[dayrinni]

This has turned out to be a rather interesting thread. Thank you for your replies.

I've long wanted to make a very good MUD over the past ten years. I never really had the skill to do it until the past few years, but I was too busy doing other things to really consider doing a new MUD. While my old MUD had some success, it had major design issues.

So from what I've gathered it seems I (and anyone else for that matter) could have a reasonable chance success of doing a new MUD. Especially since the replies haven't given a blunt "No".

Anyways, the thought on social networking and gaming is a very interesting one. Social networking and gaming has become extremely popular these days. I recently watched a video about a game developer/professor where he gave a lecture and some of the topics he spoke about was how making games more social adds an entire extra layer of competitiveness. I found that interesting because it showed how that sort of influence can essentially make people play the game more and more. Another thing he used was different pricing schemes to get "people hooked in". I believe one example in one game he used was how a player could collect "coins" but could not use them until they paid a fee. So a child was playing this game and asked if they could get money to pay the fee; the parent said no at first. After the child collected more of these coins, the parent said "Hey, if they collected this many over the past few weeks then they are going to stick with this." and then they pony'ed up the money. I wish I could find the link to this video because it hits quite a few topics that I don't really hear other developers talk about. Maybe some of you have seen this video.

Do you guys know if open beta MUDs are common these days? Or do most MUD developers wait until they have a reasonably finished product?

Thanks.