Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I love this thread for several reasons, but the main one is the premise. Most of the posts in this thread center around one thing: Bringing players into our universe of text gaming.

I used to be a HUGE graphics gamer and programmer of graphics based games when I found the Text world. Like many, it was daunting and shocking to find people interacting in this fashion and egotistically I scoffed at it, but two weeks later I was hooked and only very infrequently play graphics games anymore.

I think all of us (admins, creatiors, and players) working together to draw the crowd of uninformed to our worlds it not only benefits each of our games, it benefits the Universe of Text Gaming. Some have mentioned in posts on other threads that we should be working with eachother not against eachother in this effort and I am inclined to agree and will try to maintain a level of professionalism and positivity for the other Text Worlds that are part of this Text Universe.

For those that are interested, here is the thread that talks about the book vs. the movie stated on a previous post in this thread:

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I think we must consider what is really tried to be achieved. We are trying to get people who play advanced 3D mmrpgs that contain massive content and amazing simulations to start play "simple" text games. Big commercial mmrpgs have huge teams to support developing the game. Most MUDs would have it very difficult to match that level of quality.

What do MUDs have to offer that the 3D mmrpgs don't? Roleplay? Most of those 3D games also have textual chats so the roleplay doesn't necessarily need to be any worse. Some even support voice chat. Roleplay in MUD is about imagination, isn't it? There's little reason people can't use their imagination in a 3D mmrpg. Many of the mmrpgs also appear to have animated emotes which also could be used for roleplay, and these things will become more advanced.

The competition from the big mmrpgs will not get easier. Look at for example Guild Wars. You pay once and then you can play as much as you like. I think the game Archlord has some similar bussiness model to Iron Realms. Atleast that game doesn't appear to have monthly fees anymore. Also I believe Guild Wars 2 is just around the corner.

How many of the 3D mmrpg players do you think will be interested in text games? Even then how long will it take before some company release the next WoW and do another heavy attack on the text MUD community?

I think there's not only a need to discuss how to reach beyond text MUDs, but also how to increase quality. Why should anyone want to play text MUDs if they can play 3D MUDs that is superior in both quality and content?

It is one thing to advertise the MUD community, but if those people who see the advertisement finds games they feel are bad it wont do much good. I have noticed a lot of people tend to compare the new mmrpgs they play to the first one. How will they compare a MUD to their first mmrpg?

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I think you're generalizing far too much, Aeran. There are going to be quality MUDs and quality MMOs. And then there are terrible MUDs as well as terrible MMOs. Just because the MMO has a professional staff being paid doesn't mean it'll be quality.

Take for example (note I'm not bashing it, I actually play it). You don't even have to play the game to see the "quality" of the game. Go to the forums. You'll see that any post with a quote in it used to "break" the forums. Now they make the quotes escape, except... the slash character still shows up in actual posts. This is even something I could fix. Then you get into the game. Most quests are simply randomly generated. The text bubbles wrap at any character (and not spaces).

I could go on... but you get my point.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Graphical muds are still a fair way behind text-based muds, except for the actual graphics and sound. The good old "book vs movie" comparison still holds true.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Yes but the big graphical MMOs have a lot more players compared to the big text MUDs. What we call a big MUD is small when looking at the large MMOs. I believed a paid staff had larger possibilities to succeed in making a MMO, but I guess that isn't necessarily the case.

What I would suggest is that we try to write down some recommendations for running a MUD. It could include everything from design suggestions for client to quest design to website. Simple re-usable patterns that admins and players have experience help improve quality and that could help new MUDs to get started without repeating past mistakes. The patterns shouldn't be tied to any codebase in particular but more general guidelines. By writing patterns people can also challenge them. Are they correct, and do they add to a text game?

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

The playerbase doesn't represent the quality a game. MMOs tend to have a lot more advertising compared to MUDs.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Agreed. That's like arguing that McDonalds must serve high quality food, because they get so many customers.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Look at this quote from the_logos post:
As I interpret it Runescape didn't have any large budget to do advertising and still the game ended up with a very large pbase. As I remember it there used to be some quote mentioned in the MUD community some years ago. Something like "If you build it they'll come" so it isn't certain that the issue is advertising.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

There are always exceptions though. And yes, there is more to making a game popular than just advertising.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Far more considering that word of mouth is, by far, the most important way for both text and graphical MUDs/MMOs to get new players. Word of mouth happens only because people are excited about the game and think it's worth telling other people about.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I'm not sure what you mean by the book vs. movie comparison. Books are not inherently better than movies or vice-versa, nor are they exploring the same space. Film is better at some things than books and books are better at some things than film. It's an apples and oranges comparison, much more so than text vs. graphical MUDs which are, fundamentally, the same thing just with a different front-end (whereas books and movies are fundamentally different mediums).

As far as text vs. graphical MUDs go, I would have agreed with you 5 years ago. Now, I'm not so sure. Few text MUDs attempt anything that is anything but a re-tread of what's already been done, while some graphical MUDs are pushing boundaries by opening up to new demographics (Club Penguin), taking advantage of the scale of playerbases in a way no text MUD has ever had the opportunity to (Eve Online), tying together real-world and virtual-worlds in ways no text MUD ever did (Second Life, Entropia Universe), and so on. When people talk about advances in text MUDs though, I mainly just hear the same concepts being thrown about that were a decade ago.

I'm not trying to bash on text MUDs (obviously!) but I just don't see too many people actually trying to make more than the tiniest of incremental leaps forward in text MUDs these days.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Bah, Logos you lack faith friend. And Aeron, Good Lord, do you even play Text Muds or are you playing WoW all day talking about Guitar Hero while you kill off a Level 25,000 Dragon?

Let me break it down for you all a little more clearly. GUI Muds will Never replace Text Muds and Text Muds will never replace GUI Muds but we are in competition and we can gain our fair share of the market. How you ask? Here are some ways.

Roleplay vs. Hack/slash
1. Textual interaction on a GUI game. Someone claimed GUI games have textualization which equates to roleplay on a Text Mud. Bah, this is not Roleplay, never was and never will be. Some GUI games "claim" roleplay but they will never achieve it anywhere near an RP Text Mud. Frankly, the market doesn't want it as shown in who plays the games. I guaranty you can't find an Gui Mud that is anything comparative to the environment of an RPE Text Mud.

2. Voice chat. HAHAHA, that is worse than running IM while playing a mud and talking about your dinner or the latest movie while your adventuring. Again, will NEVER be roleplay. What are these people going to do, pretend they are talking in Elven? Let's be serious. Voice chat was just introduced as a way to not have to be on the cell phone while gaming.

3. The players that play GUI Muds are not and never will be looking for roleplay on those games. They are not looking for imagination, they are looking for the bells and whistles of the graphics and sound. Text Muds will never compete or draw people looking for such things except as shown below.

---------
Market Base.

Who are we really trying to bring to Text Muds? I don't know about you, but NW doesn't care about the 12 year old that couldn't roleplay out of a 3rd grade play, but can blow the hell out of a Demi Lord with his prototype Uzi Plazma Rifle.

I'm looking for the more mature audience that wants an in depth experience different than Gui Muds. I'm looking for those that seek to immerse into imagination and fantasy.

Who are these people? True gamers, possibly D&D style table top gamers. Readers of Books, imaginative people, those that attend Shakespeare Festivals, but more over it is people that do not want to or cannot install WoW's Huge Prog on their computer which brings us to item number 4.

4. GUI GAMES are rarely if ever playable from a schools, librarys, or work environments. THIS is owned by our domain of Text Muds. Whether you are a hack/slash Text Mud or a Roleplay Enforced Text Mud. Your target market are people on these computers. Go get them. No matter what Gui Muds do, they will never capture this market like we can. And like most who have played Gui Muds and find themselves hooked on Text Muds, they will then bring the Text Mud home and play.

So, all told, concentrate on target group 4. And while we will never come close to holding a market like the GUI games have now, bear in mind, None of them have lasted as long as we have.

GOOD LUCK and SUCCESSFUL HUNTING!

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Who knows :). Is that how you in general see WoW players(and I assume other graphical mmrpg players as well)?

I agree that GUI Muds won't replace text Muds. What I mean is that they'll simply continue dominate them. We can laugh at voice chat but you need to remember that these things are in their beginning and it will become more advanced.

Your three comparisons are all related to roleplay. While roleplay can be good to encourage is it really something that draws a lot of players? You say roleplay on these mmrpgs is poor, but is that really the case?

Looking at I noticed that, assuming I read the table correctly, the roleplaying realms of WoW are quite popular. It is possible what they are calling roleplay there is some silly odd "roleplay". Still I would be careful with underestimating them.

About case (4) I am not sure if targetting that group is something to be that very proud of. These are people who play text MUDs because they can't use any other alternative without getting caught gaming on work time, or because their computers are too poor to run any "advanced" games. The MUD might be their last resort.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I do indeed lack faith. I'm more into reason!

Was that under dispute? I don't think anyone was suggesting that text-based MUDs would die out. They clearly provide something that graphical MUDs do not (ie a text-based environment).

That's true. The few thousand people who are interested in a hardcore roleplaying environment as I'm guessing you define it are probably better off in text MUDs (or even better off in pen & paper roleplaying campaigns or good LARPs).

You're pretty focused on roleplaying, but roleplaying is only one aspect of MUDs, and is hardly the end-all, be-all. It's just a feature that can be implemented/encouraged to a greater or lesser degree (like combat or fishing or gambling or anything else really).

Further, I'll point out that just as people may pretend to be talking in Elven while speaking in English, players pretend to be communicating in Elven while typing in English (or Finnish or whatnot) on text MUDs.

I also get the idea that you've never actually participated in the activities you deride. Voice chat is used primarily as a tool to efficiently and quickly organize large groups of people. Text MUDs rarely have enough players to require 40 players to work closely together in real-time. Running a high-end raid in WoW without voice chat is painful.

You're definitely incorrect there. Many of them are looking for roleplaying. The definition of roleplaying differs from person to person though and what you consider roleplaying is not what someone else may consider roleplaying.

And they are definitely looking for an imaginative environment.


"True gamers." Anyone who plays games is a true gamer as far as I'm concerned, whether that game is a text MUD, Monopoly, or Bejeweled. The idea that someone who plays an RP game is more of a gamer than someone playing Go is completely arbitrary in my opinion.

What? Have you ever spent time actually watching people play in libraries or schools? I'm guessing not! Runescape and AdventureQuest/Dragonfable (the latter two aren't MUDs/MMOs but present themselves as one) are overwhelmingly present there.

Text MUDs that don't require a client install have an advantage over graphical MMOs that do have a client install, but some of the most popular MMOs do not require an install and are quite playable from libraries, schools, work, and so on. That trend is only going to increase as well with things like the (admittedly probably somewhat weak at first) upcoming Flash 10's inclusion of 3d capabilities.


They can and did years ago.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Yes. I have yet to play one (And have played through most of the more popular (Ultima Online, WoW, Elf Quest) that shows me anything but hack/slash Halo style gamers on them.

Very few computers lack the ability to play advanced games. And what is the difference between "serfing the web" from these locations and playing a mud in spare time?

My main argument is that I laugh at the roleplay and imagination of players of Gui Muds just as quickly as they laugh at the lack of graphics on Text Muds. It is really that simple. But despite the laughter, both games have their appeal and unappeal, pros and cons. And both are viable entertainment.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

You can't be serious with this statement. Please tell me a Gui Mud with voice activation where people are talking in elfish languages or roleplaying over the voice channel. I'd really love to sit in on that.

Perhaps on WoW. I assure you that on NW we have had groups of 5, 10, and 15 regularly and armies of 20 to 40 numerous times for massive adventures, story driven events, and raids. It is chaotic and wild and the players on NW call it "the choas of battle"

This is a good point and perhaps I was a bit hasty on that. I'm likely slightly jaded in that I have looked for RP on such environments and found little to none. I was invited to be a lead programmer on a new Gui Mud built entirely on programming. I declined and after 2 1/2 years and $250,000.00, the project closed when the financers couldn't build the playerbase. Effectively none of the teenage players wanted Forced RP.

Yes and have never seen these types of games played there. The only games I've seen at libraries and schools are Java script driven run from Internet Explorer. Perhaps these types you are referring to?

Name them. Show me the Gui Mud that is playable without an install. I'll be happy to check it out. Again, I maintain that the only ones playable from these locations are Internet Explorer (java) style games.

The reason for this is that powerful GUI games need localized graphics/sound/movie clips, to run. Thousands of Megabytes of data that you can't run effectively through a net stream. While Gui and Text Muds are very similar in O/S operation and data streaming, without the graphics localized you have to stream them to the client. This is a huge bottleneck and would mean that every graphic image or sound you see would have to stream to your client (in this case internet exployer).

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

While we're on this topic, I wanted to add another reason why I enjoy Text Mud World over Gui Mud World and that is the diversification of choices in games. There are literally hundreds of different Muds to choose from and some very unique and creative ones. Far more so than will every be inherited on the GUI side of things. The reason again is that GUI games are very difficult and expensive build, market, and run. You can't maintain one with a 10 player base.

The ability to find so many choices in the Text Mud Realm I think is very imporant.

I just take a quick grab of exciting games here like Archae, God Wars II, Threshold, 4 Dimensions, Armeggedon, Zombie, Dark Forces, Toril, 2 Towers, and others and you see very different, yet compelling environments. And there are hundreds more.

Game On TEXT MUDDERS!

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

That's kind of not the point though. People on RP muds don't type in Elvish, do they?

Don't forget about Shockwave and Flash, though. For example:



This simply is not as a high a barrier to entry as it once was -- see the above link.

I don't see why this necessarily is the case. There is nothing stopping the pool of graphical muds from diversifying more than text muds. In fact I would argue that with the public profile of graphical games so much larger than text games, more talent will flow to graphical muds, and text muds will be less diverse due to lack of development.

Currently I think text muds have two main distinguishing features -- they are text based (duh), and a small team can create an awesome text mud without a lot of resources. It seems much harder to do the latter with a graphical mud, though surely the tools for that will improve in the future.

Nevertheless I think for people who like to read, a developer on their own could create a really unique and fun game with a text mud, and this is what we should stress as the 'strength' of the text mud medium, not that a text game is better at RP or whatever.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

As Ide said, neither are people typing in elvish languages. They're typing in English. No different from speaking in English from that perspective.

Yes, of course you CAN do it without voice chat. It's more efficient with voice chat. It's why soldiers in real battles prefer voice over typing to each other. ;)

Yes, exactly. MMOs like Runescape, which is the most popular MMORPG in the western world.

You're asking me to point you to GUI MUDs playable without an install and then admitting that you're familiar with them. I'm confused. Again, I'll point you to Runescape, which is THE most popular MMORPG in Europe and North America and is playable from libraries, schools, etc. It's not as if using a particular rendering or client technology changes whether something is a MUD or not.

Yes, I'm aware of how this works. I run a company that's developing 3d MMOs (and one that's developing text MUDs). Again, Runescape is the best example here, as what you describe is exactly what they do. Same with Sherwood RPG, Club Penguin, Habbo, etc. Also worth pointing out that Raph Koster's company, , is using Flash as their initial rendering technology for

Betting on ubiquitous access as some sort of advantage for text MUDs is a bad bet. 5 years ago, not too bad a bet. Today, bad bet as Flash, Java, and Shockwave MMOs are only going to proliferate in the face of the absolutely massive success of some of the titles I've mentioned.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I completely agree with that. The only real advantage text MUDs have is that the "rendering" technology hasn't changed in a loongggg time and the content is very easy to create. This has been driven home to me every day for the last 2 years (during which most of my time has been running the team creating ). Text is freaking easy and cheap to build in by comparison. No worries about crap like seams and normal maps and video memory space, etc. It makes me sad how much less we can accomplish even given nearly a $1 million budget than we could on 10% of that in text.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Your comments and specifically the one about voice comm are part of the reasons why MUDs have a hard time attracting players other than MUD addicts.
MUD owners need to be open to new ideas,new features.Voice comm are very important to clans/guilds. The only way MUDs will get new players and attract players from Normal mmorpgs is by adding features such as graphic images,voice comm and not requiring roleplaying or creating secondary worlds for non rp players

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Wrong. 1 out of 5 players (20 percent) came to NW from Graphic Games.

And what kind of comment is: The only way Text Muds will attract players from Gui Muds is to become a Gui Mud. *chuckle*

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

If you are talking about rendering only, you still need the engine on the client side. If not you are spewing rendered images in a stream. You aren't going to get a 350k Rendering engine. AND you aren't going to be able to play DOOM style rendering however. Because you keep spouting about Runescape and its popularity, I'll happily go check it out for the ability to play without a client and no downloads.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Checked out Runescape. They use JAVA and IE (which is the client) which allows you to play from libraries if JAVA is enabled and caching of images, etc. The game is similar to a watered down version of Meridian 59 (A game I played years ago). It is very popular and yes I have seen this played at libraries just didn't know what it was. Not a bad way to bring in 50,000 plus players.

The question then is, would 1,000 of those players (1/50th) join a Text Mud? Maybe. But you'd have to play it a lot longer than I did to figure out why. I'm betting that over 50% don't even know TEXT Muds exist or the pros and cons of them. I surely didn't back in the day of UO and Meridian 59 and I left them both to play Text Muds.

I think it still goes back to the book and the movie. Even if you argue Books and Movies are apples and oranges, they both have reasons to enjoy them or not enjoy them.

What I do not understand is that in a TEXT MUD forum, why are people afraid of the GUI MUDs? The last several posts have been about how GUI MUDs are taking over the genre of Muds. I scratch my head at this. GUI Muds have been around since the early 90's and I see no difference in them today. Are you saying that we should all find 3D graphic engines to turn all of our games into JAVA clients? No thanks. If you are searching for 50,000 players, then yes, you may have to.

I'm not.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

How are you measuring that? You can measure where web traffic comes from, but as far as I can tell you can't measure where your players come from. You don't have a registration process that asks and you don't offer your players a client beyond straight windows telnet, which does not let you correlate in-game activity with a cookie created by a visit to your website, for instance.


--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

50,000? Try 7.5 million.

No, 2% of them would definitely not join a text MUD. And yes, there's no doubt that most of them don't know text MUDs exist and even if they do they're not aware of any potential benefits of playing them.


I agree 100%. However, movies and books are far less similar than text MUDs and graphical MUDs/MMOs. They are not the same medium, whereas a text MUD world is not fundamentally different from a graphical MUD world. Only the rendering technology is different. The actual world simulation can be virtually identical server-side, which is what defines the world itself as opposed to how it is rendered.

Goes back to what Ide talked about earlier: The advantage we have is in development speed, but that's pretty much it. Take advantage of that by working your ass off, but recognize that even though you may have an advantage on the order of a couple of magnitudes, they have the advantage on the order of a couple of magnitudes in terms of human resources.
--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Another advantage is that MUDs have a community where both developers and players talk to eachother. We have MUDs that while they compete to get players to some extent they still cooperate as well here on TMS and other MUD related websites. Most can be very open about what they are developing unlike commercial MMRPGs that often tend to keep a lot of secrets during development.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think it's more than just a good client that matters.

I LOVE text games, but I haven't bothered to play more than an hour or two on the last 6 MUDs I've tried, one of them being an IRE game. For me, having to learn the layout of another new city, an often confusing one, gets really tedious, and sometimes, all the syntax I would have to learn to get involved in a new mud is just too time consuming. I believe it would be even more difficult for someone who isn't already involved in text muds to invest the time necessary to learn as much as is required before you really can get into many of the muds out there. I know that I recently tried a mud where I had almost 30 skills within the first 2 hours of play. That seems like a lot of content, but it's HORRIBLY overwhelming, and I just felt like I couldn't utilize my character very well.

Almost all MMOs start you off with 1 or 2 spells and set you against a bunch of peonic creatures. You get some simple drops, and that's about it. In reality, their games are very simple to learn and pretty simple to master. I think that's why they get a lot of people. Most MU* require MUCH more thought, energy, and commitment to even get started let alone master. Most muds are NOT "newbie friendly" in the way of mechanics no matter how nice and helpful the staff or the players are.

Graphical games also have a huge advantage because you actually have to purchase something up front. So, you drop down your $50, and then you make yourself invest some time and energy into the game you've already decided to buy. Before you've bought the game, you've already sat there and debated whether or not you're going to invest time in learning it. I don't think this is true of people who try muds, and I honestly have no idea how to replicate such a phenomenon. I tend to churn through muds when I sit down to look for one, and I think so do most of the people who try out our games.

Anyway, a nice client helps, but I think you'll find that it won't increase the numbers that much.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

We don't have an automated process for collecting demographics. This is done after a person graduates from immigrancy (usually 6 to 24 hours). It is handled by our staff on a one on one interview process and is very accurate because it is done this way. My 1 in 5 is ONLY counting those that stay in the game, not the 100's that drop in and out.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

54,000 were ONLINE when I played (which is huge). 7.5 million is a complete farce. I researched it. 7.5 million is the # of registrations. Which takes about 30 seconds to register for this game. If NW boasted registrations we'd have over 50,000 players. So let's not get carried away.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I agree with nearly all of this. Forget the client. Make the creation and playability quick and easy. NW is similar to Mina's second paragraph. As an immigrant in the game you start off with a few skills and powers. More things are learned as you go through.

What I don't like about the GUI MUDS I've tried, especially this latest one RUNESCAPE. They make you go through this tutorial that is cumbersome and annoying as hell. As if you are some neophyte to online gaming. This should be opted out of as a choice. Let me play and play now, not spend 12 hours in a newbie area or tutorial.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

You're wrong. They've had 10s of millions of registrations. They've currently got over 1 million paying players and another 6.5 million or so that touch the game at least once a month. They peak at about 200,000 simultaneous players incidentally.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Unfortunately I'm not really sure that's true. Most MUD developers and players never use the forums on TMS or Mudconnector and while that's similar to the commercial MMORPG world in as far as there are no forums or whatnot that everybody's on, there's way more private communication in the MMORPG world from what I've seen. There are a lot of private email lists, for instance, where a lot of the commercial MMO devs talk somewhat freely, and there's way more face-to-face communication as text MUD people don't attend many conferences. At GDC (the biggest game dev conference) for instance, I am usually literally the -only- speaker who is actively running text MUDs. It's disappointing though I understand why too: It's expensive to go to conferences if you're running MUDs as a hobby. I think the text MUD world misses out though, as the text MUD world in general would benefit greatly from more exposure to the wider world of development.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Yeah, that is very true.

That's not an advantage. If you want to convince yourself look at the most popular MMOs. Only one of them (WoW) has an upfront fee. The others are all free to play with optional item sales or subscriptions. The boxed sale model is a huge barrier to entry that is only worthwhile if you have the marketing dollars to push people past that hurdle. Games that depend on viral growth (like Runescape or Habbo for instance) are all about lowering the barrier to entry as much as possible, not raising it.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Let me reprhase that. That's not an independent point but rather an extension of the paragraph above it. When we're talking about games that we're willing to learn to play, we're much more willing to learn a game that we've already purchased. You're right in that the initial decision to PURCHASE the game is a very big deterrent for people, but once it's purchased, the people who've actually BOUGHT the game have already made the decision to learn it. Perhaps this is simply a moot point.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Speaking of deterrents for entry, this one is a pretty big one. Why should your game be entitled to get my personal information? Just because I want to try playing it? How do I know that this isn't some hoax? Personally, I think that this is a big turnoff for your players as I personally would never give your game my personal information in that situation and found Imperian's prying for such information somewhat offensive. If a false information wouldn't work (it did though, when I tried Imperian), I would play something else instead. When combined with IRE pay for advanced acceleration business model, which is explained by this stage, the registration gives a very good point to turn away from the game and go do something else. With the registration, you force people to take a risk and trust you, with no good reason given why they should. I claim that a lot of people will choose not to trust you because of the information prying and go away.

Seriously Matt, asking for people's personal information in order to play a MUD is losing you a lot of customers. Runescape doesn't need to know my name to let me play, why does IRE need such information? You are losing a substancial amount of new players due to this (or so I claim), so I'm interested in knowing why the information gathering is so important that you choose to make a sacrifice of this magnitude. I suggest that you test it by removing the registration and rl questions and have some sort creation of game account instead that doesn't ask any extra questions (meaning the personal ones, character creation questions necessary for playing the game are not counted as extra questions) beyond the required account name, password and character name (if different from account name) and see how much does this affect the % of new players who will create an account after logging in and not turn away before this stage. I claim that your % of new accounts will double after the personal questions are removed as people won't feel that your game keeps a some kind of register that contains their personal information.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Once money becomes involved, you need to retain people's real life information in order to deal with things such as chargebacks, bounced checks, etc. You don't need it initially, but if you're playing a game that isn't free, you will need to supply this information sooner or later anyway.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

What do you mean by personal questions? Are they asking for things like your favorite sexual position and whether you have any identifying moles or markings on your genitalia?

Or are you simply talking about full name and an email address?

If you mean the former, then I agree, that's too much and will turn a lot of people away.

If you mean the latter, well I don't know of many (or perhaps any) commercial enterprises that are interested in dealing with a customer who is not even willing to provide their real identity.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Interesting point. The main reason we ask for personally identifying info is to help people get back their characters when they forget the password (and sometimes even the character name itself if they are coming back after a long hiatus) and just in general to know our customers a little better. It's nice to be able to see a character and think, "Oh yeah, Pete Jones....cool guy." Of course, people can just lie and put in false info (making it very hard for them to get their character back if they lose the password unfortunately), but most people who fill out the registration appear to fill in legitimate details.

Still, your point is worth considering. I'm going to be pointing one of the guys at this and asking him to try a test where we compare conversion % out of registration with current system vs. one that asks for less info. Thanks for the idea!

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I remember I didn't even get past the EULA that was shown on Achaea :o. I don't know if you still have the user agree to it at login(do you store statistics how many disagree?)?

I dont remember why I didnt agree with it but I think it's because of the user content rule where it states that the user automatically licenses content to the developer by participating in the service. It makes the game like a big bottle where everyone adds content to the bottle but gets nothing back.

What made me disagree especially was that there doesn't seem to be any rock solid explanation what counts as User Content. Might it include private communication in the MUD? I am curious if others have had similar problems with that rule that have forced them to disagree.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Is it possible for you to track the numbers on a certain part of newbie tutorial completed? This would be an interesting data for the purpose of understanding why 96% of people who create a character in your game don't like it enough register to keep playing. If the newbie tutorial is divided in missions or parts, you could keep a track on how many people complete what stage of your tutorial. This way you could locate the stages where the dropdown percentages are the largest and see how you could improve that part of the tutorial. If a lot of people complete the tutorial and still won't register, then the registration process itself is one possible reason. By reliably tracking the the subphases, you can guess the reason to be the previously completed part of the tutorial or the part during which the did eventually quit. The numbers for the substages will help you to locate the potential problem phases and with those, the reasons for the players turning away from the game and their magnitudes could be more reliably determined. Some interesting questions:

-How many people were put off before the tutorial introduces your business model? For these, the likelihood of it being the text-based gaming or some other mechanics of the game they didn't like being the reason for leaving.
-How many people were put off after they learned of your business model? Some of these people could be players who aren't too happy about your business model, but part of this uncertain crowd would probably stay if you wouldn't ask the registration questions, which at that stage might feel like a commitment. This uncertain crowd is not sure whether or not it wants to make this commitment. This is one reason why registration could be such a turnoff. I think that some of this uncertain crowd might stay if you don't ask them questions that make them feel like they have to commit into it right now. Some of these uncertain players might eventually turn into paying customers if they stay (and even if they don't become paying customers, they are still useful to you as the free players make the game more attractive to new players and paying players can feel that they are special), so it would be financially sound not to push them too hard for information early on as this might scare them away. You'd need the substatistics to gauge the magnitude of this effect, though.

As a free to play game, you don't really need any personal information about the player to let him play. If you need some information about him for the payments or the delivery of the purchased product (such as IRE credits), you can ask for such information alongside with the sale when it's relevant.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I personally don't see any big issue with them asking for that information. All they ask for is name, email and birthdate(required due to US laws and protection of minors, anyone under... I think 13 can't play). The other questions are things like, "where did you hear about us?" and what part of the world you come from(USA/Australia/Asia/etc) which is usefull for a business to get an idea of where most of their customers/players come from.

Not like it's hard to write down false information, and remember what it was you used incase you need to get a password back or something.

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Very few disagree with it. Our EULA is very standard in online games. You're agreeing to the same thing (phrased differently) when you play WoW, Runescape, etc.

Yes, it includes, of necessity, everything you do in the game. If publishers didn't get a license to all content created (including right down to chat transcripts) in-game, then players could demand that the publishers remove logs of their play from their servers, for instance

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Yep, we do that. The biggest drop, by far, happens at the first stage of the tutorial, as that's when people hit a full text environment. That's the rub really and fundamentally there's not much that can be economically done to 'fix' that situation. When we advertise to graphical MMO players it's inevitable that tons of them are going to drop as soon as they hit text.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

I think one way MUDs have to attract players is to have clients with maps. Why should someone remember where to go back to? why should someone switch between the game screen and a browser map?

Matt, for your games for example. It is difficult to orient in there.
I have posted many times on your forums asking for you and your guys to recode the Nexus and include an automap.

Each MUD should have an automated mapper.
And please don't tell me that CMUD and ZMUD have one.They do,but do you think that players want to waste time downloading new softwares to just being able to play a MUD?
MUDs need to provide features way above of what is expected or thought expected

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Yep, there's no arguing with this. It is flat-out better to have a client for your players rather than making them download 3rd party software, and it is flat-out better for that client to have mapping than not. In any kind of development environment though, whether it's a lone hobbyist or a team of professionals, you have limited human resources and you have to make choices about how to deploy them most effectively. It's sucky that Nexus doesn't have mapping software built-in yet but we have a lot on our plate and haven't gotten to it yet.

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

One way to deal with it is to make an announcement that you are working on mapping for Nexus and have an estimated date. Then update regularly the progress.
In addition,you can make it as an extra feature available for a one time fee or something

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Announcing we're working on something when we're not is not a good idea. As I said, our resources are being put on other things currently. When we have the resources to add mapping to Nexus it'll get added. (and we'd never charge for it either)

--matt

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

Understood.
My point is that you and IRE are the leaders in the MUD community(from what I can tell) and IRE announcing/working on something like that will create a good repercussion throughout the community. Me thinks

Re: Reaching out beyond text MUDs
 

My experience is that the conversion rate is very low when trying to reach out beyond the traditional community sites. Matt, your stats indicate about 19% at the first barrier, fyi the same calculation at the gets about a 30% conversion. Where were those banners run though? Your conversion ratio will always depend on the community you're advertising to.

Anyhow 30% is all well and good, but you're spot on, the huge dropoff happens in the first minute of actually playing - when they discover it's text, when the text whizzes by impossibly fast etc. I completely blame ourselves, we could be so much better at anticipating what problems new users are likely to have and doing something about it. Imo, a which splits the various outputs into several boxes would be the answer, something along these lines or better which Flash and I wanted to develop 5 years ago at wotmud but never had a chance to.

I also understand from some thread I saw elsewhere that you're also in the midst of developing a MUD based on a specific book theme/author. You'll find that helps because there's a base of people who are already interested in that world. There are certain things you should do now to maximise your return from that in a year's time though.

... my request to all you commercial guys would be this. If you could give some GUI based on the standard MUD applet that any MUD could hook up with some minimal config back to the mudding community without strings attached that'd be great. You're all developing these in some shape or form, and whilst it gives you a competitive edge, if the community as a whole doesn't do something to help itself it'll be in deep doodoos sooner or later.

Matt, you're talking a lot of sense in this thread about what works and what doesn't, and although we'll always have our differences because you're commercial, everyone who runs a MUD should be paying attention to this thread. Especially the fact that the data is based on stats rather than gut feeling. What we have are the benefits of analytics and data tracking; I'm also an analytics and data tracking weenie. I'd recommend anyone that doesn't to get interested in this subject and use it to work out how to prioritise your resources (which in the case of us free guys, is time and effort).