[Threshold]

Many, many problems. As soon as you go beyond Payment Required/Payment not Required, you enter the world of semantics. How do you define rewarded? I honestly do not believe that any mud which accepts payments/donations does not reward the "donators" in some way. It may be extremely obvious (items, xp, etc.) or it may be less obvious (a list of donators that gives donors notoriety in game, or the simple fact that donors will inherently have, or at least expect, greater access to the admins of the game). Even something as simple as a donators list is pressure on those who do not donate, and a reward to those who do.

But the biggest problem is these categories lack the far more useful and important differentiation between Professional and Hobbyist muds.

If we are going to start making changes, lets make the changes that truly matter to players. It is obvious that this distinction is even more important than payment model, since far more people play Professionally Run muds than Hobbyist Muds. In other words, the clear importance of this distinction is proven by the choice the overwhelming majority of players make.

This is even reflected in the traffic on the TMS site. I don't recall the exact numbers from memory, but the last time it was calculated, I believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-80% of TMS traffic came from professionally run muds.

This makes the following still the best, simplest, and most accurate set of categories:

[ ] Professionally Run Game. Subscription Required.
[ ] Professionally Run Game. No Subscription Required.
[ ] Hobbyist Game. Accepts monetary contributions or purchases
(includes sale of merchandise).
[ ] Hobbyist Game. No monetary contributions or purchases accepted.