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Old 05-26-2003, 04:27 AM   #5
Molly
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
Home MUD: 4 Dimensions
Posts: 574
Molly will become famous soon enoughMolly will become famous soon enough
I think this is vastly a question on what type of mud you run. If your mud is very intense on RP, small is better, since you may have got rid of the global channels and you want the players to have a chance of finding each other. So a very large world would be contraproductive here.

If you are more set on exploring, hunting, fighting and doing Quests; big is better. The same goes for if you are set on creating a 'REALISTIC' world, where the geography and ecology at least has some credibility, even if they are under different laws of nature than the Real World.

As for depth, this is equally important for all types of muds, but it would probably be a waste of effort to make ALL rooms totally fleshed out with extra descs for everything, because it is a fact that most players - roleplayers OR hack'n'slashers -never bother to even look for those descs. Also many rooms are more or less just transport areas, leading from one place to another. The rooms you need to concentrate on are the 'meeting places' and other places where players tend to stay for longer periods, i.e. cities in general, and inns, squares, marketplaces, castles etc. in particular.

I think Illuvatar and I run pretty similar types of muds, since we usually seem to agree on ideas. We too are aiming at having a very large and consistent world. And we are constantly expanding it, with a large, talented and dedicated staff of Builders. Actually having good Builders seems to attract more good Builders, and then they inspire and try to surpass each other, so it's a nice spiral.

As for the players, they always get very excited when a new zone is announced, and more or less trample each other down in their eagerness to be the first one to explore it fully.
After that first rush, some of the zones retain their popularity among the players, while others more or less sink into oblivion...
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