Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > MUD Players and General Discussion > Tavern of the Blue Hand
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 04-08-2013, 01:00 PM   #321
plamzi
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Home MUD: bedlam.mudportal.com:9000
Home MUD: www.mudportal.com
Posts: 292
plamzi is on a distinguished road
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

I've seen good things, too, along with the bad, but I think the bottom line is that this kind of gaming is extremely niche. If we had many thousands of active fans, we would have no trouble staying on the radar.

The historical importance of MUDs seems to be fairly well-recognized in a number of Wiki articles on actually prominent games. We are not prominent. It's even hard to tell if MUDs ever were prominent. All that we know for sure is that MUDs were influential and ahead of their time in certain types of online game design.

My return to MUD administration in 2009 was driven by the desire to re-invent mudding for a new generation of players. Unfortunately, I don't see much of a community when it comes to that goal. The general consensus seems to be that if something has graphics, or doesn't have room descriptions, then it's no longer a MUD. At the same time, most actively developed MUDs seem to be engaged in the 0-sum game of developing increasingly esoteric features to draw from an ever-shrinking pool of jaded veterans rather than try to reach people who have never played a MUD before.

With such priorities, we should be okay with becoming footnotes to other games.

In short, I agree with prof1515. These are all self-inflicted wounds.
plamzi is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2013, 03:15 PM   #322
Verbannon
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Florida-Where no Tourist has gone before.
Home MUD: Shadowgate
Posts: 63
Verbannon is on a distinguished road
Send a message via Skype™ to Verbannon
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Well, if there is a community they don't seem to be interested in promoting their games to non-mudders. I don't even remember how I even stumbled upon the existence of Muds, I think it was an accident. And I haven't seen a single advertisement for a mud anywhere outside of mud forums, not even a thread promoting a mud game.
Verbannon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2013, 05:04 PM   #323
Threshold
Legend
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Threshold RPG
Posts: 1,260
Threshold will become famous soon enough
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

You are right. That's an example of why the genre isn't taken seriously. It isn't taken seriously because people have idiotic holy wars insisting they own the "One True Definition" of terms like RPI, and they go around "rescinding titles" from games because something happens with their feature set or management.

That kind of crap doesn't happen in the rest of the industry. If someone says their game is an action, tactical shooter with RPG elements, you don't see veterans of other companies trashing them for not being a "real RPG." Mature members of the gaming industry let other people define their games how they want. Then they let the players decide if the definition is BS or not. They don't engage in open hostility for the whole world to see. That's the kind of crap that makes the MUD community look juvenile and silly.
Threshold is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2013, 05:26 PM   #324
Threshold
Legend
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Threshold RPG
Posts: 1,260
Threshold will become famous soon enough
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

It is funny you would say that in of all places. This thread started when someone bucking for admin rank tried to delete . The amount of support we received was ENORMOUS. Fellow MUD admins, respected industry veterans (Raph Koster, Dr. Richard Bartle, Brian Green), and tons of mud players who never played Threshold came to our defense.

The AFD page (Article For Deletion - the official way a page deletion is debated) for Threshold was, at the time, the largest AFD in the history of Wikipedia. The AFD was something like 95% in favor of keeping the Threshold page. The amount of support we received was massive.

There have been other examples of the same type of rallying together in this thread and other threads on the forum. Yes, there is far too much backbiting and pettiness in our community. It is a real shame. There are ancient grudges that people really should let go of that continue to cripple us. Mobile gaming is actually a great opportunity for MUDs to gain exposure, because the low bandwidth and small client footprints work really well on mobile devices.

I agree. We still have major problems in our community, but it is light years better now than it was even 4 or 5 years ago.

People do what they can to help the community depending on their skills and opportunities. Very few of us do as much as Lasher and Icculus running TMS and TMC, but its great that people do what they can.

Speaking for myself, a few years back I was doing some freelance writing as a hobby. I ended up becoming the Managing Editor of Gaming on a large web site (40 million monthly page views). I made an offer to the community to write about anyone's MUD: . If I recall, only 1 or 2 muds took me up on it, but I believe they were happy for the media coverage.

We have a very old community that is unfortunately weighed down by some negative history. But we are fighting through it and slowly but steadily improving. That's something positive to build on I think.
Threshold is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2013, 05:46 PM   #325
plamzi
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Home MUD: bedlam.mudportal.com:9000
Home MUD: www.mudportal.com
Posts: 292
plamzi is on a distinguished road
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

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.
plamzi is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2013, 08:14 PM   #326
Threshold
Legend
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Threshold RPG
Posts: 1,260
Threshold will become famous soon enough
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

The "slow death of MUDs" isn't the topic here though. We're talking about the community.

I replied to your other points in a new thread here:

That way this thread can remain about MUD community and defending MUDs as a community.
Threshold is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-09-2013, 06:15 AM   #327
KaVir
Legend
 
KaVir's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
KaVir will become famous soon enoughKaVir will become famous soon enough
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

There's something of a "rising tide lifts all boats" attitude. Having a presence on Wikipedia helps all muds, and the whole "conflict of interest" thing pretty much necessitates cooperation, as we're not supposed to add content to articles about our own muds.

As far as the community is concerned, of course there is competition and rivalry, but most muds were only made possible by the contributions of others - and many of us give back to the community, whether in the form of code, areas, tools, articles, or whatever else.
KaVir is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-12-2013, 06:46 AM   #328
prof1515
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Illinois
Posts: 791
prof1515 will become famous soon enoughprof1515 will become famous soon enough
Send a message via AIM to prof1515 Send a message via Yahoo to prof1515
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

You really shouldn't make ignorant comments when you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The title was rescinded after it was discovered that massive cheating in the voting had been going on. Hundreds of bogus accounts had been created since the site's start. They were easily identified because the culprits weren't that bright and often used the same email address when registering them or used bogus emails that were easy to spot (bigdog0(at), bigdog00(at), bigdog000(at), etc. all created on the same day, one after another). When those bogus accounts were deleted several games took hits in their vote totals, none so large as Accursed Lands which dropped by 75% in their vote totals the following week.

After a few weeks, some of these games had partially recovered their vote totals (though nowhere near as high as before the bogus account purge) and a second sweep through the accounts discovered dozens of new bogus accounts had been recently created. These accounts were purged and once more the following week vote totals dipped. Hardest hit again was Accursed Lands which once more dropped pretty much all the ground they'd regained since the first cleanup. While AL had "won" the voting for years, the difference between their totals before the purge and their totals after the cleanup was so huge that they couldn't even make it into the top five (they dropped to sixth or seventh). Since these bogus accounts mostly dated back to the site's start, it put great doubt as to whether or not AL had indeed won fairly or that any of the games' totals were reflective of honest voting.

At the same time, a bug was discovered that could allow a single account to vote an infinite number of times. This potential bug was tested and confirmed and as a result of this bug and the clear impact of the bogus accounts, the committee unanimously decided that voting should be discontinued and that and previous results were unverifiable. Hence the title was rescinded though we stopped short of directly accusing AL, any of its staff or its players of cheating. Months later, the identity of one of the cheaters was ascertained and it turned out to be one of AL's staff though by that point voting had long been discontinued and the titles rescinded.

Last edited by prof1515 : 05-12-2013 at 06:54 AM. Reason: typo
prof1515 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-13-2013, 01:29 AM   #329
Threshold
Legend
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Threshold RPG
Posts: 1,260
Threshold will become famous soon enough
Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Nothing I said was ignorant. When you gave more detail, you just proved my point. It was yet another pointless, petty drama.

I don't have to know all the nitty gritty details about some petty drama to know its silly and ultimately irrelevant to the community at large. In fact, I'd prefer not to know all the painful details.

Lets not forget you actually asserted that Accursed Lands claiming to be an early RPI was one of the reasons our "genre isn't taken seriously."

WHO CARES?!?!?!

Don't you get it? Normal people don't give a damn about stupid, pointless distinctions like that. Heck, most people *IN* the MUD community don't care. People outside of it care even less.

In the rest of the gaming industry, third parties don't feel compelled to butt in on developers describing and categorizing their games how they want.

If a developer is deceptive in describing their game, that's a problem between the developer and the customer. Other companies stay out of it. It would be unseemly and unprofessional to behave otherwise.

Understand?
Threshold is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:34 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022