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Threshold · 04-13-2006, 06:12 PM

How can you actually type those words and expect to be taken seriously?

Are you honestly going to claim that there are not players out there who prefer a completely PROFESSIONAL experience when deciding where to invest their gaming time and money? There is a level of comfort and security a customer has when they know the person providing the service relies upon that service for their livelihood.

Can you really not understand that there is a sizeable chunk of players out there who have more faith in a FINANCIAL MOTIVE (which exists on a commercial, professionally run MUD) than a good will motive?

Isn't the fact that commercial, professionally run MUDs send about 80% of the traffic to TMS pretty good evidence that there are indeed a lot of people for whom this distinction is actually quite meaningful?

The top Hobbyist MUD administrators often claim that their muds have as rich a feature set as many professionally run MUDs. I happen to agree that this is true in some cases. So why do the professionally run MUDs have so many more players? One of the reasons is because some people PREFER a professionally run game to a hobbyist game. They like knowing that the operators have a simple, basic, financial motive to do things like drive out to the server hosting facility at 4am if it has to be done, purchase redundant hardware and bandwidth, and a whole host of other things that are really not necessary, expected, or feasible in a non-professionally run MUD. Your proverbial burger-flipper can't reboot the server if he's pulling a double-shift at McDonalds. Many players are not comfortable with that fact.

You cannot reasonably or logically claim that the distinction of professionally run vs. hobbyist run does not matter to many MUD players. The proof is right in front of you demonstrated by the traffic of this site and the userbases of the games in the MUD community.

Now, I would appreciate it if you would stop engaging in amateur psychoanalysis in claiming I have some nefarious motive for this list. I do not. I was never critical of the free mud list, and there is no reason you should be critical of this list. Both lists serve very legitimate purposes and have value to players with difference sets of preferences. If one list is valuable, then both are.

Can't you just leave it at that? So far, it seems like all you want to do is turn everything into a flame war. That is disappointing.

04-13-2006, 06:12 PM	#16
Threshold Legend Join Date: Apr 2002 Home MUD: Threshold RPG Posts: 1,260	How can you actually type those words and expect to be taken seriously? Are you honestly going to claim that there are not players out there who prefer a completely PROFESSIONAL experience when deciding where to invest their gaming time and money? There is a level of comfort and security a customer has when they know the person providing the service relies upon that service for their livelihood. Can you really not understand that there is a sizeable chunk of players out there who have more faith in a FINANCIAL MOTIVE (which exists on a commercial, professionally run MUD) than a good will motive? Isn't the fact that commercial, professionally run MUDs send about 80% of the traffic to TMS pretty good evidence that there are indeed a lot of people for whom this distinction is actually quite meaningful? The top Hobbyist MUD administrators often claim that their muds have as rich a feature set as many professionally run MUDs. I happen to agree that this is true in some cases. So why do the professionally run MUDs have so many more players? One of the reasons is because some people PREFER a professionally run game to a hobbyist game. They like knowing that the operators have a simple, basic, financial motive to do things like drive out to the server hosting facility at 4am if it has to be done, purchase redundant hardware and bandwidth, and a whole host of other things that are really not necessary, expected, or feasible in a non-professionally run MUD. Your proverbial burger-flipper can't reboot the server if he's pulling a double-shift at McDonalds. Many players are not comfortable with that fact. You cannot reasonably or logically claim that the distinction of professionally run vs. hobbyist run does not matter to many MUD players. The proof is right in front of you demonstrated by the traffic of this site and the userbases of the games in the MUD community. Now, I would appreciate it if you would stop engaging in amateur psychoanalysis in claiming I have some nefarious motive for this list. I do not. I was never critical of the free mud list, and there is no reason you should be critical of this list. Both lists serve very legitimate purposes and have value to players with difference sets of preferences. If one list is valuable, then both are. Can't you just leave it at that? So far, it seems like all you want to do is turn everything into a flame war. That is disappointing.