Thread: Hello
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Old 12-13-2012, 10:19 AM   #13
SnowTroll
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 183
SnowTroll will become famous soon enough
Re: Hello

Here's the thing. Your mud, and most muds for that matter, are very, very limited games. There are three kinds of content: 1) the things the game is programmed to allow people to do, which include the standard acquisition of money, items, and experience points, and the ability to chat/emote with others and at times, engage in player killing; 2) special content and events a mud administrator creates and runs on occasion; 3) "player-run special events."

You've always placed a huge amount of emphasis on #3, as have most of your players, when really, #3 is just a very minor extension of #1. In your mud, for example, you do #3 by doing a whole lot of #1 to get whatever money, items, or experience points you need, then setting up a #3, which is really just a whole lot more acquisition, chat/emote, and/or player killing that's just colored slightly differently but is still the exact same content. For example, "Enter a poetry contest about why my religion is awesome and win this incredible piece of armor! Meet on Saturday at midnight to recite your poem, as everyone else passively listens, nods, reacts, and chats! Cash prizes, too! I did a lot of #1 to get all of this together, so you can do a lot of #1 while you're there, but because we're styling it as a poetry contest and not regular chatting, it's a special event and counts as #3. If the administration is watching and causes some special global text to be output while we're doing it, we can upgrade it to a #2." I'm picking on you a little bit, but this is true of every single RP mud, not just yours.

The one and only thing that makes an RP mud different and better than other muds, and a different experience for its players each day, is the chat/emote of the other players. And the only thing that makes that experience worthwhile is if the other players do something that's more than just ineffectual chatter, that actually forces you to think and react and change. That's a rare find. You can give and give, but if you don't get that back, the game's not much fun.
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