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You say this, then say;
You should hold yourself to the same standards you accuse other players of not holding themselves to. You can't be the voice of Syno anymore than I can be the voice of the Common MUDer. You can buy yourself into many things, but immunity-to-hypocrisy is not one of them.
If people want to play IRE games, that is their individual decision. I've played IRE games before, though they never really captured my attention for long. As I've said before, I consider the model that you use, and your dealings with the community to be unethical. There are players who would agree(admins of truly free MUDs more-than-likely), and some who would disagree(probably mostly the ones who play your games).
Players are able to determine what games they wish to play and howmuch money they wish to spend - but at the end of the day, that does not create a free, fair, and equal playing-field; which is a setting most truly free MUDs(and also some commercial MUDs) try to hold themselves to creating. You can call yourself free, advertise your MUDs as the most challenging PvP in the universe, and walk around pretending to be the mouth of Syno on these forums... none of that means that you are telling the truth, however. It is for every player to decide to trust you or not - I personally do not for many, many good reasons.
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Valg's on the money here - since we're using a capitalistic model, let's simplify all of this. The claim is that you can receive credit bonuses via providing work/goods to the MUD.
Goods = Money
Goods = Credit
Money = Credit
Goods are not really free, it's a misleading backdoor excuse. People put hard work into creating a piece of art, a piece of literature/etc, and sell the rights to you in exchange for a Credit reward. That is not free.
The only option to achieve the same status of those players who buy game-mechanic enhancements is to spend years. And even then, for PvP(for example), a wealthy opponent can drop 20$ when necessary to buy skillsets that will aid them in filling a weakness in defense, or to protect against another specific player(who may not have the ability to pay money to keep up). This is not a truly free system. It's capitalistically savvy(perhaps unethical, but that's just my opinion), but it is certainly not free.
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Skip this next part if you don't want to read a slightly off-topic rant about PvP and MUDs.
The element of MUDing I have the most experience with is the design, critique, use, and abuse of PvP on MUDs. On the best PvP MUDs, either there is an end that anyone can reach given some time - and once that end is reached, all players are on(more-or-less) equal footing, allowing skill to be the determining factor in combat... OR, the system is level-less and/or successful PvPs award points that can be used to enhance your character. The latter system is used in both Everwar and Utopia, probably the two of the better PvP MUDs I have ever played/reviewed(I was not always staff on Utopia, there's a reason I stuck around).
On the worst PvP MUDs, there is a) cheating, or b)a system that rewards the players who have played the longest by using a system of infinite(or nearly infinite) character/stat/skill expansion, or c) a system that rewards players who are lucky/wealthy enough to be able to by their way into powerful PvP characters. It does not promote success through PvP skill, no matter how pretty the layout of combat itself is.
And you don't need to play Aethia/Aetolia to find large group on group PvP battles. If that's what you really want, go find a better, free PvP MUD that focuses entirely on PvP. Some of them have large battles also, with better and more challenging PvP systems(Everwar, for instance).
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