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It's not really fair to dismiss the desires of some MUDers because you don't think much of their preferences. By that logic, all text MUDs can be dismissed out of hand given their extreme unpopularity in the wider MUD/MMO world.
Well, no, that's not the only impact. Other impacts include things like gold drains on the economy (if you have to buy food or torches) and increased immersion for some players. You might decide that, in aggregate, more players are being annoyed by this than are being helped, but then, that's just a function of your playerbase. The same logic you're using there would say that all RPIs are just nuisances, since they represent one of the most extreme forms of using virtual worlds (and appeal to very few people compared to virtual worlds based on, say, monster bashing).
To say that food, drink, and light have no value is a bit narrow-minded, with all due respect. As a player, for instance, I always enjoyed having food and drink available and feeling like the game required me to eat. It increased my immersion without rising to the point of irritation. That ideal cost/benefit analysis point is going to be different for nearly every player. What might be overcomplicated to you may be ideal to someone else, and vice versa.
Whether they have an effect on gameplay is worth considering, but gameplay is merely one aspect of participation in a virtual world. I guarantee you there are people out there that enjoy that particular setup. Given the # of people playing virtual worlds, virtually any design decision is going to be appreciated by some players, just like there are people out there who are turned on sexually by almost anything you or I can think of, and a whole bunch of things we can't. It then merely comes down to whom you're trying to appeal to.
Sure, it's oversimplified for you, but your preferences are just that: your preferences. I mean, just about everyone would tend to say that they prefer being able to communicate verbally to not being able to communicate verbally with people. And yet, there is Age of Reptiles, with, at most, a handful of players, and without the ability to use 'say'. For virtually all virtual worlds, including probably theirs (as much as I respect them for doing it), this decision is death. And yet, I know I went there and tried it out specifically because of that feature that would be beyond annoying to 99.999% of virtual world users.
There's more out there in terms of human preference than any of us can really encompass or understand. It's too easy to dismiss what we don't like as 'wrong' and I think it's a tendency to be avoided in the names of both innovation and general acceptance of diversity.
--matt
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