[Delerak]

I have to disagree. What needs to happen really is a more co-operative community between MUDs. Too many people start their own mud when they could find a place on staff at one of the hundred or so being developed. Too many people simply linger here and there without finding their true niche or home mud. A lot of players simply try it and then quit. It's the community that lacks really, it's not solid at all.

Commercial muds will not get anywhere in the future in my opinion. Most businesses will cut and run once they start seeing losses and no net profit. They might keep their MUDs up, but the commercial enterprise will completely take leave once this happens. This applies to any online game that costs money. Depending on the state of the economy, people will spend less and less on trivial things such as online gaming. The numbers might not show it now but it is coming.

MUDs have always been a free pass time that people could share together, and they've evolved over time into better and more advanced, complex games. I think that in the end, these games that have evoled will remain standing the test of time whilst the rest crumble. The ones that tell stories, and cater to the urge for mankind to want to hear that story or become a part of it. Not to walk around killing everything you can find, or to socialize and chat. There are plenty of chat rooms and forums for that. The time of the stock MUDs will slowly dwindle to an end in the next ten years.