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Old 10-14-2010, 05:38 AM   #19
KaVir
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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Re: Are MUDs still popular?

Personally I found one of the more effective ways to build up an initial playerbase was to make sure the game had enjoyable solo activities. There are a minority of players who are happy to play a mud as if it were a single-player game, as long as it's entertaining - if you can appeal to these players, you can build up a small core of regulars, enough that casual visitors won't just quit within a minute or two of logging on (although some newbies will always do this, regardless of how many other players you've got).

Other than that, I've found that players are more likely to hang around if I'm online - even now that I've got a fairly stable (albeit small) playerbase, if I'm on vacation for more than a few days it dips noticably. My playerbase also fluctuates quite a lot based on my development activity, and I believe muds that hold scheduled events also see a rise in players for those events.

But all of this requires time and effort. A playerbase isn't a static thing, you need to work hard to maintain it - even if you open your doors in 6 months and hordes of newbies rush in, if you don't keep working on it they will drift away.

A few years ago I described a generic , which you might find of interest if you don't have a clear idea how you'd like to handle classes. It can be used to represent both class-based and classless systems (even both at the same time if you wish), and can also cover races, alignment, clans, supernatural afflictions, and so on.
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