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because, certainly, I believe all these college age students are ruining my gaming experience by having more time than I do, I mean, it is really unfair that I, being a professional, with a 5 months old daughter have to compete with these guys with no responsibilities and whose hardest days in life are those Sunday morning hangovers.
Your Viagra MUDs advertise themselves as commercial games, and as such, they are obviously games on which you must be able to get something in exchange of money. You disregard a player opinion because it does not fit your argument, but hey, hello, it might be also true, he might be just speaking the truth.
Having more time than others is an advantage in the type of game you prefer, having money instead of dozens of hours a week to play is an advantage in the type of game other people prefer to play. What is amazing is that everytime this thread pops up we learn about a different player who has had a positive gaming experience and has not spent a penny in these games. Which means, in my opinion, that IRE has somehow found a balance between credit cost/ benefit and rl hour spent/benefit, which I think is a great deed indeed.
Some people dismissed the post by a single player who managed to do it without money, because he is the exception to the rule. I would imagine multimillionaires who spend 5k dollars in a month for an online-text game are also the exception and should be examples dismissed as well. Realistically we would be looking at people who spend a cash amount similar to other RPGs of the likes of WoW etc, so, those multimilliondollarplusafieldofoil-guys might just exist in your imagination.
As for every MUD being play-per-perks, I guess what the writter was trying to counter was KaViR's argument, as explained in my previous post.[/quote]
There's only so much time a person can put into anything meaning that everyone is limited to the same cap time-wise (24 hours in a day and it's doubtful that anyone will do that) and even then, there's a factor of luck to be considered. You're still competing against the other players in that same timeframe to achieve the same things (exp, gold, etc which is limited to what's available in-game at anytime). There's not the same limit money-wise. There may not be any big-gold mob that hasn't already been killed. But with your credit card you can still get the same thing without spending ANY time whatsoever or competing. At any given point, there may be a hundred players competing for the same fifty million experience points available collectively. But you can buy sixty million experience points with your credit card, without competition or regard for the maximum capability if you were playing alone.
You can get something for money on any commercial MUD. That's the definition. The difference between pay-to-play and pay-for-perks is that it's not an even playing field. And in pay-for-perks MUDs that advertise themselves as "free", that creates an advantage for those willing to pay. As for opinions, I dismiss them when they run counter to facts. "Truth" is not the same thing.
As for players that succeed against those odds, we hear stories of these players every now and then minus the details of how they got what they did. Did they achieve it through hard work or because someone gave it to them (or random once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that constitute luck more than they constitute achievement)? IRE makes a lot of money off a lot of players. One or two players that MUDsexed their way to where they're at or actually worked hard don't constitute a significant, to say nothing of relevant, number.
And by stating that "every" MUD is pay-for-perks, they were flat out inaccurate. Speaking of which....
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