Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

Bogre · 01-21-2014, 03:02 PM

This is an interesting issue that definitely has differences among the varying genres of MUDs. For RPIs, of which I'm most familiar with, it seems like there is a lot of dynamic changes currently in the community. Armageddon, for example, has seen steady rises in the number of new player accounts and in continuing players, and the peak player levels are about 10-15 higher when I started playing. (Although- last summer peak player counts were well into the 70s- which is nuts.) On the other hand, two other popular RPI's have closed- Atonement and Shadows of Isildur. Atonement's new permutation Parallel saw a great deal of early popularity but that has seemed to drop off somewhat. SoI seems to be in a perpetual sort of beta. Harshworlds, on the other hand, which I never used to see about 5-10 players online, seems to be doing 15-20 nowadays, so you have other muds picking up the slack.

The genre also has some exciting things going on- new MUDs (Black Sands, Parallel, SoI's Reboot), while not common, are still being developed. There is also the considerable excitement building around the development of the FutureMUD engine, which is being designed to bring a lot of awesome into RPI code bases.

If other genres are perceiving a fall-off, it may be due to a couple of reasons. One, there is not a lot of opportunity for RP to the immersion point that a MUD or MUSH can give, so RPI's and the RPEs may be feeling this a lot less than the H&S muds which have to compete with games that have huge graphical advantages. The difference in the '
golden ladder' is also present. In RPI's, specifically, player-character power is usually linked to specific characters that have a tendency in perm-death games to roll over. You also don't have to have a max-level character to have fun in an RPI, and you can get involved almost from the get-go with a new character, whereas in H&S muds you generally need to grind up to a certain level to be competitive with other chars.

There can be a golden ladder in that some of the RPIs, long-lived characters are quite powerful and entrenched in power positions, and new players and new characters can feel somewhat powerless if one of those chars is being an arse. There are also karma trees, in which experienced and trusted players get access to the rarer guilds and races.

01-21-2014, 03:02 PM	#3
Bogre New Member Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 23	Re: Golden Ladders and Playerbases This is an interesting issue that definitely has differences among the varying genres of MUDs. For RPIs, of which I'm most familiar with, it seems like there is a lot of dynamic changes currently in the community. Armageddon, for example, has seen steady rises in the number of new player accounts and in continuing players, and the peak player levels are about 10-15 higher when I started playing. (Although- last summer peak player counts were well into the 70s- which is nuts.) On the other hand, two other popular RPI's have closed- Atonement and Shadows of Isildur. Atonement's new permutation Parallel saw a great deal of early popularity but that has seemed to drop off somewhat. SoI seems to be in a perpetual sort of beta. Harshworlds, on the other hand, which I never used to see about 5-10 players online, seems to be doing 15-20 nowadays, so you have other muds picking up the slack. The genre also has some exciting things going on- new MUDs (Black Sands, Parallel, SoI's Reboot), while not common, are still being developed. There is also the considerable excitement building around the development of the FutureMUD engine, which is being designed to bring a lot of awesome into RPI code bases. If other genres are perceiving a fall-off, it may be due to a couple of reasons. One, there is not a lot of opportunity for RP to the immersion point that a MUD or MUSH can give, so RPI's and the RPEs may be feeling this a lot less than the H&S muds which have to compete with games that have huge graphical advantages. The difference in the ' golden ladder' is also present. In RPI's, specifically, player-character power is usually linked to specific characters that have a tendency in perm-death games to roll over. You also don't have to have a max-level character to have fun in an RPI, and you can get involved almost from the get-go with a new character, whereas in H&S muds you generally need to grind up to a certain level to be competitive with other chars. There can be a golden ladder in that some of the RPIs, long-lived characters are quite powerful and entrenched in power positions, and new players and new characters can feel somewhat powerless if one of those chars is being an arse. There are also karma trees, in which experienced and trusted players get access to the rarer guilds and races.