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Old 08-24-2007, 10:41 AM   #29
Lasher
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Join Date: May 2005
Name: Derek
Location: Orlando
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Re: Nodeka

Which is exactly why TMS attempting to define "what does 100% free mean?" is pointless. If I can play a game, at no cost, it is free. If I cannot play a game without cost, it is not free. Everything between that is semantics.

At one end of the extreme: I stick a tic-tac-toe game in a room all new users go to and they can't leave that room without paying. You could argue that the game is still technically "free to play". Is that a fair label?

At the other extreme: I could have 50,000 rooms/objects/skills/spells/whatever fully available without ever spending a penny but if someone can get 5 seconds more on their armor spell for donating, or a slightly larger in-game map, some would argue that the game is technically not "free". Is that a fair label?

So let's stick to black and white facts that can't be debated, in addition to pay to play, which needs better defining:

[ ] Donations accepted Y/N?
[ ] Donations rewarded Y/N?

Possible third option:

[ ] ALL game content available without donating Y/N?

My problem with the third option? Let's go with the example we've been using. Imagine this:

"As of today the extended map is available without donations for just 17billion diamonds-of-uberness"

Technically all game content is now available without donating, let's not mention that 17 billion diamonds-of-uberness would take around 12 light years to collect. You start to add phrases like "reasonable amount of time", "high/low advantage" to the categorizations and you're back to subjectivity.

Another problem with the third option, define "game content"? Every piece of "content" may be available, but at what level? You can get Bubba's sword and I can get Bubba's sword, but is my Bubba's sword better than yours?

I agree this is important information to players but let's not beat it to death. There are as many variations on roleplaying style, on pk type and on many other categorizations. Take PK as an example, there is NO PK, there is FULL PK, everything in between is a gray area. In this case the grey area is listed as "Restricted Playerkilling" and players can choose to login to the mud in question to find out exactly what "Restricted Playerkilling" means in that MUD. Any attempt to categorize all styles of PK would be pointless - you can still never really pin down how ingrained PK is into that game without trying it. Same with "pay-for-perks".

Long note, so worth repeating this part:

I agree this is important information to players..


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