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You do not pay money to be listed here. You pay in traffic.
TMS is a traffic exchange site. I honestly do not understand why so many people refuse to understand and accept this.
So payment is in the form of the traffic you send.
The popular games send the overwhelming majority of the traffic to the site. Why should games that "pay" virtually nothing to be listed here (they send very little traffic) get a special list where they appear more prominently? That doesn't sound fair by any stretch of the imagination.
MUDs that send little traffic (and get less votes, and are lower in the rankings) already benefit inordinately. They send almost no traffic, but they benefit from the fact that every person who visits the site might see their game, or might go looking for a new game simply by being exposed to the list.
The example Matt gave earlier about WoW helps illustrate this. Would anyone here really care if WoW seized the top spot with 90 gazillion votes, bumping everyone down one notch? Think of all those players they'd be sending here to TMS to at least SEE that there are other games out there, and possibly give one of them a shot. Personally, I'd be THRILLED if WoW would join the list and send their millions of players here to vote. I played WoW, and I know there are a lot of people there are who only marginally satisfied, and would jump at the chance to try something new- something that might actually fit their tastes better.
When you understand and accept that the TMS list/front page is a traffic exchange, you can easily and quickly see why separate lists, or annoyances like typing in letter codes are not things that promote TRAFFIC. A traffic exchange that does not promote traffic is not doing its job.
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