Well, honestly, no, I don't think either of those has anything to do with it. Remember we're talking about PR here, not advertising.
It boils down to a few factors.
1. Mainstream games media (after all, Computer Gaming World is hardly mainstream media generally, just mainstream games media) isn't too keen on covering hobby projects, which make up 98-99% of text muds.
2. Most text mud admins devote no time whatsoever to PR. Why should they? If you're doing something for a hobby, does it really matter? The attention might be nice but that's all that's really driving you in that situation, unless you're angling to parlay your mud into a job in the games industry.
3. Most text muds don't really do anything worth being covered by the mainstream games media. What this type of media reporter wants to see are things that will make sense and be of interest to his readers (ie people who don't play text muds). This definitely does not include roleplaying, nor does it include having a new fantasy race or cool monster bashing, etc. Gleam got us a lot of attention because drug use is a familiar, controversial subject to people generally, whether they play text muds or not.
--matt
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