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The_Disciple · 08-01-2006, 07:48 PM

I disagree.

The point of the analogy is not that Medievia is a huge corporation crushing its rivals. The point is that it (by design, I would argue) appeals to a wide variety of players, rather than being the perfect game for a much smaller group of players. Thus, the disconnect when a player/admin playing a smaller game encounters Med and can't figure out why anyone would want to play it -- they're instead used to a specialized product designed to appeal to the taste of people like them. I'm sure it's not necessarily as engineered as that -- a guy like KaVir probably sits down and makes what would be a great game for his tastes, the kind of game he'd like to play. I think that instead of trying to be perfect for a few people, Med strives to be pretty good for a lot of people.

At this point, yes, WoW would be the homogenized taste of the masses. If all MUDs, text and graphical, magically came into existance simultaneously today, it would make perfect sense to say that, no, Med is itself crafted to a very narrow taste -- but that's not how it happened. Ten years ago games like WoW or even Ultima Online were not yet a reality, and it's in that climate (further back, actually) that Med was born, grew, and grew its playerbase. That it's no longer a populist choice in the face of more popular options isn't as important as the climate that made it what it was and makes it different from other Dikumuds.

08-01-2006, 07:48 PM	#50
The_Disciple Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 113	I disagree. The point of the analogy is not that Medievia is a huge corporation crushing its rivals. The point is that it (by design, I would argue) appeals to a wide variety of players, rather than being the perfect game for a much smaller group of players. Thus, the disconnect when a player/admin playing a smaller game encounters Med and can't figure out why anyone would want to play it -- they're instead used to a specialized product designed to appeal to the taste of people like them. I'm sure it's not necessarily as engineered as that -- a guy like KaVir probably sits down and makes what would be a great game for his tastes, the kind of game he'd like to play. I think that instead of trying to be perfect for a few people, Med strives to be pretty good for a lot of people. At this point, yes, WoW would be the homogenized taste of the masses. If all MUDs, text and graphical, magically came into existance simultaneously today, it would make perfect sense to say that, no, Med is itself crafted to a very narrow taste -- but that's not how it happened. Ten years ago games like WoW or even Ultima Online were not yet a reality, and it's in that climate (further back, actually) that Med was born, grew, and grew its playerbase. That it's no longer a populist choice in the face of more popular options isn't as important as the climate that made it what it was and makes it different from other Dikumuds.