[Lasher]

(Not directed at NewWorlds, just responding to his quote)


It's hard to do this without starting some kind of holy war, but in the interests of community building and bringing more people into MUDs, RPMuds could do with taking a serious look at how they treat people who obviously don't want to roleplay.

We often get a lot of people on Aardwolf asking about roleplay. We tell them that some clans do some roleplaying and there is a channel/forum for it, but roleplay is not an integral part of the MUD. We also tell them that there are many fine MUDs out there that do focus on roleplay and direct them here, TMC, etc. There is no implication of what is right or better, just differences in style.

It has been a while since I did this, but I used to hang out on RPMuds from time to time. Newbies who appeared new to MUDs and were probably looking for a more hack and slash environment were often derided and looked down on. Either that or they were told to learn to roleplay and they'd like it eventually. No idea what happened to those folks, but if they were new to MUDs they might not be aware of the huge range in styles of MUD, decided it wasn't what they wanted, and gone back to WoW or whatever. The same applies to "Hardcore PK" vs non-PK.

If we get a new player on our MUDs who is clearly not going to be a good fit for the style, instead of ridiculing them let's direct them to a place they can find a mud they do like. Nobody loses, it keeps them in the niche and as tastes change over time, they may just find your own MUD a better fit in the future.