify as "quality" then I'm glad to be playing an inferior game, and hope that inferior games never go out of style.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

I agree with the general sentiment, but can't help to point out that it's a chicken-and-egg situation, and both the chicken and the egg have moved on. As in, it's a tad bit late in history to expect excited crowds to gather around a text-based game, even if it's awesome, professionally run, and totally free.

I'm of the opinion that if popular MUD codebases in the late 90's had more permissive licenses, with clear provisions for commercial use, the community would have been able to retain more members longer. The two well-known commercial operations remain in a fairly good shape, while the thousands of free MUDs have been more than decimated, with only a handful having anything near a healthy playerbase.

With very few exceptions, the admins and devs of free MUDs have neither the resources, nor the desire, to go after new players.

I'm absolutely convinced that there are people out there who have never heard of a MUD or played one, but who would pay a good amount of money to experience depth they have not imagined before. The question is, how do you reach those people and get them to stick around long enough to realize this is possible?

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

I haven't played a Simutronics game in a REALLY long time, so I can't comment there. I wasn't talking about them or anyone else specifically anyway. You and I obviously look at the "goodness" of a game very differently. I love good RP, but as a designer/programmer/developer, I see beauty in great gameplay and clean mechanics as well. LoFP and Inferno both had role-play in spades, but mechanically, both were rather bland. I don't think Gemstone has never been mistaken for a hot bed of RP, but at least in it's pre-AOL days, its mechanics were clean and the gameplay was pretty darn exceptional (in large part because it was based on RM).

(I think if Jon had paid more attention to Legends, it could have been as big or bigger than GS. Oh well.)

My point isn't that paying for a game makes it better, though from a resource, knowledge and sheer manpower standpoint, I do think a software shop is more capable of producing great mechanics than a part-time hobbyist, and professionals are more likely to get interested if there's money involved. I don't think anyone will debate that professional designers and coders will produce better software than kids in their dorm rooms. My point was and is, I don't understand peoples' reluctance to support a text game monetarily, even if they love it. That's all.

@plamzi:

Nobody is going to pay for text anymore. This I know. Its time has unfortunately come and gone. I just think that if all the people who have loved MUDs over the decades had been willing to show it with their wallets, we may not be having this discussion.

Without a doubt. I think the biggest issue is retention. The problem there is that we've become a society based on instant gratification; if we have to do much more than point and click, we're moving on. I bet there is a sizable segment of the gamer population that can't even tell you what "RPG" stands for, and a heck of a lot more of them who have no idea what it really means. From my experience, it's easy to get these folks to come take a look. It's nigh impossible to get them to stay. I think it comes down to involving them instantly in stories, showing them what role-play is and demonstrating the difference between what can be done with a typed four-word command and the barrage of mouse clicks they're so used to. Unfortunately, that's a lot easier said than done.

IMHO, the real downfall of MUDs began with instant messaging. Our games used to be places where people could congregate in their free time and socialize with friends around the world. These days, socialization happens among people anywhere and everywhere in about 100 different ways, instantly, 24/7.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Um, have you considered simultaneous MUDding with your friends - I've not done it but I understand that some MUDs are amiable to LAN parties and it sure as hell beats having a background Skype or other back channel to coordinate your actions - though typically you do have to play on the same side. One of the perks of text based things such as MUDs is that the bandwidth is not excessive and can usually be shared between players without problems - just be sure to check in advance what the arrangements are when multiple players appear to be coming from the same IP address, otherwise some MUDs will do nasty things to characters that appear to be multi-playing...!

Of course this also has the potential as a way to introduce others that you know to the joy of your particular MUD!

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

Now thats an interesting idea! I know that on my MUD, some players have shown FluxWorld to their friends while visiting, but I never even considered LAN parties. Nice!

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

You've answered your own question in part already: its time has come and gone, for people to pay for text.

But a HUGE part of it - is that MOST of the MUDs out there use code made by others and the licensing requires the game to not gain any revenue. DIKU and LPMud and CircleMUD all require that the game owner NOT charge players.

So the reason they can't pay, is because they're not allowed to pay. Beyond the server costs (which they can recoup by charging for fan-products like game logo coffee mugs or mousepads, for example), the coders and staff are not *allowed* to get paid from game revenue. Now, if the head admin is wealthy and wants to pay his head coder out of pocket, that's fine. As long as the players don't have to foot the bill.

This is true for -most- text games out there, because -most- text games out there are some variation of Diku, Circle, or LPMud. There are other main game codes out there that are required to be strictly hobbyist use only (meaning - you can't charge your players, and the staff can't be paid from any game revenue). But those are the big three, and they're pretty big.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

I actually agree here, but I don't agree that it's impossible to create a focused professional text-based RPG nowadays. Challenging, yes. You have to basically build your own engine out of something without the restrictive licenses of the big, creaky engines. In some ways, this is a good thing: starting from scratch allows you to take your experiences as a developer and improve on the way text-based RPGs are played.

There are, and always have been, quality free-to-play MUDs. There are, and always have been, lower quality professional MUDs. If you are capable of marketing intelligently (finding a way to not only reach your target player-base in the current community but beyond the current community), executing professional level design and programming, developing a rich and interactive world that redefines the MUDing experience, spend your time actively engaging players in immersive story and plot that exceeds what free games can offer due to their voluntary basis (which is the major factor behind the burn-out of proactive administration), keep your paid staff at a supportable number, find a means to make use of volunteers on a short-term and fair basis to fill in some of your administrative needs, and create a fair and viable monetization system for your project, I absolutely believe that you can create a professional MUD.

It's just a lot to consider, and (like all professional projects) is going to require some start-up capital and the right team of people. It wouldn't be easy, but it is possible.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

I agree with almost every word of your post and wouldn't mind at all trying to prove just how right you are.

I'm a designer and coder, and I have time and capital to invest. I would love to find a few like-minded people interested in and motivated to build a professional text RPG, though I'm not interested in making money from it.

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

In case you guys are not just shooting the breeze, here's one of my projects in progress:

Re: Taking another look at some MUDs
 

I like the look of the GUI. Seems like you're making some progress!

I'm currently working on a professional "RPI" that we're building from scratch with the Evennia engine. You can read more about it in my article on Optional Realities (), and on the Article Discussion / Project Redshift sub-forums on our Optional Realities site. That's mostly why I chimed in here; I absolutely think that it's possible to create a viable professional text-based RPG. Step One, though, is moving away from the old standard engines and being willing to invest in creating it all from scratch.