I think Hephos has the comment that makes the most sense to me, though it is the most frustrating as well. When you have a MUD that is focused mostly on RP, how do you keep people sufficiently interested when..well when there's not so many people around to RP with? That's the bread and butter, that's the spice. People don't really always say why they came to our MUD other than "I found it on Mudconnector," or "A friend told me," but they say they stay for a few things, like the RP, but it's one of the more frustrating things for them too. I feel like I'm trying to play a very tight balancing act between pushing it to total RP and alienating 90% of all people who ever login, and letting it go too soft and alienating some of the die-hards.
I mean...socialization, we've structured it code and rulewise so you pretty much have to interact with other players to really amount to very much. It's possible to do it without, but it's very hard.
Oh, and Erdos? Yeah, I know the name appears there, but I found the inspiration from R.A. Salvatore's book series.
|