[HAL]

Definitely an interesting perspective! I guess I've gotten used to the DIKU variant of emotes and speech code, so that I find natural and flexible. I have attempted to play Armageddon on occasion, as I keep hearing interesting things, and their emote system continues to keep me at arms length, unfortunately. I see where you are coming from, however.

This is an interesting perspective. I've found that the majority of our players would find it incredibly jarring for someone to OOCly talk about something else in the middle of an intense scene. But then again, we have a live chat that is available outside of the game for players to use.

I do agree with you, that people who want to cheat will do so outside of the game where they are less likely to be caught, and the folks who try and learn the code and other OOC intensive bits about the mud suffer for it. We had some trouble players who knew the combat code left, right, backwards and forwards, coordinated OOCly, and we had to deal with the results.

I find that forums, chats, and other OOC resources help raise the barrier between IC and OOC, simply because people are so aware of it. You chat on the forum as a player, you play IG as a character, if you blend those, there are penalties. Information as well is limited as to what can be talked to on the forums, but having things like, "Event at 12 noon tomorrow to hunt X," is perfectly fine.

I've had the same experience with staff Alts. I've never seen a staffer that can do a completely 100% job at keeping their character experience outside of their staffer work. We allow staff alts, but restrict them to a low level, and really avoid them becoming any sort of clan leadership.

I've been in the same boat when looking at MUSHes, the lack of code makes it hard to imagine playing them, for me personally. Though I keep hearing fantastic thing.