[Orrin]

I remember using something like this once but I can't remember the name - it had a GUI where you could create rooms and place mobs and script behaviours etc., as well as create skills and spells, along the lines of RPG Maker or Eclipse type engines. The problem with these things I think is that it's very hard to remove the need for programming without making it so all the games end up looking the same.

Besides, I don't think it's a lack of tools that is holding back new mud development, if anything people seem to be far more interested in developing tools than they are muds - just witness the numbers of half finished code bases that keep popping up in various languages - at one time it was ruby or python or lua, now it's node and javascript etc.

I think the real disincentive to new game development is that it's a lot of hard work to put together a good playable game, as much in content creation as in programming, and that there's really not much of a pay-off at the end. A lot of programmers enjoy tinkering with new codebases and features and it doesn't matter to them if the game never opens, but there don't seem to be as many writers willing to spend hundreds of hours creating an original world that the chances are very few people will play.

Where new games can be successful I think is when they already have an established audience either from a familiar IP or a feature set that appeals to existing mudders (eg. RPI).