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Anitra · 01-05-2006, 06:53 PM

DonathinFrye is far from alone in his opinions. Several of us have similar feelings, but I guess that without a poll among the Forum members and guests it would be hard to get an idea about how many. (Also, as someone pointed out, and as the list itself is an example of, polls can very easily be manipulated).

We are really discussing two things here, and both of them have ethical aspects.

1. The first is the play-for-perks idea in itself
2. The other is the intentionally misleading way of some commercial muds to present their games as free when in fact they are pay-for-perks.

Here are my own opinions on both:
1. Pay for perks
We all have our preferences. I would never choose to play a Mud with a pay-for-perks system myself, because the idea of buying success for real money, in what should be a skill game, offends my idea of fair competition. I wouldn’t go as far as calling paying for in game benefits unethical. But it is not my idea of a fair game.

However, if other players like the concept, this is of course their privilege. It is apparently a very popular system, judging from the amount of players those types of muds have. But in a way it reflects the general down-going standard of mudders. Today’s players are a lot more impatient and a lot less inclined to put down much time and effort in exploring and learning the mechanics of the game they play. Many of them prefer almost instant success, and if the easiest way to get that is to pay real money for it, that is what they’ll do, provided they can afford it. As a result real gaming skills no longer count in the way they used to. It’s a rather sad development, but it is one that we all will have to learn to live with, because it reflects a general shallow trend in the community.

2. ‘Free’ versus ‘commercial’
Another trend in today’s society, (and one I particularly loathe), is the aggressive and often devious way in which certain companies market their products. Telephone marketing, where you are tricked into accepting something that you don’t really want, is one example of this. Another is the often used scam to fool the potential customers into believing that they are getting something for free that in reality is going to cost them money. Book Clubs sometimes use this marketing strategy. They offer to send you a book for free, just as a ‘sample’ of their product. If you accept this, they send you the book, but at the same time you realise that you also accepted an ‘offer’ to buy one book a month from them, unless you specifically send in a coupon to cancel the purchase. A lot of the people that fall for this scam forget to cancel in time, which is of course what the company is counting on. There are other tricks that these companies use too. For instance to hide the information about the costs in the small prints section, and to make it as complicated as possible to cancel a book, and even harder to opt out of the system once you got roped in. The sad thing is that people actually fall for this kind of scam, I’ve done it myself a couple of times too.

Some commercial muds use similar tricks.
The ultimate goal for a commercial mud is to get as many players as possible to pay as much as possible as often as possible. That is the reason why they go commercial in the first place.

To achieve this goal, and lure as many new players into the system as possible some commercial muds market their game as ‘FREE TO PLAY’. They even put this in their promotion blurbs on the site. They defend this desinformation by claiming that you actually can play for free, and even be successful doing it. To prove this they offer the example of a couple of players that got to the top without paying, while at the same time carefully avoiding to mention the hundreds of others that failed.

The information that the game is actually far from free, if you want to have any chance of competing on equal terms with those that do pay, is a lot harder to find. I took the trouble of checking out the website of Achaea, and discovered that they had disguised the info pretty well, under the heading 'Credits', which to most mudders means something totally different. It took me quite some time to find, even though I was specifically looking for it, because that wasn’t the obvious place to look. The ‘small prints’ trick once again.

To me methods like those are unethical, especially when large parts of the target group are under age. I think that a large, commercial company like IronRealms should be above using cheap tricks like that. It sends a bad message to the community. And it also reminds me of some other shady methods that Achaea has used in the past.

I think the reason why this subject keeps popping up on TMS about once a year is that there is a general resentment among most of the members against unethical methods. Just as the community shuns obvious rogues like Medievia, most people also react negatively to methods that are perceived as unfair, or even unethical.

I think that if TMS, TMC and other Mud list sites would implement the filter and colour code for commercial/non-commercial muds that several people have asked for, it would be a great improvement to the search engine and the list. It would also be much appreciated by a majority of the mud players and mud owners.

For the players of pay-for-perks muds it shouldn’t matter at all, since they have already consciously chosen the system. It might even help them to find other muds of similar type to the one they like to play. (Once you have got use to paying for advancements, it is probably hard to go back to a pure skill-and-time system). So for them too it should be valid and valuable product info.

However, certain owners of commercial muds that label themselves as free vehemently object to the idea. Why? After all, the pay-for perks system obviously is a popular one. So if you believe in your system, why pretend to be something else? Why not market yourself as what you really are, and leave the FREE label to the muds that actually are 100% free? The only reason I can see for the objection would be that the scam actually is a lot more successful than they like to admit, and gets them far more new players than they would have if they labelled themselves correctly.

Once again: It is not the P2P that people react against, it’s the sneaky way in which certain muds pretend to be something that they are not.

So I am asking Synozeer again; please give us a system that actually distinguishes between free muds and commercial ones.

If you decide not to do it, it's of course your privilege as List owner. But at least do us the courtesy of telling us yourself. And please motivate your decision to us. We would prefer to hear it from you, not the_logos. After all, you own the site, not he. Right?

01-05-2006, 06:53 PM	#181
Anitra Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 123	DonathinFrye is far from alone in his opinions. Several of us have similar feelings, but I guess that without a poll among the Forum members and guests it would be hard to get an idea about how many. (Also, as someone pointed out, and as the list itself is an example of, polls can very easily be manipulated). We are really discussing two things here, and both of them have ethical aspects. 1. The first is the play-for-perks idea in itself 2. The other is the intentionally misleading way of some commercial muds to present their games as free when in fact they are pay-for-perks. Here are my own opinions on both: 1. Pay for perks We all have our preferences. I would never choose to play a Mud with a pay-for-perks system myself, because the idea of buying success for real money, in what should be a skill game, offends my idea of fair competition. I wouldn’t go as far as calling paying for in game benefits unethical. But it is not my idea of a fair game. However, if other players like the concept, this is of course their privilege. It is apparently a very popular system, judging from the amount of players those types of muds have. But in a way it reflects the general down-going standard of mudders. Today’s players are a lot more impatient and a lot less inclined to put down much time and effort in exploring and learning the mechanics of the game they play. Many of them prefer almost instant success, and if the easiest way to get that is to pay real money for it, that is what they’ll do, provided they can afford it. As a result real gaming skills no longer count in the way they used to. It’s a rather sad development, but it is one that we all will have to learn to live with, because it reflects a general shallow trend in the community. 2. ‘Free’ versus ‘commercial’ Another trend in today’s society, (and one I particularly loathe), is the aggressive and often devious way in which certain companies market their products. Telephone marketing, where you are tricked into accepting something that you don’t really want, is one example of this. Another is the often used scam to fool the potential customers into believing that they are getting something for free that in reality is going to cost them money. Book Clubs sometimes use this marketing strategy. They offer to send you a book for free, just as a ‘sample’ of their product. If you accept this, they send you the book, but at the same time you realise that you also accepted an ‘offer’ to buy one book a month from them, unless you specifically send in a coupon to cancel the purchase. A lot of the people that fall for this scam forget to cancel in time, which is of course what the company is counting on. There are other tricks that these companies use too. For instance to hide the information about the costs in the small prints section, and to make it as complicated as possible to cancel a book, and even harder to opt out of the system once you got roped in. The sad thing is that people actually fall for this kind of scam, I’ve done it myself a couple of times too. Some commercial muds use similar tricks. The ultimate goal for a commercial mud is to get as many players as possible to pay as much as possible as often as possible. That is the reason why they go commercial in the first place. To achieve this goal, and lure as many new players into the system as possible some commercial muds market their game as ‘FREE TO PLAY’. They even put this in their promotion blurbs on the site. They defend this desinformation by claiming that you actually can play for free, and even be successful doing it. To prove this they offer the example of a couple of players that got to the top without paying, while at the same time carefully avoiding to mention the hundreds of others that failed. The information that the game is actually far from free, if you want to have any chance of competing on equal terms with those that do pay, is a lot harder to find. I took the trouble of checking out the website of Achaea, and discovered that they had disguised the info pretty well, under the heading 'Credits', which to most mudders means something totally different. It took me quite some time to find, even though I was specifically looking for it, because that wasn’t the obvious place to look. The ‘small prints’ trick once again. To me methods like those are unethical, especially when large parts of the target group are under age. I think that a large, commercial company like IronRealms should be above using cheap tricks like that. It sends a bad message to the community. And it also reminds me of some other shady methods that Achaea has used in the past. I think the reason why this subject keeps popping up on TMS about once a year is that there is a general resentment among most of the members against unethical methods. Just as the community shuns obvious rogues like Medievia, most people also react negatively to methods that are perceived as unfair, or even unethical. I think that if TMS, TMC and other Mud list sites would implement the filter and colour code for commercial/non-commercial muds that several people have asked for, it would be a great improvement to the search engine and the list. It would also be much appreciated by a majority of the mud players and mud owners. For the players of pay-for-perks muds it shouldn’t matter at all, since they have already consciously chosen the system. It might even help them to find other muds of similar type to the one they like to play. (Once you have got use to paying for advancements, it is probably hard to go back to a pure skill-and-time system). So for them too it should be valid and valuable product info. However, certain owners of commercial muds that label themselves as free vehemently object to the idea. Why? After all, the pay-for perks system obviously is a popular one. So if you believe in your system, why pretend to be something else? Why not market yourself as what you really are, and leave the FREE label to the muds that actually are 100% free? The only reason I can see for the objection would be that the scam actually is a lot more successful than they like to admit, and gets them far more new players than they would have if they labelled themselves correctly. Once again: It is not the P2P that people react against, it’s the sneaky way in which certain muds pretend to be something that they are not. So I am asking Synozeer again; please give us a system that actually distinguishes between free muds and commercial ones. If you decide not to do it, it's of course your privilege as List owner. But at least do us the courtesy of telling us yourself. And please motivate your decision to us. We would prefer to hear it from you, not the_logos. After all, you own the site, not he. Right?