[Hannah]

More polls for you people.

[Alexei]

*sings* Because I reached the top, and had to stop, and that's whats a bothering me.

[SheWhoHasNoName]

Because of an absolutely horrible Administration. Guess it goes along with cheating immortals.

[Kyrene]

My response would consist of two answers, cheating immortals and I was also harassed by said cheating immortals. I'm glad that first MUD was full of jerks, because of them I found DM

[Wenlin]

When X mud stops being X mud and becomes Y mud.

Change in favor of what the people want is good. Unneeded change and drastic unneeded change is not.

[Rytorth]

Ehh....my first MU* was a pay-to-play. Eventually I got tired of paying and my player file was wiped.

[Molly]

I got two comments to this subject; one from the player's point of view, the other from the Admin's point of view:

From the player's point of view:
With 1700+ muds out there, why on earth do you keep playing a mud with cheating/harassasing imms and/or horrible administration?
I know it is painful to leave, because of the friends you made, but you'll get to a point sooner or later when you just HAVE to go, so better make it sooner. The more you put it off, the more painful it becomes.

I used to play a mud that I loved, but where the head imp was a control-freaked, hypocrite  bitch.  Eventually our mutual dislike became so strong that I just had no choice left. It really hurt to leave, but in the long run it turned out to be the best mud-related decision I ever made. And most of my real friends followed me to my new 'home', the rest I found that I can easily live without.

From the Admin's point of view:
I just wish that some players would learn to leave a bit more discreetly. I mean, why do they have to make such a big fuss about it? Why not just fade out quietly and simply stop logging on to the mud?

But no - they have to make a big soap-opera show of it, delete their char publicly, post about it all over the Message Boards, insulting half the mud in the process, and then top it of with even more insulting mudmails to all their personal enemies and tear-dripping, maudlin ones to all their friends, sometimes even attacking the staff publicly to really burn their bridges.

Then they change their minds the next day, begging the  Admin to restore their char and equipment, and generally making a nuisance of themselves and becoming the laughing-stock of half the mud.

We have players who have done this 5-6 times. They just never seem to learn.  

[Yuki]

Preach on Sister Molly!

I've not played many muds, but the few I have... the first one that I left was over a number of things: biased immortals, cheating immortals, general boredom... but you see, those weren't enough to get me to leave. I still had friends there, a sense of familiarity, even a girlfriend who played there. When she broke up with me, I kind of realized I was simply going there to see her more than play, so I had quit the playing portion long before, but it took that to make me delete everyone and leave. I could almost handle the cheating imms, but the biased imms were too much. Rules apply to you but no one else just because you're not their best friend or something.

Next place I played at briefly, but power tripping owner/cheating owner/asshole owner + bias towards his real life friends did it again. I just left. I actually quit mudding totally. I will curse my friend Rod for asking me to help him do helpfiles, build, and learn to code at the place he started up... pulled me back into the deep of mud, how evil it is.

Guess seeing all of these things though has made me a better immortal, mud owner, etc.

[Caxandra]

I've only outright left one mud-- the others just lost funding. I left because I was accused of multiplaying when I only had one character. I chose to just leave instead of arguing with some Immortal who swore up and down he saw my 'alt.' No dramatics, I just deleted. I think I didn't even tell my guild I had gone.

[Enzo]

Sometimes you get bored...

[Yuki]

Oo Oo Oo !!! I just remembered that I had quit another mud too! I was a coder there as well!

The breaking point was when the player base yelled at me for rebooting them game when they were leaking 64 megs of ram every 12 hours or so, creating lag on the whole server that my game was also hosted on. Heaven forbid I only gave them a 30 second warning and did not wait for them to kill some mob. They called me names, it hurt my feeling so much. The one coder who did something in the previous two years for them... wonder why all their other coders got chased off?

I tole them to F themselves and went back to coding my mud. Sometimes it's nice to see other muds, it reminds you just how non-asshole your players actually are.

[Consider this post deleted]

[Mnemosyne]

Most of the times, I just... got bored with it. It takes a bit to keep me interested

[Kyrie_S]

Hmm, what makes or made me leave a mud..

Lazy coders that do nothing but "throw them a bone" coding all day if at all, poorly built areas, and a crap imm staff.

On the players side, heh, Players who swear playing a role and roleplaying are one in the same. Players who bring personal ooc issues into a game due to lack of a good psychologist, and powergamers.

Above all, boredom

[Santrilla]

I've never fully left a MUD. Not for any period of time, anyway. I've gone into various MUDs as a 'guest' and wandered for a bit, before just vanishing into the ether and returning to the comfort of my own. When I first started MUDding, it was all so new to me and everything just seemed to be going wrong. Everyone hated me, I kept dying, and when I hit my first Death Trap it was the straw (or rather, tree) that broke the camel's back. I admit, I made a big show of leaving, but was persuaded by a kindly admin to stay.

Now, 2 years on, and I'm still playing. I go through periods of getting bored with MUDding and quitting, then coming back after 3 months or so and realizing how addicted to them I was. When I do leave, it's usually because of my real life interfering in various ways. Either that, or I'm just not getting anything from it anymore.

I've had my share of dramatic exits, but when it boils down to it I'm like a little puppy dog- always coming back for more

Cheating admin/Admin with personal issues that impact the environment.

But equally important, because there are 17,000 muds out there. And when I get bored and go try a few out, there is occassionaly one I start really liking, more than where I am, and I move on.

Good thing I don't feel a need for powerful characters *grin*

[Boggis]

I left my old "RP Enforced" mud as I got tired of the lack of RP. Sure people didn't talk about OOC stuff while playing but it still all felt very shallow and not the kind of RP I was looking for. Powergaming wrapped up in the euphemism "hunting", Levelling being indicated by "Ooh, I learned a new skill" or "Ooh, I'm not going hunting there as the trainers said they'd teach me a new skill soon". Throw in an over-sized ego for the head Imm as well as number of other things that irked me and after two years I'd realised I'd had enough.

No big scene... just didn't log in one day and moved on to a better place. Was kind of hard to junk two years but it was probably the best mudding decision I've made. There's a huge amount of muds out there and chances are you'll find something to be happy on. If you're sticking around to play a game that you're not happy on then I think you need to ask yourself: "Why am I annoying myself when I should be enjoying myself?" Sounds simple I know but it took me nearly six months to eventually figure out how simple it really is.

Happy mudding!

[mhc]

I never left. To many peoples chagrin, I'm still around. I am the constant in their lives. When they return years after they last logged on, there I am, waiting to eat their souls again.

[Lily]

During my short 7 years of mudding, I've only ever considered 3 muds my "home". My 2nd home I wasn't left with a choice in leaving; it went down never to be heard of again.
The first one I left because I became bored and very disillusioned. During my "heyday", I eventually immed and that's where the downward spiral started. Being as naive as I still was when I immed, I wasn't aware of the daily political b.s. that went on behind the scenes. I was also disappointed at how the immortals, especially the higher ups who I looked up to as a mortal, would ruthlessly bash the mortals behind their backs but then smile sweetly to their faces.
During THAT time I was asked to build on 2 other muds, one I quit because I really didn't have any time, not to mention rl was interfering severely. The other one I called it quits because the head imp was f'd up in the head. He was either missing his daily dose of Prozac or having a bad nicotine fit. During those times, he'd constantly ride me and accuse me of things I never knew I had the power to do, and just generally find reasons to harass me.
Anyway, I went back to spending all my time on the first mud but by then I was so totally disillusioned that I stepped down to spend my remaining days using it as an elaborate chat room so when a friend introduced me to my 2nd home I quietly went and eventually gave all my chars to a rl friend who put better use to them.
I'm still at my 3rd home.

[Sanvean]

In my experience, the people that make a big deal about leaving are the ones that end up coming back. They post long, dramatic farewells on the discussion board, request that their character be deleted, and send long email to the admins detailing exactly how they've been driven to this drastic move.

The more fuss they make, the likelier they are to come back. They've got a degree of emotional investment that keeps them from returning. It's the ones that fade away wordlessly that don't come back - sometimes that's a sad thing, other times it's just a case of player styles differing radically from that of the mud.