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Old 04-18-2008, 05:24 PM   #2
Parhelion
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Name: Sarah
Location: Tempe, AZ
Home MUD: Ethos
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Re: The "Health," of Muds

MUDs will be around for years to come. They may not, however, be things of success without falling into certain categories.

What I mean by that is, the average "MUD" is a thing of the past -- this is your run-of-the-mill, hack-and-slash, fresh-out-of-the-box Diku that allows players to run around and kill stuff for experience and to socialize over channels. These are being replaced by MMOs, of which now there are a large number of freebies and games that are capable of being played over any sort of connection. They will always be around, of course, in theory -- so long as the code is out there, people interested in playing around with code of experimenting with the idea of running their own game will be setting these up until they finally get bored with them and shutting them down again.

The MUDs that will survive will be your Pay-to-Plays (*shivers and gags*) that are financially backed and offer high-quality customer service and development. RPIs will also strongly survive: despite all the shiny things an MMO can provide, nothing graphical has yet to hit the market that can offer the creative and descriptive freedom of roleplaying on one of these types of games. They have cornered the niche market, but will suffer from fierce competition among one another as more and more of them open and vie for already-thin playerbase. Players who choose these types of games are also usually very loyal (atleast in my experience) and are not easily swayed by shiny advertisements.

MUDs will be around for a while yet, but they'll be evolved from what they were in the 90's.
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