[plamzi]

Dentin,

How many of your new players would you say are people who have never played a MUD before? If your playerbase is slowly growing primarily by converting existing mudders away from other games, then someone somewhere is losing players, and the niche is not growing.

Also, I'm curious if you do any promotional activities to reach non-mudders and if so, how successful these efforts are in your opinion.

I have a playerbase that is 60-70% players who had never played a MUD before. And in the 2 1/2 years of our existence, the game has reached over 40,000 people, very few of whom knew what a MUD was before they fired our mobile or our web GUI. Most of my efforts have been focused on making the MUD as accessible and appealing as it can be to a new, visual MMO generation of very casual players.

Even so, the conversion rate is wildly different between people who have played a MUD before and people who haven't. The gulf is far deeper than what can be bridged by making a better tutorial, or setting a clear goal in the first 15 min. of play, or having readily available and extensive help files, or helping new players navigate the world easily via maps and auto-maps (we have all these things).

Here's a brief snapshot: More than 90% of mobile players quit when they don't see a familiar 2D-scroller or 3D UI. Then some quit because they don't like to read, or can't read that fast. Then some quit because the ways to interact with the game world are numerous compared to any MMO. Then some quit because the world is truly open as opposed to herding them from one simple "quest" to another by cleverly positioned obstacles.

I think that most MUD devs have forgotten by now what it's like to try and convert a person who has never played a MUD before. In 2012, it is very very difficult. That was my point.