[Suicide Boy]

I don't have much to say regarding extremely early attraction of brand-new players.

However, I've noticed several issues — specifically in IRE MUDs, but I'm sure they could crop up anywhere — which nevertheless effect the retention of these brand-new players far more so than retention of new (but experienced) MUDders. That's because experienced MUDders are wise enough not to be put off by what I'm about to outline.



The first problem I've noticed is simply that two of IRE's MUDs have far too many player guilds and/or organizations (cities, etc.) available. Lusternia has 24 guilds (soon to be 26), to serve a player base that averages approximately 80 people online at any given time. That's an average three online players per guild at any given time, but naturally, some guilds are more popular than others. Thus, the least popular guilds are completely empty during the quiet hours, almost empty during off-peak times, and maybe see a bit of activity during peak times. Even the more popular guilds are spread rather thin, no matter the time of day.

Imperian also has a lot of guilds (26), and its player base is actually 12% smaller than Lusternia's. The same difficulties outlined above apply to it, too.

This is a problem because guilds aren't just a character class in IRE MUDs. They're a critical and essential part of gameplay, and having active members within your guild is important. You get a brand-new player in one of these deserted guilds, and they may quit on you because of it... if not immediately, perhaps later.

The solution is fairly simple: Bite the bullet and downsize these games to properly fit the player base. Having an oversized set of guilds doesn't help the MUD grow, instead hindering it by spreading players too thinly.



Another significant problem I've seen in IRE MUDs is private OOC clans and equivalents. It's probably far too late to get rid of these, as doing so would anger older players, but I feel that they're detrimental to the MUDs.

While OOC clans look good on paper, they turn quite a few people (and groups of people) into great swatches of silence that brand-new players don't understand. The newbies don't realize why people are so (relatively) quiet on IC channels or at places where players tend to congregate.

In Lusternia, for example, I have stood at my organization's nexus (major congregation area) to observe the SAYS in that room, the org's main channel, my guild's main channel, all of the org's various sub-channels, and the newbie channel.

Complete silence can reign for minutes at a stretch (longer during quiet hours, shorter during peak hours).

As well, keep in mind that these two issues actually compound and reinforce each other. Having a ton of guilds and/or too many orgs means even fewer people on the various chat channels.



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Well, that's all I've got for now, though I can't help feeling I forgot one more item. I hope these constructive criticisms are least give you some food for thought.