[rosareven]

Hello lovely replied people,

Lawks! So many replies to catch up on! First and foremost, thank you all so, so much for keeping the chat respectfully hate-free and honest. I was hoping for this flammable topic to be approached peacefully someday and so far it has been. Therefore hugs for all of you.

I overestimated my ability to type up a long winded reply on a mobile device so I will update this post shortly with my full reply. Till then, thank you all again for the lovely replies!

UPDATE

I pretty much agree to what all of you have said here, and my feelings out of this discussion is, quite precisely, summed up by New World's reply "you are the leading player in any roleplaying game and the direction, quality, and environment is created mostly by you and your choices".

After reading all of your responses I have come to realise that, while it is a fact that active, hardcore players are what drive the muds forward, to me that is quite a sad truth that which I don't wish it'd come to, but unfortunately for me that is "how things work" and I have to accept it. I definitely fully agree that a successful mud requires more than one or two of these hardcore players to keep the virtual world running, other wise not even a casual will have fun in it. And having seen this fact being evident in all the well populated, highly reputable (not to me, but according to the measurable popularity) muds, I shall conclude to myself that there is not going to be any muds like what I asked for in my opening post, and rightfully so.

That being said though, I'm not quitting RP muds, no way! That just means that I'm going to accept the above fact, and I shall continue to lurk various muds that I come across as I please. While I cannot devote myself to be a hardcore player, I can take the joy of being a casual lurker, jumping among different muds as my mood sees fit (all the mud clients are made with the capability for you to keep track of different muds that you play, after all). I'll have to bear the consequence of not being able to call any particular mud my "home", nor will I excel in anything in any mud since I'll spend too much time just to catch up things. But I think I have now come to accept the reality that there really isn't going to be any mud that I was asking for, because that kind of casual focused mud just won't work. We need hardcore players to keep the muds rolling.

Odd Raven and Ghostcat, thank you for nominating your muds which I haven't heard of before, as now I'll have two more to add to my list of fun! Newworlds, you probably won't know it but I did gave your mud several tries before. I kept returning to New Worlds like crack, and then something would, for whatever reason, made me drop the ball and leave quietly. While I cannot put into words exactly what made me keep leaving New Worlds repeatedly, I can assure you that my reason is mainly due to my personal preference, and I hope you take the fact that I did repeatedly come back as a compliment, and a sign or implication that your mud is indeed well done and appease me in some way anyway. That being said, you can mostly certainly expect me to return as a lurker no-body again XD

SnowTroll, Will and shevegan, thank you very much for stating your honest yet flame-proof opinions. You guys raised concerns and observations that I too have noticed, but which I have been uncertain about whether if it's natural or unnatural. Things like the necessity of hardcore, devoted "full time" players, the trade off of PvP and PvE designs, definitions of "reward" in "rewarding RP" etc, all those things really could be interpreted differently in so many ways, and it eventually comes down to the players of how they want it to be and, on the other end, how the admins want it to be as they set up the actual game itself.

There's also the worry of trust and maturity that I came across in any RP environment, especially those with PvP enabled. It's really hard to trust that someone is mature enough to consider a RP with a victim player involved being a justified situation (most common scenario being PK), and equally hard to trust that the victims aren't trying to get away from the punishments that they deserve when they are the receiving end of a victimised RP. The difficulty of balancing that alone is also part of the reason why I feel like giving up enforced/hardcore RP altogether, not because everyone I've ran into are jerks, but just because the nature of these things are too difficult to manage. Everyone could be right, and everyone could be wrong.

Before-I-Forgot Update

I almost forgot to mention what I'm up to now since I started this thread! I've been mainly occupied by Lensmoor, a mud that is only partially RP enforced (certain aspects of the game play such as religion, special quests etc, and PvP policy is favoured towards the protection of non-pvpers as long as they don't ask for it in RP). Quite a less publicly advertised mud but I'm enjoying it. I still open my mind to other muds on my "lurk list" though.