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Old 05-14-2008, 02:29 PM   #1
Disillusionist
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 83
Disillusionist will become famous soon enough
Deck Chairs on the Titanic

I played a mud that falls somewhere between the blurry lines of RPI and RPE on and off for ten years.
During that time, it saw reasonable peaks of attendance, over 200, in its hayday. Since that pinnacle about five years ago, an interesting phenomenon has occurred, and I just wondered what some of the feedback would be.

This game is still in beta, eleven years down the pike. It boasts 12,000 highly detailed finished rooms, overlarge verbs and adverbs lists, in fact, most of the features that some would define as RPI necessities.

While many systems are incomplete, or even unstarted, the game as is could go live, as the spinal systems are operative. As such, it's already better than many games out there.
Without trying to sound like an ad for a game that can no longer remain anywhere near the top 20 (occasionally breaking through to the top ten as recently as last year), I see a game that at one time enjoyed an enormous potential, now swirling down the drain.

A playerbase that could boast 50 players online not long ago now often sits empty, and peaks out at 3-4 people a day, perhaps up to 7-10 for reasonably major events. Most who played it agree it's in its death throes.

That said, I don't believe the problem was ever with the game. Sure, it had, and has, bug issues, and the typical developmental problems of many games, but essentially its downfall is a matter of poor administration. The overwhelming majority of players who have abandoned it agree. Still, recently the owner of the company has planned a player meeting with the few remaining and any who would come back for it, to discuss (too little, too late, in my opinion) problems and solutions.

So I ask, players and admins of other games alike, if your back was to the wall, and your product was failing (or your favorite game), and you had to make a list of 10 basic administrative rules, inviolable, what would they be? What things would you be willing to change about yourself or your policies to save the game, and what would you not change, even if it meant business failure?
Of players, I would ask, what are your top ten peeves with administrators of games, and how have they impacted your attendance, behavior and how did you respond when your buttons were pushed?

At what point do you admit defeat?
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