[plamzi]

While I'm sure the bickering doesn't help, I don't think it has much to do with the slow death of MUDs. I think the bottom line is most of us refuse to go where the players are, and if they do go, they refuse to give the players what they want in a 21st Cent. online game.

For example, there are now thousands of browser-based MMO's on Facebook that look super-sleek but whose gameplay is so shallow that any stock MUD can blow them out of the water. There is not a single MUD I can think of on Facebook (mine included) that has achieved the same sleek look and incorporated all the elements that the crowds have come to expect from a social game.

A big part of the reason for this is that there never really was any real money in MUDs. (If there had been, we would probably have an industry as well as a community.) An even bigger part is, I think, the fact that MUDs stubbornly refuse to look like other games, they require a lot of reading (hard to localize) and typing, as well as paying close attention. Most of them don't even have a "pause" button.

And if you're one of those devs who is willing to bend "the rules" to turn the clock past 1996, then you're most likely not reading this post because you've already been disowned by this community.