Oh please - enough is enough. Some of you just take yourselves WAY too seriously, I think. That you sit in judgment of me without knowing the slightest bit about my personality, my motivations or my thought processes in this particular situation is ignorant at best, downright moronic at worst.

If someone came up to you and said: "Hi. We'd like you to create and design a MUD based on the work of your favorite childhood author, who, by the way, has only ever licensed -two- other computer games. It has the potential to amass a huge userbase, about 10 to 20 times the size of your current project, and we've got a unique codebase for you to structure your work on. Oh: and we'll pay you, so you can do this full time - and you know all those annoying student loans you've got? You'll be able to pay those off, so you can take your $160,000 degree and TAKE that $40,000 public servant position you've wanted since you were a kid the moment you're finished with school." - what would you say?

Sad, bitter people.

I've tried all of them and that's exactly what they are. If you'd just openly admit that about your muds you'd probably get less crap from RPI players.

It's not like RPI players make smartass comments when people call their games an RPI.

A piece of bread is a piece of bread...big deal.

Traithe: I don't see what's moronic about stating my opinion...and if I'm a moron then I guess I must be wrong about you being a loss to the RPI world as well.

There's nothing moronic about stating an opinion.

When that opinion is based on little more than complete ignorance and constitutes a very harsh judgment of someone's character, however - especially when they've done nothing but support the community in the past - well, that should speak for itself.

And to be honest, I'm not sure why everyone seems to think the games are "losing" anything. Whatever my decision here, the product of the past three years of my very hard work will remain for everyone to enjoy, and a very capable and excellent programmer who's also been one of our long-time players will be replacing me. In fact, I'd even venture to say that the guy's a better programmer than I am, by far.

If you really truly think I've contributed enough here to merit some respect, and that my leaving to work on another challenge constitutes a "loss", then consider showing enough respect to examine your speculations more carefully before passing judgment from your mile-high pedestal.

I've seen Matt do and say a lot of ridiculous things on these boards, but I don't remember him claiming his games were RPI. Maybe there are more kinds of muds than just RPI and H&S? *gasp*

Heh. That would explain why of the 900+ combat abilities in Achaea, for instance, about 20 of them work on NPCs. That would explain why of the six places Dr. Bartle's book "Designing Virtual Worlds" mentions Achaea, none of them have to do with monster bashing (instead having to do with character skills, PvP combat, economics, organized events, player narrative and political systems). That'd explain why the recent IGDA whitepaper spends no time talking about monster bashing in our games and instead references the politics in our games. That'd explain why less than 1% of our code has to do with monster bashing. That'd explain why there are about 2 items in Achaea, for instance, you can even get from bashing monsters. Yep, we're clearly all about hacking and slashing those monsters!

Get a clue. Our games are focused on player vs. player tension for the most part including combat, politics, religion, war, and so on. There is monster bashing...but it sucks due to the fact that we place little emphasis on it and have spent little time on it.

--matt

Uh, I hope I'm not a sad, bitter person here, as I sincerely congratulated you and all... Getting paid to build a Mu* would be the cream for me. The lyric is kind of sarcasm, in the context of the song... Hope there was no misunderstanding here...

Oh, obviously they'd say 'no', Chad. OBVIOUSLY. Don't you get it man? These people have -integrity-. *pounds his palm with his fist for emphasis*

Of course, it's easy for the ones criticizing you to do so, because none of the ones doing so have any ability and thus certainly don't have to worry that they'd ever be offered an opportunity like this. Thus they're free to scream and cry like little children, safe in the knowledge that they're losers and so have nothing to lose. They can't even lose touch with the real world, since that is a non-existent connection for them. They live in little teenage dreamworlds where mommy and daddy pay the bills and it's "selling out, man" to get paid to do what you love. I hope they have to flip burgers at McDonalds when they grow up, since doing anything enjoyable for a living is apparently a sin. Speaking for myself (and likely everybody else at Iron Realms), I'll continue having the World's Best Job and laughing it up while these ineffectual morons bitch and moan in their personal hells of frustrated, bitter jealousy.

--matt

Thanks for the clarification. I was sitting there looking at the lyrics thinking, "Is he serious or not? Surely that's way too over the top for him to be serious....I hope!"

Btw, other Tool songs that would be apropos here are: "Intolerance" and "Disgustipated."

--matt

Actually, that's not quite accurate. If I wanted to hire a pure coder, I wouldn't have hired Chad. No offence to him, but there are better pure coders out there, with more experience, as he is aware. To a large degree this will be his project. Yes, of course, Iron Realms and by extension I, will have final control, but beyond the high-level design structure, which Chad and I will work on together, most of the decisions will be up to him. In other words, I didn't hire him to be 'just' a coder, and if that's how he looked at his role, the project would fail. He was hired to be the project's producer, which means he's responsible for all non-business aspects of it. The design is at least as important as the code and building a competent and capable team is also of equal importance.

I look at text MUDs this way: Any reasonably competent coder can do just about anything that is needed with them. It's the design that makes or breaks them.

Hey man, you don't have to like our games. I dare say I don't like most games of any type that are released. I mean, aside from any specific things you don't like about them, if someone's broadly looking for a DIKU-style Hack & Slash or a mud that forces you to roleplay or a mud focused on furry sex, they'd definitely be better off looking elsewhere. No game can appeal to everyone...especially text MUDs, which barely appeal to anyone!

What I dislike are the schmucks who spout total nonsense like, "You suck because MUDs were meant to be free." or "Doing something you love for a living is selling out!" and that kind of thing. They're entitled to their opinions, but then, so is someone who believes the earth is flat. Doesn't mean they don't have a screw loose.

--matt

Just one word, "Plastic".

You do have to admit that going from running a game that's fairly obsessive about roleplay to one in which by your own admission it won't even be a factor is a pretty huge change.  In that context, I could understand someone crying sellout.

(Note:  I am not crying sellout.  I'm just saying.)

That said,  I wish you the best with it.

Not a factor? You're definitely wrong there. It's just not the focus. I believe in making fun the focus. Roleplaying is one way of having fun. Roleplaying is neither superior nor inferior to any other type of gameplay in a MUD, and we try to accomodate multiple playing styles, to varying degrees of success.

Roleplaying is just a different way to have fun, as is PvP, Hack & Slash, politics, world-building, RTS, whatever. Nor are any of those mutually exclusive with roleplaying. I'm also more concerned with immersion than roleplaying. I, personally, find it anti-immersive to have to roleplay constantly, but some people will feel differently. Different strokes for different folks, you know?

To say that going from one form of gameplay to another is "selling out" makes no sense.

--matt

I tried that logic twice here. It don't work. No there are only two kinds of muds. There is Diku and there is Diku with numbers hidden, no channels and forced role-playing. There is fact nothing else. It's a lot like wahabiism. Well no.. on second thought that's less strict and more reasonable. Nevermind. RPI Akhbar!

I'll bite. I don't see how roleplay could be anti-immersive. Please explain this to me.

I stand by what I said, though. I mean, ####. People cry sellout if a band that has underground popularity releases a radio-friendly single, or if a professional athlete changes teams. In that context I could easily see someone saying it for a MUD administrator going from a type of game that is, by definition, zealous about any perceived breach of RP to a type of game where all manner of breaches of RP wouldn't be a big deal to the admins.

My guess is the guy's interested in creating things for MUDs that seem cool/fun to him and the RP factor not being so huge to him personally, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of SoI's players didn't see it that way.

Regardless, I suspect that despite any manner of name calling, this will go well for Traithe.

Just out of curiosity:

There is an old thread in the legal section, started by the_logos and titled "Shadows of Isildur, IP thieves should be banned".
()

It just surprises me that someone should choose to work for a person that publicly called them a thief not so long ago. It also surprises me that someone should ask a person to work for them that they publicly called a thief not so long ago.

But no doubt Thraithe has a very forgiving nature. And I admire him for that.

As for the rest, I won't even speculate.