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Old 05-26-2013, 06:15 AM   #1
Elriic
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Join Dragonrealms today!

If you're looking for a Medieval themed, RP heavy MUD, why not try out ?

DragonRealms is a subscription based MUD with a basic subscription cost of $14.95 per month. Read below please to see what you get for your investment:

- Its over 18 years old with huge story arcs which reach back throughout game history and lore as well as constantly evolving stories you can be as much or as little involved in. Including some pretty epic wars over the long years of the game's life.

- A staff of developers and events GameMasters whom are all former players of the game themselves and are highly invested in seeing the game become successful due to their own ties with the player community.

- A completely custom and extremely powerful gaming engine. This isn't based on some software package that's been modified. It was built by the company and is maintained by the company exclusively for their use with a proprietary programming language that gives its developers pretty much unlimited flexibility. If they can think of it, they can develop it.

- Enforced Role Playing. You won't find guys randomly talking about what's on TV in this game. People are encouraged and are motivated to stay in character. And again, the lore is so rich, and heavily developed both by the players and by the staff is not hard to do.

- During prime time, (and this isn't an exaggeration) there are hundreds of players online at once in the game. Checking out DR does not mean you are that lone action figure in the middle of your living room. A good portion of the player base has been playing for over a decade or more. Hell, I'm one of the original players myself.

- A heavily developed crafting system. The beauty of this game in my opinion has always been that the best gear in the game is stuff created by players themselves. Already very complex and powerful forging, engineering, and outfitting societies are available, with alchemy and enchanting societies under development for release this year.

- Ten different classes, Ten different races, again with their own rich lore and language and cultures. The classes are balanced, and the PVE and PVP environments are fantastically well controlled and blended. If you never want to fight another player you don't have to. If you do, there are avenues for you to do so. The GameMaster staff has always taken very serious measures to prevent griefing.

- Huge festivals, big parties, player organized orders, militias, and more!

- Custom developed User interfaces created both by the company (Simutronics) and by players themselves give you the opportunity to make the game feel like whatever you want it to.

There's really so much to experience. If you want to play a text based game, your imagination hasn't atrophied or rotted away yet, or you're new to the whole experience, come visit today!

Last edited by Elriic : 05-29-2013 at 10:17 AM.
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Old 05-27-2013, 10:59 PM   #2
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

To add to this some players have started to make videos to help you along.

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Old 05-28-2013, 01:09 AM   #3
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

Good grief.
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Old 05-28-2013, 02:51 PM   #4
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

I was debating saying anything, myself. In this day and age, where the huge majority of muds are free, and the bulk of the few that aren't are pay-for-perks but still free to play, an outright pay-to-play, subscription-based mud is an oddity.

So much of an oddity, that it's nearly disingenuous to post an advertisement for the mud without mentioning that it's pay to play. Whatever else makes Dragonrealms unique and awesome, the fact that the game carries a monthly subscription (and a sizeable one, not just a few bucks) is a defining characteristic of the mud. Just as much of a defining characteristic as the features and gameplay. To mention all of those awesome features yet somehow omit that it's a pay to play mud (and an expensive one at that) borders on lying.
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Old 05-28-2013, 03:57 PM   #5
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

It's more "withholding the details" and less "outright lying," though. Salesmen don't like to build up the bad features of their products.

When I was looking through the website (before realizing that it was p2p), it sounded like an interesting game. However, once I discovered the cost, it immediately turned me off. Being part of the true blue clique is $50/month and that doesn't guarantee that they'll welcome you into the fold.

If you look through the site, it's nothing too special; it has all the races and classes you find everywhere else, and I'm sure that there isn't much new about the spells and skills.

So why are we paying porterhouse prices for the same London broil that everyone else has?
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Old 05-28-2013, 04:24 PM   #6
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

There was , where "free subscribers would be able to improve their experience by obtaining the features that are important to them".

However they later retracted the statement, clarifying that "Neither DragonRealms nor GemStone are going "Free to play"." They have introduced a pay-for-perks model (you buy blocks of SCoins to ), but you also have to pay a $15-$50/month subscription. Quests and special events still cost extra, but I would guess they're now tied in with the SCoins.
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Old 05-28-2013, 11:14 PM   #7
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

The company [Simutronics] seems to be exploring different business strategies,
but there may be customers who are willing to pay more for a particular
experience, customers who see the game as something more than a piece of meat.
The higher prices may provide a certain amount of exclusivity which some may
find favorable. Obviously any business has to view it as a numbers game in some
manner (in order to survive and prosper) but the customers may not be inclined
to share that POV.
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Old 05-29-2013, 01:23 AM   #8
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

Howdy folks. I'm currently a developer for Dragonrealms and am interested to know what you think would make a MUD worth paying for?

Dragonrealms does have hundreds of logged-in players paying to play. So that likely speaks to the game's quality! Your money buys more than just a login account. You get a team of Mentors, Gamehosts, Gamemasters and Onsite staff working to assist you. Enforced roleplay, scripting policies and rules all maintain the game's quality and envrionment. These are harder to come by with an open-door policy. Alterations, constant game development, daily events, player-run organizations... those all exist and are only feasible with a large player and developer base.

I'd also like to point out that in-game purchases are not crammed down anyone's throat. The microtransaction store is a relatively new concept to test the waters and see how things pan out. DR tries hard to give just as much free stuff out as they make pay stuff available. Free festivals and pay festivals. Free auctions and raffles, pay auctions and raffles. Free events, cheap quests and expensive quests. There is a good variety.

The pay quests and festivals provide an experience you probably cannot find in a free mud. Having staff dedicated to watching your 10-man group brave a dungeon, safari, tower or prison riot for many many hours is... tricky to coordinate. Getting lost in a maze of 120 festival merchants each selling dozens upon dozens of items... that takes a lot of effort!

There is a 30-day free trial - so you can always check it out and cancel if it isn't your cup of tea.
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Old 05-29-2013, 07:56 AM   #9
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

Well since you asked: my answer is nothing. Nothing would get me to pay for something I'm getting, better, for free.

There aren't hundreds of players logging in. There are dozens of players, many of whom have multiple accounts. Dragonrealms and the Simu flagship Gemstone (currently IV) are trading card games.

If you do a google search for "dragonrealms character sales" you'll find the first search result page consisting entirely of websites dedicated to selling and buying DR characters for RL money. That is why people pay for this game. Because they can get more than what they paid for, by "levelling up" their characters and selling them on the internet.

Since I'm not interested in trading card games, there is nothing that DR could do, that would convince me to pay to play it. I wouldn't even play it for free.

And that 30-day free trial is a joke - you have to provide your credit card number (or bank account info if you want to do debit or check), and if you don't cancel before the 30 days is up, they start billing you. There is no option to just show up - with your unique account name and password, and the counter starts, and 30 days later if you haven't submitted billing info your account is cancelled.

In fact, out of morbid curiosity, I checked over at Gemstone, and attempted to log in with my old GS account and was surprised to find out it was still valid. I haven't played it in 10 years. But the account name and password still worked. I got an error message saying Welcome Back, please give us money - which of course I didn't do. But that 10-years-dead account info was still valid.

I should've sold it when I was first offered - could've made $2000 on my PC at the time. Silly me, I had integrity. Didn't do me a lick of good; the game only has maybe a couple dozen actual individuals playing it, all trading items and characters back and forth for money, and the script-jockeys are still at it, gathering their mana-bots around them to enchant items that get sold in turn for even more money.

One player with 1 high-level wizard on a premium account, plus 1 other player on a premium account with a cleric - and then the wizard has 5 other characters (you can have multiple characters on one account) - those 5 characters channel their mana to the cleric, who can receive it at 100% because he's a cleric. then those guys log out and the wizard logs in - and the cleric channels all that mana to the wizard, who enchants the item, and they sell it and split the profits.

It's a HUGE money-making business...and they've been doing it at the very least since the days of Prodigy.

There was even a write-up about how one guy was averaging $100,000 in a YEAR profiting off the items and character sales business.

That is why people pay to play those games. If you think otherwise, you're very naive.
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Old 05-29-2013, 09:42 AM   #10
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

You are about 8 years removed and harping on the wrong game (Gemstone)

A quick check of sites like the Sales Yahoo groups has shown a 75% decline in activity since early 2000s. But sure, there will always be a market for items and characters! Why is that such a horrible thing?

If someone enjoys the game enough to buy an item or charater, someone will profit off selling it. Somehow I think this proves my point that people REALLY must be enjoying a game to spend 1000s of dollars buying characters for it! You even admitted it could have been a good source of income for yourself.

In a given day the DR population ranges from the low 200s to the 500s - more during big events. Your observation that the games have only a few dozen people all paying for 10 accounts, spending 100s of dollars a month (to play with themselves??) doesn't add up. But then I guess you had never been to a Simucon and met any of the hundreds of minds behind the text?

The 30-day trial is pretty standard in the industry... ahh well, haters gonna hate :P

I will point out that since the 3.0 release you can't really Redmage yourself. The best armor and weapons give you an advantage, but the game design allows for experiencing all content with storebought gear. Invasions, quests and other events feature mechanics that allow players of all skill levels to participate.

Since I've seen crafting mentioned in a few places, I wanted to list what DR has to offer and is planned to have to offer:

Blacksmithing - Released
Weaponsmithing - Released
Armorsmithing - Released

Bone and Stone carving - Released
Wood and Clay shaping - Older fletching system still in place
Mechanical Tinkering

Leather and Fabric Tailoring, Knitting - Released
Artistry - Older embroidery and dyeing system in place
Jewelrycrafting

Alchemical Remedies - Estimated release this summer
Alchemical Poisons - Estimated release this fall
Cooking - Old food system in place

These are the planned Enchanting Disciplines and are all in development
Runecraft
Invoking
Binding
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Old 05-29-2013, 09:55 AM   #11
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

I want to start off by apologizing. I didn't mean to mislead, lie, or hold back any information. Yes, DR has a $14.95 subscription with a larger premium subscription as well. I'm not on staff with DR, I don't hold an interest in the company, or any of that. I'm a long time player that loves the game enough to pay for it and who would love to see new people try the game out.

Next, I want to address the quoted post.

You are ill advised on many accounts.

1) While there are people who log in multiple accounts, there are in fact hundreds of individual, unique players playing the game. Why? Because it is that much of an in depth game. I'm not denying that there are people with multiple accounts who play the game. But the vast majority of people have one account which means one character logged in at a time.

2) People selling accounts and characters are the EXCEPTION. Not the NORM. The vast majority of people who play this game become seriously attached to their characters because of the personal investment involved. Of course, like any other game you have people who buy and sell in game currency and characters because they either want to avoid the grind, are just lazy, or pick any reason. Think about how much people enjoy the game if they're willing to invest the kind of money we're discussing into it. This is more of a salute to the game, than it is an insult when discussing the long term health of the game.

3) The reason why they ask for the credit card up front is because the people who operate the game on a day to day basis have a zero tolerance policy for griefing. I'm sure there are other reasons, but if you ask the player base, we're generally cool with this. A lot of us remember the time when they DIDN'T require the card up front and we had random jackasses talking about TV, and rolling up characters to follow you around and insult you.

4) You'll have to speak to someone who plays Gemstone to address your points regarding that game and its economy and dynamics. Aside from a nostalgic stint here and there, I haven't played it since it was Gemstone 3.

You're entitled to your opinion and I'm not going to wax rhapsodical trying to convince you to change your mind. I'm simply going to leave with some final thoughts:

DragonRealms is almost 18 years old if you go all the way back to the alpha/beta on Genie. Its survived being connected to Genie, Prodigy, AOL, Microsoft's GameZone, and a transition to a web based service. Its survived economic downturn. Its survived the general decline in text based gaming. Its still there. We, the players love the game. The GameMasters who do everything from provide customer service, to run events, to sit for hours with players helping them custom design their stuff, to the developers who take the time to learn a proprietary programming language so they can build onto the game are --volunteers-. I personally took the time out of my day here to reply to your post.

If we're all willing to pay $14.95 a month for a basic account, or spend hundreds of hours a month as a volunteer, maybe there's something special here?

Respectfully,
Aaron Schlesinger, player of Elriic for the last 18 years.











Last edited by Elriic : 05-29-2013 at 10:05 AM.
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Old 05-29-2013, 10:09 AM   #12
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

Like you, I haven't played these games. Unlike you, I feel that makes me largely unqualified to comment on them.

I'm sure that, like any other games, various people play these games for various reasons. If your favorite free game became pay-for-perks tomorrow, you will get the same folks that try to mine real money in any way possible. That's human nature. Given that, how would you suggest that people working in the online game industry monetize their efforts? Not everyone works on an online game as a hobby--they want to get paid for a hard day's work, just like you do.

If anything, the (alleged) complicated and time-consuming exploit you heard about is a testament that the staff of these games has closed off all the easy botting they could find.

When you play a commercial online game, most of what you pay for is service: professional support, guaranteed on-going event activity, a guaranteed pace of content growth, a better longevity.

Try running a free game as if it's a commercial one, and you'll quickly find out how much more work it is. If your favorite game is trying to do that, then you should focus on giving it extra kudos instead of looking down on other games just because they're commercial.

Incidentally, I believe that more commercially-run MUDs are better for everyone. They are the ones that have promotional budgets to get the word out, and have the potential to generate new audiences. If we were smart, we would support their efforts rather than disparage them.
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Old 05-29-2013, 10:14 AM   #13
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

Negative. Paying customers create an environment of accountability. If you've invested a huge amount of time in your character and realize that if you're repeatedly a jackass, you're going to lose it, it tends to make you keep your anonymous troll behaviors restricted to MUD forums :P

Yes. But if you turn out to be one of those players who is a griefer, you don't get a second chance. Hence the reason for all the information requested at the beginning of the process.

This is MY fault. I am sorry and I've addressed it in a follow up post a few minutes ago. I wasn't intentionally omitting it. I'll go back and add the cost information to my post. I don't work for Simutronics, please don't hold my mistake against the company or the developer who's also posting in this thread.
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Old 05-29-2013, 10:42 AM   #14
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!


If your entire post is based on the first statement, then your entire post is erroneous. I have played those games. Gemstone was the first text game I ever played. Dragonrealms was the second. I started with GS on Prodigy, saw it through the AOL fiasco, and into the WWW and beyond. I played DR for a year or so once it had already become available on the web, and Prodigy had gone out of business. I was also the assistant to Tom Zelinski (co-founder of Simutronics) on the Prodigy GS forum as a librarian archivist, and I was a moderator and active member of the biggest GS fansite forum, which is still alive and running today, on which I still have an active account and read every few weeks.

I'd say that qualifies me to offer an opinion on the product.

Juason posted: What Juason isn't understanding, is that the industry standard is *free.* There is no 30-day trial, or any trial at all, in the industry of text-based interactive online multiplayer games. The vast majority of these types of games are free, period.

DR and GS and other Simu players, for the most part, are members of a group of people who don't know any better. Many of them (as Juason and Eriic have pointed out) have played for many many years, back when they were first available only on the online services. In other words, they have been playing exclusively since the pay-for-play model was the method du jour. They haven't moved beyond it, they haven't ventured past it, they haven't attempted to seek out anything else. And so - they have no idea that there exists thousands upon thousands of players who play for free in other games, that other games might have better systems, better staff, better forums, better code, better roleplay, better hack-n-slash, than anything they can wrap their minds around.

The point being - whether or not these things are true - these players don't KNOW, because they've never experienced anything else. The guy who spends his life in a cabin in the woods, with no radio, no phone, no friends, no family, doesn't know that skyscrapers exist, because he's never seen one or heard anyone talk about them. Those are the majority of players who play Simu games. They pay, because it doesn't occur to them to NOT pay somewhere else.
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Old 05-29-2013, 10:45 AM   #15
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

What makes a pay-to-play mud worth paying for, in my book?

Nothing, given the stage of my life that I'm currently in. I might play a mud a couple of hours a week, and sometimes not even that. Not every day and all weekend long like the heavily invested players (e.g., college students, housewives, unmarried folks without kids who can stay up all night spending any portion of their salaries not required for rent or food on computer games). The few hours a week I play isn't even worth 5 dollars a month, much less 15 or more. But if the game cost 4.95 rather than 14.95, was serious about roleplay-enforcement all around rather than having an exclusive 50 dollar a month club for the real roleplayers, or if the game used a more accepted pay-for-perks model, I'd be less offended. I'd also be much, much, much less offended if the game let me have a free trial right now, without providing any credit card information, rather than hoping I'll forget to unsubscribe and they can make a few bucks auto-billing my credit card before I do so. Believe me, if people really, really like a game, they'll sign up after 30 days when their trial's up. You don't want to look like you're trying to screw people. I'm serious about this. The primary reason shady internet offers collect your credit card info to begin your 30 day trial and require you to unsubscribe manually is to get some cash out of people who forget to unsubscribe. It's to screw people. There's no reason not to wait to collect that info at day 30 except wanting to screw people.

There's actually very little about mud gameplay and features that makes a game worth more to me. If a mud is rudimentary, full of bugs and typos, unfinished, and just plain stupidly tedious to play, yeah that's a turn-off. But I've had my best experiences logging into a random mud, large or small, and being sucked up into a fun roleplay encounter with other players (even just one or two others) right from get go. Look at New Worlds, for example. Very successful mud (by most standards), and one of the more popular ones around here. Absolutely simplistic system, code and gameplay wise. A few neat features but nothing that special in the code or any of the game systems. But five minutes into the first day I tried that mud, I was roleplaying and having a blast. You just can't code or enforce that experience. It's hit or miss whether I'd have that kind of fun logging into Dragonrealms (or New Worlds on most days, or any other mud). But you only get one shot at that first impression. I've been on and off with New Worlds (currently off) over the years, but still mention it around here as my favorite example of a mind-bendingly simple mud that still manages to do well. It's not the code or the staff-run special events that make a mud what it is. At least not in the case of a roleplaying mud.

If I logged into Dragonrealms right now and wasn't having that kind of fun in 5 minutes, it's not worth money. If I can log into any other free mud right now and have that same kind of fun, Dragonrealms isn't worth money.
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Old 05-29-2013, 10:53 AM   #16
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

If your criticism are based on a game you played 10 years ago (and I'm assuming it was good enough for you then to pay for) and secondary observations, then I think every reader can decide how seriously to take them.

@Elric & @Juason:

Don't apologize or take it personally. There are folks in these forums who will shoot down pretty much anything.
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Old 05-29-2013, 11:01 AM   #17
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

It would be interesting to see if, over time, the sudden exposure of Dragon Realms players to many other muds, and Dragon Realms exposure to players of other muds, turns out to be a net benefit or loss for Dragon Realms. Based on the sudden voting numbers, it seems that Dragon Realms made a decision to drive their players to vote here when they have never really bothered before.

Either they didn't think it through very well or someone at DR feels they will gain more players from other muds than they will lose to other muds which is a pretty big vote of confidence in their content even with a pay wall to climb.
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Old 05-29-2013, 11:16 AM   #18
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!


This seems like a pretty presumptuous statement. I've played other free muds. I've played many other pay games. I keep coming home for a reason.

It strikes me that the negativity in this thread is stemming from a lot of presumptions and misconceptions.
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Old 05-29-2013, 11:19 AM   #19
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!


Your're correct. Someone discovered this site, posted it on our forums and the player base got out and 'pushed'. I never knew about this site before the post myself or believe me, I'd have been active for years already.
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Old 05-29-2013, 11:26 AM   #20
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Re: Join Dragonrealms today!

Don't forget boredom! Trolling promo threads is the *industry standard* antidote for boredom.
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