[MikeRozak]

Which is my point about paradigm shifts that I didn't get to.

I suspect lots of people here have some of the same issues that I do. There are certainly enough posts on topmudsites and mudconnect talking about clients, attracting new players, etc.

However, the reason that companies don't survive paradigm shifts is because they refuse to make/see hard decisions. Often, they can't switch to the new technology because that will upset their existing customers. (As per IBM and PCs/Dos/Windows paradigm shift.)

The "facts" are:

- "Everyone" knows a better client would be a win.

- But no one has written it. It's a lot of work. (I know, since I've written a better client.) There are dozens-to-hundreds of attempts, but none have hit the mark. Or, those that have come close charge money (because it's a lot of work). Or there are other problems, like it only runs on Windows.

- And, MUD players have a proud tradition of being able to play with whatever client they want. If one client were to come out that was perfect, admins would need to convince all their players to use it, which wouldn't be possible.

- And, even if the perfect MUD client were written and admins could convince all their players to use it, it's basically impossible to convert a huge 20K-room MUD to use the new client. There's way too much code/content to fix.

- In addition, there's the "making the gameplay simpler to attract newbies" issue because that will probably lead to losing some long-time players who will complain that the game is too simple.

As a result, there are half measures like the BatMud client. But (IMHO) they aren't sufficient.