[dark acacia]

Ever play a game for quite a while, only to take an extended hiatus for any reason, and then just find you can't return to it no matter how much you want to? Sure, the game's still standing, but it's been such a long time that you've forgotten so much about how your character plays and how the world works that it would be better to just make a new character and learn the game anew.

You resolve to make a new character to get back into your game again, until you remember what the newbie levels were like. Grinding rooms for exploration experience, dealing with really long tutorial areas, needing to solve many tedious quests that don't get you much, or sitting through many long nights playing a character (any character) who won't hit its stride and be a useful party member until after days and weeks of slow and monotonous time investment.

Player retention is an important part of keeping a game going, but I also think that player reclamation is something that shouldn't be overlooked. People have lives outside of the game or things that take them away, but it is the memory of making a new character that can do a lot to prevent people from returning to a game they fondly recall playing.

There's a number of RP-optional games that I'd love to get back into just for the fun of party PVE mayhem. Every character had a class combination, and the classes each provided skills and spells that were different enough from each other and unique to stay interesting. They weren't the trains/practices games you see everywhere these days with the trip and the dirt kicking. The reason why I don't go back is because of barriers to re-entry. I don't want to grind rooms for exploration again, and I don't feel like doing nothing but soloing for days or weeks before I'm strong enough to join a party. I did all that before and it wasn't fun the first time, and it just doesn't feel worth it to go back and do it all over again.

I guess these games can't do a lot about the way they are now. How do you eliminate exploration in a game where people have earned millions of experience points just by going from room to room in every city and dungeon?

[Malifax]

Yes, unfortunately.

[plamzi]

This "problem" has been solved by market forces. You could try to post a classified and purchase a developed account / character for a game you think you'd enjoy if you could "fast-forward" to the endgame. Try to be fair in your offer, or you'll just be wasting everyone's time.

My guess is I'm going to get anathematized for saying this by folks who don't "believe" that time = money in the world of MUDs.

[dark acacia]

I don't think I ever played a game where this was allowed.

[Ghostcat]

How would that even work?

Random new person takes over the existing character? What about ongoing RP, or character traits?

[dark acacia]

It could work in a game where role play is unimportant. I remember that Dragonrealms thread we had on TMS a while back when it came out how people paid for college with the characters they'd made there.

The thing is, a lot of MUDs these days don't allow the sale of characters, even if there is no role play enforcement on any level.

[SnowTroll]

That's a deceptively hard one to enforce, actually.

"Excuse me. You've been consistently logging on from a different IP address all the way across the country. You're in trouble for violating our rules."

"I moved."

"Oh. But some people told us you've been acting differently and they think you're a different person."

"Moving is stressful. Tell my former friends to suck it."

"Oh."

[dentin]

We allow it on Alter Aeon for exactly that reason, but we've had to add a transfer fee to limit low-value transfers. The transfer fee came about because there was a spate of character selling/transfer of noob chars that caused a lot of confusion, and even a small transfer fee kills those trades in a hurry. The transfer load is low enough that I do it manually, and the rate has only been around one per month.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD