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MikeRozak · 10-24-2008, 10:42 PM

Your question inevitably raises the issue of eye candy...

Looking at shows a "peak concurrent users" of 9000-ish for known muds (as known by mudstats). I assume they missed some; maybe the peak concurrent users is 14,000. For a popular pay-for-play MMORPG, you'd multiply this by around 5 to determine the number of paying players. For MMORPGs (and MUDs), multiply about 10x.

Thus there are around 140K MUD players (+/- 40K?). IMHO, this number has been steadily shrinking. (The shrinking part is open to debate, as per other threads)

If you make a text MUD, you'll never get any more than 140K players.

Actually, you'd never get more (paying players) than the total number of players in Iron Realms and Simutronics combined (about 1800 peak, x 10 = 18,000 players) since they're the only two commercial text MUDs companies surviving.

And you'll only get 18,000 players if you manage to make infinitely better products than them (and also better than all the free text MUDs.)

Conversely, MMORPGs (see ) have 16 million active subscriptions, NOT counting the non-paying players on "free-to-play" MMOs like Runescape. Lets say 30 million total MMORPG players worldwide.

That 30 million is most definitely growing (see mmogchart), while text MUDs are either holding their own or shrinking. Even if text MUDs were growing (which some people have proposed), they're NOT growing at the 20%-30% annual rate that MMORPGs are. (Even Simutronics and IRE are making their own MMORPGs now.)

So, to make a new commericial text MUD is (a) challenging because of the dominance of Simutronics and IRE, (b) limiting yourself to 18K max players, and (b) entering a shrinking market.

The reason why more people (30M vs. 140K) play MMORPGs than text MUDs? EYE CANDY! They certainly aren't playing for better and more-creative gameplay!

Having said that, I am writing a commercial "MUD" (kind-of). It uses a lot of graphics, audio, and text-to-speech, but not as much eye candy as a full MMORPG. The problem with a MMORPG heavily-laden with eye candy is that writing one is a huge amount of work.

10-24-2008, 10:42 PM	#2
MikeRozak Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 48	Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs Your question inevitably raises the issue of eye candy... Looking at shows a "peak concurrent users" of 9000-ish for known muds (as known by mudstats). I assume they missed some; maybe the peak concurrent users is 14,000. For a popular pay-for-play MMORPG, you'd multiply this by around 5 to determine the number of paying players. For MMORPGs (and MUDs), multiply about 10x. Thus there are around 140K MUD players (+/- 40K?). IMHO, this number has been steadily shrinking. (The shrinking part is open to debate, as per other threads) If you make a text MUD, you'll never get any more than 140K players. Actually, you'd never get more (paying players) than the total number of players in Iron Realms and Simutronics combined (about 1800 peak, x 10 = 18,000 players) since they're the only two commercial text MUDs companies surviving. And you'll only get 18,000 players if you manage to make infinitely better products than them (and also better than all the free text MUDs.) Conversely, MMORPGs (see ) have 16 million active subscriptions, NOT counting the non-paying players on "free-to-play" MMOs like Runescape. Lets say 30 million total MMORPG players worldwide. That 30 million is most definitely growing (see mmogchart), while text MUDs are either holding their own or shrinking. Even if text MUDs were growing (which some people have proposed), they're NOT growing at the 20%-30% annual rate that MMORPGs are. (Even Simutronics and IRE are making their own MMORPGs now.) So, to make a new commericial text MUD is (a) challenging because of the dominance of Simutronics and IRE, (b) limiting yourself to 18K max players, and (b) entering a shrinking market. The reason why more people (30M vs. 140K) play MMORPGs than text MUDs? EYE CANDY! They certainly aren't playing for better and more-creative gameplay! Having said that, I am writing a commercial "MUD" (kind-of). It uses a lot of graphics, audio, and text-to-speech, but not as much eye candy as a full MMORPG. The problem with a MMORPG heavily-laden with eye candy is that writing one is a huge amount of work.