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Old 08-01-2010, 07:59 AM   #50
Parhelion
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Name: Sarah
Location: Tempe, AZ
Home MUD: Ethos
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Re: The "Health," of Muds

When approaching the debate "Why an MMO and not a MUD?" I do think that graphics play heavily into it.

I spent a year recently almost submerged 'in all thing gaming', and when I polled the people around me as to why they chose to play World of Warcraft over another game, the resounding response was "It's pretty!!!" Not, "It's fun to play" or "The mechanics are great," but, "It's pretty!!!" This became even more prevalent in casual gamers - they liked shiny things that they could click or point at.

When it comes right down to it, I think MUDs take more energy and effort to play and do not offer the same sort of instant gratification that our graphical competitors can provide. To get into a MUD, you have to go through this huge process of typing up a bunch of information (name, email, etc) and reading all sorts of details. (( You may laugh, but to a player used to graphics, or maybe just an impatient one, these are real issues. )) You can often get spammed to death at login with MOTDs and other "read this!" messages. Killing a monster often isn't simply an issue of clicking on it, but rather a complicated series of commands of "e,e,n,hit monster" - and God forbid the thing runs away from you! And even when it's dead, you still have to LOOK at it, read through its inventory, "GET" everything you want (sometimes individually!), and then "sac" it. Of course, if you're on any of the larger roleplaying MUDs, the above scenario is even more complicated.

Then, of course, there is Wall-of-Text Syndrome. Most standard MUD clients do not provide a whole lot of support to combat this. We're keeping our games afloat in an evolving virtual world where the culture has come to frown down upon endless streams of words.


All of that said, I do not think that a custom graphical client, or even more complex clients, are going to give us the "oomph" we need to attract a lot of new players. They will, however, be useful in KEEPING new players and improving our image as a genre.
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