Happily, your opinion is irrelevant. Our muds are some of the most popular
around and we're respected in the games industry at large for the simple
reason that we provide entertainment people want at prices they're willing
to pay.

And 80k a year? Please. We have 5 full-time employees at the moment
making competitive developer salaries. At 80k a year we'd be quickly bankrupt.

--matt

On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Soljax wrote:
(I removed this because it was pretty flamey)

Simutronics Inc. is a multi-million dollar gaming corporation. They deal exclusively with text games using their own unique scripting engine and game code. They're currently working on a graphics game, but that one's been tabled on and off for several years and who knows when it'll manage to get off the ground.

I haven't checked out Matt's company, but a simple google search should get you whatever answers you desire.

There are several commercial gaming companies online, and remember most of them were inspired by a few of the original text-games, which were single-player games. The most famous is Zork, created by another commercial enterprise called Infocom.

If anyone hasn't heard of Infocom, I'm going to cry.

It's highly suspect that the "moderators" of TMC which receives revenue from Achaea fealt obliged to repost the origional charity message and lock the thread.

I think that was a bad move by the moderator staff. I was pretty good about removing all "personal" attacks and getting to the meat of the matter.

Money greases the cogs of the world.. Even on our lowly TMS.

If you think this board is so biased, why don't you just go away? You've done nothing but troll for flames for the last few days.

Why don't you send Synoozer some cash to foot the bill for the bandwidth consumed by the massive amount of bull**** you keep on posting, or, if you can't put your money where your mouth is, shut up instead?

If sy wants to censor further, then he can delete my account. I'm just putting up my observation to see if anyone is gonna challenge it. I wanna know what's more important. Free forums or Money.

I don't troll for flames, I troll for an intelligent opinions.  The same people who flame are the same people who call me a troll.

Furthermore, I've been real careful about NOT flaming.  If people would have the same curtesy, we'd have no trolls, and no moderators crying about the uncivilizedness of the forums.

Seriously, people, unless his game is somehow able to make more money from the 'advertisement' in their press release about the donation, than the donation itself, which is highly unlikely, then your whining about it will be justified. Until then, accept that what they did is a good thing, and even if they chose to profit a tiny bit (how much players do you really think such a post would give them? maybe a couple max) from it, that does not outweigh their generous donation, and as such, it is a Good Thing™ overall, just accept it.

Having said that, my preference is still with free MUDs, but I have nothing against Pay MUDs, if people are willing to pay money for playing those games, more power to them!

Because you have been so badly and injustly and repeatedly censored so far, haven't you?

So unfair, after all this persecution you got on any single MUD you log on to.

If you'd turn off your Calimero complex and started thinking _before_ trolling, you'd perhaps start to realize that those forums _you_ enjoy for free, with an amazing tolerance for the daily load of crap you're serving us since the very moment you joined, actually cost Synoozer quite a bit of money to run. Your posting here is a privilege, not a right, a privilege Synoozer pays for.

So if you think it's somehow wrong for one person to give you this opportunity to express your trolling mind's content at your leisure and covering his expenses, again, stop being a hypocrite and delete your account.

That means you're a trolling flamer who calls himself a troll? Hey, that's even better than when you said you cheated but you didn't cheat.

Ah, because it was the flames who attracted your trolling self to this board, not the vengeful reviews you had to write after getting banned for harassment and / or cheating. Glad it's all sorted out, then.

RE: myrdred23

They will make a great deal of money from this ploy, despite giving 10% of it away.  One of the things that motivates people to pay exhorbant amounts of money on nothing is the idea that it's a donation.

Mr. Mike is a very good businessman.  I know for a fact how he normally sells his product.  

First of all, people want his product. (it makes them gods among mortals)  It's just incredibly expensive and any wise consumer (in the right mind) wouldn't buy it.  To overcome any inhibitions that people may have, he plays on their sense of responsibility: "We need donations to keep the game running".  Oh, well in that case it's perfectly fine to drop a couple grand.  

This time, (around christmas) people are feeling particularily generous.  He pulled out the "do it for the kids" card and played it quite well.  I'm doing him a great service by even talking about it.

I don't have anything against Mr. Mike, I just can recognize shrewd business a mile away.  

RE: Alastair
The only one that isn't contributing to this board, currently, is you.  Instead of vouching for the owners of these forums, why don't you read the policy instead.  You'll find that it's okay to talk about controversial subjects.  What you do, on the otherhand, isn't okay.  

  if you'd like to brush up on your definition of hypocrite.

The above was said by Soljax. This is an example of him not 'have[ing] anything against Mr. Mike' and 'recogniz[ing] shrewd business a mile away. '

Soljax, you have no idea, whatsoever.

You don't know how he sell his products, as your statements of credits making players like 'gods amongst mortals' is unfounded in practice in his games, where skill is more important than the amount of money spent. You're also completely wrong with quoting Matt as saying "We need donations to keep the game running." Iron Realms games are run as businesses. When you purchase credits on their websites, you're not being rewarded for making a donation, you're making a purchase, something that the credit system has always been very specific on.

If you don't like Matt or his muds then thats fine, but if you're going to attempt to slander him like other notable posters around here at least try to give your post some sort of basis in fact.

There is money to be had in doing anything well.

Slander is spoken, I suspect you're thinking of libel. And if anyone were to libel Matt (which they've yet to do as far as I've seen), I'm sure he'd take action against them.

However I wouldn't take anything Soljax says seriously - certainly nobody else does.

aarggg Hells is Freezing over. It have come that far that I must voi ce my oppinions on this constant flamewar going on.

Alastair your nearly as bad as Soljax in flamming. Whenever you see him you speak against him. This is not the way to keep flamming out of thise boards. What he writes stands for itself and we are able to make an oppinion about him ourself. Please jsut ignore him like so many else are.

Soljax if you write a subject I am interrested in and there is a proper tone I will discuss with you.

You're wildly exaggerating.

Sadly enough, the boards seem to be grinding to a silent halt as soon as the flames quiet down. Note that this isn't an endorsement of flamewars, just an observation of mine.

Aside from that, indeed, I tend to let myself get carried away sometimes. Then again, there are certain things which can't remain unanswered. I'd however happily leave other people take turns at it in the future.