[Kereth]

Not disagreeing with Aeran directly here, but I feel it important to chime in on this concept. When approaching this idea, what we need to realize is that while MUDs are nice, and they have their niche, to say that graphics in games are a passing fad, or that games like this will naturally endure forever of their own merits is to be like the people from the first half of the last century, who were saying the exact same thing about sound and color in movies. Surely, the classic medium will win out, no? People want to be able to just imagine for themselves what actor's voices sound like, or what color their hair may be. You can paint the pictures and add noises all you want, but nothing beats the power of imagination, right? Unfortunately, that's wrong.

Now, the seeing-impared are a concern in this matter, but just as we have not gone back to silent films to help the deaf, it's unlikely that more than a handful of MUDs can afford to cater to the blind minority, but by all means, any who can manage to run with the equivalent of available subtitles should do their best to do so. I have partied with blind players before in RetroMUD, though only one, and I haven't met any that professed being unable to see elsewhere. Few MUDs are completely friendly to the blind, and indeed, any that takes advantage of the traditional ascii overworld map may run into issues, let alone graphical interfaces on the client and so forth. I'm all for making game adjustments to help those with disabilities to be able to play, but if a MUD designer finds some great feature they can add to their MUD that sets it appart from all the others and gives it added appeal, albeit at the cost of alienating a minority of players, that really is their call. Just the same, if a coder desides that their time of running a MUD is at an end, and it's time to move on to some other kind of game, that's their call too, though we'd all be sad to lose them.

-Kereth, hoping he didn't ramble off topic too far in there.