Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
No, I haven't either, but I do think that in order to do away with the wall of text, you have to simplify the game to the point that the content and system-creation advantages you get from a primarily text game, or at least you have to change it enough that it may look more like a deep strategy game than a MUD. One of the reasons MUDs are still around is because of the breadth of things they offer as much as the depth, and it is very expensive to develop graphical interfaces, of which you need many to accomplish the kind of range of things a MUD can.
Again, that's not at all opining that it can't be done - it's just an increased up-front burden which means a lot more risk.
Apologies for not knowing more about your example, but when you say you've spent 0 dollars and 0 cents promoting it, that's the case with most apps. If you've seen success while spending nothing to acquire users, that's awesome and you should double-down on whatever you think is causing your app to act virally.
Yeah, we had that in Earth Eternal too, but that kind of feature is purely a convenience thing - it won't help you attract and hook users. It's a commodity function, not a attraction-feature.
What you describe isn't short session gaming though. Short-session gaming would be something like including a match-three game that they can play on their phone or Facebook to earn currency in the main MMO. Just checking info won't move your needle at all. You can read the news, check messages, send messages, etc both on our website and with a chrome plugin, and that's great, but it's not a needle-mover if you see what I mean. It's peripheral to their interest, not the focus of their interest.
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