Bah. As in the note by Richard Bartle, he explains that MUD was written by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex university. So I believe it is safe to assume he had a position in the thought process as well. Let's just read the message.

Which obviously shows that Richard Bartle, 1) Had a sense of what MUD was meant to be like and 2) Had the power to change it if he didn't like it.

If he had a sense that it being commercial was not what it was supposed to be then it never would have been licensed, would it?

----------

I seriously doubt, given where it went from there that they sat there cooking up a MUD and thought: Hmm, hopefully people will someday make mud servers and disallow profits!


As to where it mentions money, it most explicitly states on the bottom that it was licensed to Compuserve, although to still your disbelief:

on Richard Bartle's web page:

Regardless, I also doubt that Roy Trubshaw had no say in the matter, so I don't believe your conclusion really has strong legs to stand on.

For me the purpose of entering a mud is to gain enjoyment from active playing, wherein new opportunities and pathways are opened up by the activity of actually playing. In my opinion this leads to a level playing field, some players may be able to devote more time to the game but the rewards received are always commensurate with their actions within the game. When development is opened up to monetary influence the total development potential of a character is taken away from the game and shared with the real world, it becomes a game of two worlds.

Within a cash free game the potential for character development is strictly governed by a players actions. They do they get, they don’t do they don’t get, the more they do the more they get, the less they do the less they get. Development is strictly tied to the potential opportunities presented by the game. Even role-playing opportunities are affected by the presence of cash bought progression, how could I hope to play a part in high level guild activities if all the current high level guild positions where occupied by players who had bought their positions with IRL currency. I could play my heart out and hope to pass them, but pound to a penny if they have the monetary reserves to attain the position in the first place then they have the resources to maintain it and stave off my valiant gaming efforts. Once IRL cash is introduced into a game it affects every part of the game - not just those associated with skills, equipment, and levels. If I can’t achieve something or attain something then how can I hope to realistically role-play a scenario around the deficient something?

In cash influenced games fair development is severely compromised by the open-ended availability of real life cash resources. The free mud approach is based around a meritocracy model while the cash fuelled mud submits to the doctrines of capitalism. In such a case the game ceases to be a largely secular environment, irrespective of minor IRL tariffs such as internet connectivity and hardware requirements, because it becomes tied to real life factors in a greatly exaggerated fashion.

A situation occurs where the player can use real life circumstances to override the majority of gaming factors. The gross inequality in the real world contaminates the game-play for all involved. This inequality is amplified in games where players are beholden to other players for progression, such as Achaea, a game wherein guild progression is governed by players. I wouldn’t feel as bad if my progression was in the hands of a player that had spent more time actively playing the game than if it where in the hands of someone that happened to earn more money than me in real life. It is hard to engage with a fantasy setting, or consider it a viable gaming challenge between player vs game or player vs player, when your conscience is being pricked by the background scribbling of a pen and the rustling of a cheque book. The IRL overtones are too strong to be denied.

Gaming equality aside, I don’t have a problem with commercial muds, if they choose to widen the gap of inequality within their mud by enlisting outside influences that is their concern - and the concern of their players. If someone wishes to pay 10K for a codebase, while paying continued royalties, possibly submitting any new developments to the parent game, directly competing with the parent game for limited players by virtue of world diversity – which could be usurped by the parent company, then that is their business decision. I personally wouldn’t be comfortable putting my balls so tightly in the grip of a franchise operator, but that’s just me.

My only problems with commercial muds are when they commit copyright theft and when they use their commercial might to increase growth by hogging resources, under the banner of equal provision.

The latter being the way mud sites continue to allocate them free advertising at the visibility expense of free muds, those that frequently contribute to the wider community. It’s a simple equation, increased visibility  = more players, more players = more voting and increased visibility in listings = even more players. A vicious circle leaving free muds victim to the monetary might of commercial muds. As the commercial muds gain more visibility they gain more players and the competitive gap between the two widens to a chasm. Without the monetary resources to get the initial ball rolling from paid advertising the majority of free muds are left for dead in the wake this unfair situation.

Such a situation is akin to expecting a charity soup kitchen to compete on equal terms with a commercial restaurant. They may both serve the same quality of food and offer the same extensive menus, but the playing fields both organisations operate in is entirely different. To bundle them together in the competitive arena, with visibility and corresponding growth the prize, is an injustice to the hard work and charitable contributions shown by free muds. I fully support the giving of free advertising opportunities to commercial muds but grouping the two distinct providers together in one listing is a blatant slap in the face to equality, they obviously aren’t equal in the strictest sense of the word.

------------------------------------------------------
Since someone brought it up – on capitalism

I’m an avid supporter of capitalism providing that equality is maintained and a respect for social movements shown. I do not feel that objecting to doctrines and features of capitalism detracts from my support, it only strengthens the integrity of the system. I may support free trade, but I don’t support unfair protectionism, such as developed economies actively using their established position to inhibit the opportunities for growth within developing countries.

Some of my best friends are capitalists, feel free to ask them about it, I'm certain I paid them enough to agree with me on this.

I'll tell you a story. My dad was born in Transylvania. His family fled to Hungary after the Romanians (who got Transylvania after WWI) started performing genocide on the Hungarians in Transylvania (traditionally Hungarian). He then fought, at age 17, in the Hungarian Uprising in '56 where they kicked the filthy Soviets out of Budapest for 10 days until the Soviets realized the US was not going to come help Hungary (as had been promised by the US on Radio Free Europe). After being captured, tortured, and escaping, my dad crossed the border by throwing rocks ahead of him to blow up mines in a mine field. He came to Canada speaking no English whatsoever and receiving $5, a bar of soap, and a hand towel. Went and worked in the gold mines until saving enough and coming to the US where he went to San Francisco State for a couple years before managing to transfer to Cornell (an Ivy League). Never got a dime from the government for education. Worked 40-60 hour weeks and went to school full-time.

After graduation (age 27-30. I forget.) he worked for a few food service companies (hotel management major) before starting his own company. I didn't see him all that much during my childhood because he worked so much. He made out pretty #### well and has retired with my mom to a 130 acre ranch in the Sierras. This from a poor Eastern European immigrant who grew up with no electricity and spoke no English.

Don't tell me the poor can't better their station in life here, or in Western Europe generally (though America tends to be friendlier to entrepreneurs). America has many flaws and I bet I can speak more cogently on them than you can. But don't tell me that capitalism doesn't allow for the poor to become rich. It happens all the time and the opportunity provided by capitalism is the one great shining virtue of the Western world.


Show me a country in any system in which this isn't true, my man. The leaders are always better off.



Let me guess: You've not done much traveling. Most of the so-called poor in America are much better off than most of the world's population. That holds true for Western Europe/Australasia/Japan/Canada too.

I've been to a lot of places and while some of America's inner cities are an absolute disgrace, people have things like "electricity" and "running water" there. Those are huge luxuries in many places in the world and not surprisingly the places where they are the biggest luxuries tend to be the places where capitalism is the weakest and some sort of autocratic government is the strongest. America pollutes more as a whole due to the # of automobiles here but there are -no places- in America that compare to the worst places in the rest of the world. None.


--matt

Free muds are victims how exactly? The only ones expanding the market for text muds are commerical text muds. What do free muds lose, precisely?

The majority of free muds are left dead in the water because the vast majority of free muds are total garbage.

And incidentally, soup kitchens produce bad food. Free, but bad. You want the best food? Go pay for it. A lot for it. The analogy doesn't quite work in text muds anyway because while people may donate their labor, food costs are an inescapably huge cost in the restaurant business and text muds have no similar fixed cost per unit of "fun" or whatever.

--matt

I know Richard Bartle. He's served on an advisory board of a company of mine. I've had meals with him. I co-edited his book.

Richard Bartle would tell Delerak, without saying it outright, that he's an idiot without a clue. (He's much more polite than I am.)

I'm off to Vegas with some of our volunteers in a few hours so this ridiculous discussion will have to continue without me.
--matt

Diku II (aka VME), created in 1995.  Genesis (aka Cold), created in 1993.  DGD (an LPC driver), created in 1993 (although the LPmud legacy that it was developed from dates back to 1989).  There are plenty of others, but those are the only three I can think of off the top of my head that predate Rapture.

I'm not doubting that Rapture is a good mud engine, but it's certain not the only one with a proven track record of commercial use.

As The_Logos has pointed out, Rapture is just an engine.  Therefore, regardless of development tools, it will still require a large amount of time and effort in order to produce a decent game.

His situation was very different.  And I didn't claim "it'll never work", what I said was that I believe there is not the market to recover that sort of expenditure within any sort of realistic timeframe.  And that's an opinion I stick by, although obviously people like malaclypse are free to form their own opinions (it's their money, after all). I think Fharron has nicely summed up what pretty much amounts to my own opinion on the matter regarding the usage of the license.

But what I said was that there are no licensable mud engines with better commercial track records. Where are the games more successful than ours, written in those engines? I don't know of any muds written in those engines that even approach us in terms of commercial success. If Simutronics was licensing we certainly couldn't make this claim.


Of course it will require a large amount of time and effort. Everything worthwhile does. If it was easy, there'd be a lot more commerical muds. Iron Realms has certainly required an enormous amount of time and effort. More of my life (and I'm just one of a group at this point) than I like to think about sometimes.



My situation was different how? The only differences I see are that it's likely someone licensing Rapture today knows more about muds than I did when I started. I had no clue what I was getting myself into back then. I didn't even know how to code beyond some Basic and Pascal years earlier in high school.

We'll just keep making muds that lots of players like and be satisfied at that I guess. Hopefully Malaclypse will also be doing that.
--matt

Sorry - Stilton has a habit of misquoting, I should have double checked before replying.

However DGD, at least, has an excellent commercial track record. It was purchased by iChat (now Acuity) in 1995 and used to create a powerful chat server, which was licensed by Yahoo! and other well-known Internet companies. It is also used by Skotos Tech, the company which runs commercial muds such as Grendel's Revenge and The Eternal City - not to mention a couple of graphical muds (including Meridian 59, one of the earliest MMORPGs) and numerous online strategy games.

All three engines I listed have been used by numerous muds, some of which are as old as (or older than) Achaea. So while I don't doubt the success of your games, the situation is certainly not as clear cut as Stilton implied.

[/quote]It is also used by Skotos Tech[quote]

To add to this:

Castle Marrach by Skotos Tech runs on DGD
The Eternal City by Skotos Tech runs on ColdC

Kaylus

Malaclypse wrote:
Yes, it’s pretty obvious that we are never going to agree about this

Especially since we apparently are talking about two different things. I am not ‘railing against’ the evil of Capitalism here, and you cannot ward me off by trying to paint me out as some sort of Communist. I live in a capitalist society, I am fairly well off myself, and even though Capitalism may have its flaws, all history shows it to be a darned sight better system than Communism. But that is not the issue here.

What I am talking about is the quality of the Gameplay.

Pharron summed it all up in an admirable way, and I suggest y’all read his post carefully. I’ll just add one example to it. (And note that this example is just to illustrate the point further, I am in no way implying that any of the posters on this list are indulging in deplorable habits like this).

That said; here’s the example:

There is a certain type of Twink Mud, which I am pretty sure all serious Admin – (including Malaclypse and the_logos) would agree is a particularly bad sort. It’s the Mud with cheating Imms/Imps. You know, the type where the Staff members create ‘special’ weapons and equipment for their own mortal and those of their friends, leaving everybody else at a permanent disadvantage.

Now compare this Twink Mud to the practical effects of selling in-game benefits for RL money. To the players that go without, it doesn’t really matter whether the other party got their advantages from cheating imms or by paying $ for it – it still leaves them at a disadvantage. So, to them both systems are equally negative, (even though one is a bit more detrimental from the ethical point of view). Both will lead to exactly the same feelings of frustration and irritation among the players who prefer to play the game in what should be the ‘normal’ way – by achieving these things solely based on their own efforts and skills.

No matter what the purchased item or ability is, it always has a negative side effect. If what you buy is an unusually good weapon, equipment, certain skills/spells or even the ability to rest/sleep (as I’ve seen in another Mud that uses a similar system) it obviously gives the purchaser advantages in a combat situation. If it is a political or social position in the Mud, it’s negative for the Roleplayers. No matter how skilled a fighter you are, the Twink with the extra ‘feature’ will always have an advantage. No matter how good a Roleplayer you are, you’ll never reach the peak of your career, if someone already BOUGHT the top position – or the ability to appoint someone to it.

So, with this system, you cater for the masses, not the good players. And since for every really good player there are 10-50 Twinks who’d gladly pay $ for shortcuts, I don’t doubt that the pay-for-advantages system is popular among the majority of the players. But it is popular at the expense of the really good players, who will most likely leave in frustration sooner or later.

This is of course not necessarily a bad thing, if you have already made the choice of catering to the masses. If the main object of the Mud is for the owner to make as much money as possible, it wouldn’t mean much if a single player leaves, as long as there will always be 10 new Twinks ready to take his place. It probably doesn’t even matter to the owner, if the one that leaves is the potentially best player in the game, since happy Twinks are much less likely to criticize the game or make any demands of improvements than skilled players - and also much more likely to shell out some more $ for new features.

But don’t try to sell me the idea that paying $ for in-game advantages in any way makes for a better Game Quality, whether the main theme of the Mud is Hack’n’slash, Pkill, Exploring, Questing or Roleplaying.

This is actually one of the few advantages ‘Free’ Muds still have over the P2P. We don’t have to worry about profit. It doesn’t really matter to us if we have 20 players or 500 at peak time, so we can stay true to our vision. So if  ‘making muds that lots of players like’ is the goal of a commercial Mud owner, ‘making a quality game that attracts good players’ might be one of the goals for a free Mud owner.

I never called you a communist. I simply believe your views are biased by a belief that MUDs should be socialist institutions. Read more to see what I'm talking about.

To assume that cheating immortals would be received by the players the same way as a commercial MUD is just ludicrous. Games where the admins cheat are often quickly abandoned by the disenfranchised players. Commercial MUDs don't have this problem. I can only assume its because players don't actually consider the two equal.

I'll repeat myself once again, Molly. You cannot buy political power in IRE games. This argument is completely irrelevant. If you could buy political power in the game, I'd actually be agreeing with you right now. Matt made a good point earlier, which I had to repeat for you, and now find myself repeating yet again: You cannot sell the point of the game, otherwise you compromise the quality of the game. The things for sale in Achaea are not the point of the game.

Wow, theres a giant leap in logic... so you're defining "good players" as people who can spend all day on the game, regardless of any other quality? I'm assuming thats what you're doing, unless you think it actually requires skill to achieve in your standard free mud? You also go on to define as "twinks" anyone who decides they want to support a commercial mud? Basically what you've done here is insult the players of commercial muds, while praising the people with the patience to type kill goblin for hours on end. And you still try to claim you have nothing against commercial muds?

Why not? I've always considered it possible to make a far greater game with a few thousand dollars than with no money at all.

And I still maintain that its more fair to offer in-game achievement in exchange for multiple OOC commodities rather than just one. I like the fact that if I have all the time in the world, I can log onto Achaea and earn credits by spending my time enriching the community... or if I don't have time because I'm working all day, I can spend $10 and get the same credits.

I agree with the first part of this statement, that you have more freedom as a free mud owner. There are lots of things designers like to do that players hate, and in a commercial setting you have to steer clear of those. But the end of your statement is once again filled with charged words. It is the goal of both types of MUDs to "make a quality game that attracts good players", its just that free muds can be more selective in their definition of "good players". Both, I should hope, would keep quality as a goal.

- Ryan

[quote=Molly O'Hara,Oct. 01 2003,12:18]:
That's not a very apt comparison.  Players go into commercial muds with a fairly good sense of what it is their money will buy them, whether it is simply the right to play the game, or whether it is the ability to purchase various in-game perks.  Such players shouldn't really feel put out when other players purchase such perks, as they've made the choice to play a mud built around a model that allows this to be done.  Players on a twink mud, however, usually have every right to be aggreived because twink muds are usually not in the habit of advertising the fact that they hand out perks to their favored players, nor do many even choose to admit that they do so when they are called out for it.

What is it about a player spending some money to acquire skills/gear a bit more easily or quickly that makes it any worse than a player with no life being able to acquire more skills/gear in a shorter time than those of us with jobs and families?  After all, on most muds, players with oodles of time on their hands will generally have a significant advantage over those with little time on their hands, regardless of these players' respective playing skills.  If you play 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I only play 15 hours a week, it won't matter how good my playing ability is -- on most muds I won't be able to keep up with you in any meaningful way (at least as far as skills and gear and other likely purchaseable perks would go).

Well, it wouldn't make much sense to pay money for something that decreased your combat abilities.  I don't really see how this is a negative.  Whether players opt to purchase some advantages or not, they know what the deal is.  If they don't like it, then that mud isn't for them and they should probably go somewhere else.  If they don't mind it, there's not a problem.

But, it would seem to mostly be the commercial muds with straight subscription schemes (Gemstone, et al) that really cater to the masses.  And, while I am certain that a game like Achaea would like to bring in as many players as possible, it still seems to be a rather exemplary mud (and, no, I am not a player there) that doesn't appear to be cutting corners on quality and imagination just to cater to the lowest common denominator.  I'm not really sure what qualifies as a 'good player', but it would seem odd that such a definition would exclude players solely on the basis that they might choose to spend a little more money and a little less time on improving their characters in some way.

Absolutely.  And not having to worry about profits will be liberating to some mud owners and will allow them to pursue their hobby in potentially rewarding ways that they might not have considered had they been more concerned about the bottom line (then again, people who sacrifice vision for preconceived notions of what sells, probably shouldn't be trying to make money on creative endeavors anyways).  On the other hand, it also creates its own set of worries.  A free mud may not have to worry about profits, but it still has to worry about costs.  It has to worry about finding coders and builders who are creative and mature and able to set aside sufficient time for something which isn't going to put any food on the table (that's the real bitch about hobbies -- when you have the time for them, you usually don't have the money; once you get to the point where you have the money, you generally no longer have the time.)

Edited to fix a bunged-up quote.

First, for whatever it is worth, let me qualify my response by disclosing that I am associated with Iron Realms so my views are somewhat biased.

In any event, the business model of Iron Realms has always impressed me as being not only commercially successful but fair to players as well as providing an enriching gaming experience. The crux of the business model is that it costs nothing to play but players do have the option of buying credits for in-game benefits. I understand the argument against this model boils down to the benefits that players receive for credits skew the game play itself. While this may seem meritorious on its surface, having been involved in Achaea (the Iron Realms' flagship MUD) since its inception, from mortal to admin, I have reached a different conclusion and hope to address what I see as myths that seem to perpetuate on these boards.

MYTH: Players must purchase credits to fully play the game.
REALITY: This is downright false. The world is fully open to those who choose never to purchase credits. One of the aspects of the business model that I think is rather financially egalitarian is that a player can never purchase credits, or purchase credits at the rate he or she can afford (be it $10 per month or $10 per year). In a nutshell, players can decide for themselves what the game is worth and invest in their character accordingly at the rate of their own choosing. Personally, this appeals to me as opposed to subscriptions where one must pay per month. Perhaps I can afford something this month, perhaps I can't (or don't feel it's worth it). Either way, I can still play.

MYTH: You can only get "advantages" through purchasing credits.
REALITY: Players can also, through dint of hard work, make gold through quests, bashing, or commercial endeavors and use that gold to buy credits from other players (there is a thriving credit market) and in turn acquire those same "advantages".

MYTH: Many players resent those who take the "shortcut" of purchasing credits.
REALITY: Interestingly enough, I don't see a lot of that. I suppose those players that have a real problem with this simply leave the game and I never hear from them which is fair enough. On the other hand, the game play itself is set up so one's involvement or enjoyment of the game is not limited by whether or not one has credits.

MYTH: Players can "buy" high positions in the game.
REALITY: Uh, no. I'm not sure where this came from but players who spend no credits have the same opportunity to rise in the political or social realm as those who buy credits (being that political/social positions are democratically elected by players). Strength of personality is much more important than if you happen to have a nifty sword.

MYTH: The great players will not stay, only the mediocre.
REALITY: I personally see those I consider great players who stay, some purchasing no credits, some purchasing only a few (the majority really), and some purchasing a lot. I suppose one could argue that the really great players only stay at MUDs where the "playing field is level" and thus I never see the really, truly greatest of the great, cream of the crop, top-drawer elite players. Don't know how I can possibly respond to that except to say that it's my loss, and please forgive me if I still enjoy Achaea and those who enthusiastically play there. I think I can live with that.

Ya know Molly, your post is rife with insults against the player community, and I tend to take that sort of thing personally, since I'm a player.

I'm a quality player, involved in a quality game. I came from the pay-to-play world (the legitimate one, not the code-stealing one), and I take issue with your snide remarks, no matter how well-intended, in comparing twink muds to pay for play.

In GemStoneIII, you can - and do - get in-game benefits for real life money. The more you pay, the more you get. Most of the things you get have no affect on "levelling up" or advancement, and the things you can, that do, are usually just a greater opportunity to win something spiffy and uber powerful at an in-game auction. You can't attend certain auctions or merchant shops unless you're a "premium" subscriber, which costs extra. They even give you incentives to BACK-pay 6 months worth to allow you the privilege of attending these things.


GSIII caters to the masses, and they do a damned good job of it. Achaea does a great job with it as well, but the difference is, and I"ll repeat what everyone else has been trying to say here:

ANYTHING YOU AQUIRE IN ACHAEA FOR CASH CAN ALSO BE ACQUIRED FOR FREE AS LONG AS YOU HAVE THE TIME TO SPEND ACQUIRING IT.

Further, nothing that Achaea provides for cash allows a character to advance automatically, or become powerful automatically. You cannot buy a nobility title with cash. You cannot buy your way out of a fight with someone stronger than you with cash. All of that has to be done in-game, and no matter how much real life cash you sink into it, it won't mean diddly if the guy you **** off is bigger than you.

I don't even play Achaea, nor do I have any interest in it, and never did. But this railing against pay-to-play games that are working legitimately, and successfully, only contributes to furthering the gap between the community and itself.

As for the Rapture engine, I think it's awesome that the company has developed it and is offering it to whoever's willing to pay for it. Beats the heck out of code-stealers clutching open source and claiming it as their own. It also encourages other code creators and engine-owners to watch the trends, to see if this could be an option for them. Obviously people who write code are extremely possessive, and with good reason. This is merely another option, and I applaud its creators for offering it.

KaVir:
If you'd bother to look at the thread, you'd find that your ad hominem here is, as usual, false.  I have not misquoted anyone.  The only mistake here was logos', who thought that your response to me applied to his statement, which led to your mistake in attributing the misunderstanding to me.

Please don't claim that making a more general statement than a previous poster, without stating or even implying that it was said by them, constitutes misquoting.

Edit: logos' original quote was "other available mud engines available that have proved themselves to nearly the same extent in a commerical environment". I did include the phrase "as logos noted" in my post which mentioned only some possible particulars of a commercial environment. Your later qubble with logos over successful vs MORE successful certainly has nothing to do with my post, though, and I don't understand your recurring need to flame me.

Commercial license terms are also either unavailable or hard to compare to the engines/codebases you cite.  As I understand it, DIKU II for example is a codebase, while Rapture is a language and compiler/interpreter with native socket support.  DGD/LP would be an interesting comparison if you have a pointer to license terms?

Cold was the one I had foremost in my mind when I was posting.  Very nice codebase to start from for a team with a strong coder, but I don't know who's using it besides Genesis.  DIKU II- I know about it, but I didn't know if anyone was actually using it.  DGD- ok, that one I forgot about.  I'm open to correction on this point- that's why I ended my paragraph with a question about whether I was unaware of something I should be.

On the other hand, logos is correct in pointing out that success is relative and Achaea now Iron Realms seems to be doing extremely well relative to other ventures.

If I were to object to Rapture, it would probably be on technical rather than license grounds- I just don't like the language.

Unless you're suggesting that Rapture would require more time and effort to develop content for than another engine/codebase, I'm not sure how this is relevant.

How so?  All the differences I can think of make his success seem less likely than malaclypse's, not more.

Then consider my comment modified to "You're claiming that his business model will not generate a positive return on investment in a reasonable period of time to a person (logos, not me) who has already made that business model work, and shows every sign of continuing to make it work."

I doubt if many of the readers here see a significant difference between these two phrasings, other than that the new one is a lot less concise.

Stilton

Since the majority of recent posts have been dedicated to correcting misconceptions, I'm going to assume that everyone understands the business model IRE developed.

Returning to the topic, I'd just like to say that our development process continues to speed along with Rapture. In fact, while our detractors have been busy disseminating misinformation, has already coded rooms, movement, communication channels, emotes, rudimentary OLC, object code, and quality assurance systems. As you can see, we already have enough functionality for a pretty advanced talker.

Keep in mind that this was all done in our spare time, both myself and my programmer are busy people with multiple commitments, including full time day-jobs.

- Ryan

To answer my own question:
(secondary sources like muddev posts)
Cold muds also include The Eternal City and holotrek.

DGD is apparently licensed by Skotos

There are a few DIKU II but they tend to be listed as VME rather than DIKU II, which is why I missed them in the past.

Stilton

Petty (and pointless) arguments like this one are what have pretty much destroyed any sense of community on these forums over the last year.

What used to have lots of posts now has almost nothing worthwhile but people bitching at each other, trolls for players and staff, and utter crap.

Seriously, shut the #### up already.

I agree with Terloch. The fact that a simple promotional post has led to this 7-page back-and-forth shows that some folks need to think things over more.

It's fine to argue, I think. But unless you want your promotional post used as a jumping-off point for a flamewar, in my opinion we should try to keep the arguments in other forums.

As a player of many muds and of Iron Realm's releases, I would have to say that the quality of gameplay in Iron Realm's releases far exceeds any other realm in which I've played in.

What disturbs me Molly is the broad strokes you're painting IR with when from what you're saying you sound as if you have never played their games. Why does IR deserve your bigotry in this?

Leigh
CTO

I completely agree with you. Unfortunately every time an Iron Realms game (and by extension I'm assuming my company will face the same) gets brought up, a few vocal individuals come out of the woodwork to start denouncing them.

This places us in the unenviable position of having to choose between feeding the trolls or letting their misinformation stand. Perhaps in the future we can just refer them to this thread.

- Ryan

If you can buy credits with real life money. And trade credits for gold to players who don't have enough real life money. Then you can become rich. Is this not the first step to a "high position?"

After all, if you are rich IC, you can buy whatever you want. And probably bribe, and buy your way to the top of any clan/guild, all with RL money. Then again my train of thought comes from a totally roleplaying background, so I wouldn't know how Achaea or whatever other mud that does this, uses gold/credits in character.

-Delerak

The fact that you only mention that now when I bring it into the discussion half-proves that you have probably never even met the guy.

That means nothing.  He never intended to make money off of his creation.  That is what we were argueing.  Not whether it was sold to become a commercial product.  That means nothing.  The original creator of the mud never intended to make a dime off it, therefore it was never intended to be a commercial product.  And how much did they make?  I think they made a couple hundred or something.

-Delerak

That still means nothing toward the uh...debate, heh.

-Delerak

My, and I thought I was a cynic! Well, that is an interesting scenario you raise. From my experience in Achaea, this has never happened, but that's not to say it couldn't happen. However, politics are taken rather seriously in a roleplaying sense and running through that scenario, I can assure you that it would never happen. From a purely practical standpoint, the world has a large player base and, just looking at a guild (not a city which is larger), you are talking about "bribing" hundreds of guildmates. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you are rich enough and motivated enough to "bribe" the players for a guildmaster position,  I can just imagine what the reaction would be.

First, you couldn't possibly keep your efforts at bribing hundreds (or even dozens) of players secret (we all know how well secrets are kept on MUDs). Some rival, somewhere, will get wind of it and begin a campaign against you, calling you out as the louse you are trying to "buy" votes. Second, the guild itself will come under scrutiny of the city it resides in (if not the entire world), and turn your election campaign into a public relations fiasco--making Arnold Schwartzenneger and his orgies look like a bake sale. This is a virtual community which reflects social organisms found in the RL--imagine what the media would say if Schwartzenneger offered $1,000 to every voter who voted for him. Yes, you'd be facing that. The guild would become a laughing stock, the city would exert pressure against you. More likely than not (and I could almost guaranty) that you'd be, at the minimum, drummed out of the guild, perhaps even your city. You'd be a pariah, an outcast, albeit a rich one.

Boy, just thinking about the roleplaying repercussions sends shivers up my spine! I hope it does happen one day so I can witness it!

Oh, I should mention if one does want to be "king of the hill" in a clan, one can buy a personal clan for gold (not credits). Anecdotally, I witnessed a young player who never invested any RL money in Achaea buy a clan upon an idea he had (thus, through force of personality, convincing others to donate gold for his "cause"). Just a case on point of how roleplaying (or text charisma or whatever you want to call it) is more important than how much one spends RL dollars on a game.

The_Logos stated "Certainly there are other mud engines available. However, there are not, to my knowledge at least, other available mud engines available that have proved themselves to nearly the same extent in a commerical environment"

Which you then reinterpreted as "I'm quite aware of many good bases to work from for a hobbyist.  As logos noted, none of these have a proven track record of years in a commercial environment supporting several hundred simultaneous users."

My response was appropriate to your version of what he'd said, but rather irrelevent considering what he actually said.  That was the point I was trying to illustrate.

Diku II (aka VME) includes a fully embedded scripting system called DIL.  I have no idea how powerful it is, but I do know that it covers the creation of things like skills and spells, in addition to the usual OLC-style functionality.  Pricing is $99.95 for a non-commercial license, or $899.00 for a business license.  No royalties, although you have to pay for upgrades (if you want them) after the first year.

I've no idea, sorry.  You'd have to contact Skotos Tech I guess, as they appear to hold the exclusive rights to it now.  I know they posted a draft non-commercial license here, which might give you a rough idea of what to expect:

You've already answered your own questions about Cold in a later post.

You responded to my comments about the cost by asking how long it would take a company to develop an engine themselves.  The relevence of my above point was that I don't NEED much information about the engine to know that it will still take a huge amount of time to develop the mud.  Getting an engine is certainly a headstart, but shouldn't be compared with the development of an entire game (as you implied by asking about the progress of my own project).

Stilton asked earlier in the thread how long it would take to develop an engine completely from scratch.  Well, it took us around five weeks to attain the above level of talker functionality (ie create a character, walk around rooms, talk to people, etc) under similar conditions (two programmers in their spare time).

And yes, I'm sure that your engine provides lots of other nice functionality as well.  But the point I'm trying to stress is that the engine is a pretty small part of the overall mud.

One last point: I have no problem with people running commercial muds.  My interest here lies purely with the licensing issues of the Rapture engine (which was after all the original subject of the thread).  And if people don't want such issues discussed, posting them to a discussion forum is really not the best thing to do.

As CTO of Persistent Realms, we got that accomplished in a week and a half of my spare time. I'm the only coder who is contributing in the initial stage.

I'd have to say that working with Iron Realms has been an absolute pleasure. We have a fantastic level of contact with the guy who wrote the engine who has been able to clarify any issues we've had the few times we've had problems, and coding for the engine has been by far the easiest and quickest process for any mud I've worked with.

For the record: Working with the Rapture Engine has been an absolute pleasure.

- Leigh

KaVir:
Yes, topic drift.  Since we don't have the data to quantify the success of companies like Skotos relative to Iron Realms, it was more interesting to me to find out to what extent other businesses had survived on licensing vs writing their own without quibbling over the level of success.  I just didn't think that I deserved the gratuitous insult.

But VME still isn't quite like Rapture, is it?  Quite a bit beyond sockets is hard coded?

True, but if you've got 5 tasks to do, saying that it will take a long time to get them all done doesn't prove anything about whether it's better to do task 1 yourself or sub it out.

I agree that coding is only a small part of the job.

True, but $10,000 is also a pretty small amount of money when considered as part of startup costs for most businesses.

Many businesses would consider $10,000 pretty cheap to move your opening date closer by a month, and the royalties a cheap way of getting continuing bugfixes/development taken care of.

I wish them luck- any successful venture, hobbyist or commercial, can only help attract people to the community.

Stilton

Um...

Questions come to mind at this point.

Have any of the major players in the current arguments published philosophical or business-oriented papers regarding these matters? I'd be interested in collecting a bunch of links to pages all over the web where people can read full, unadulterated points without having pieces of them picked apart in an ongoing debate (one of the problems with the debate model, imho).

Also...there DOES seem to be a bit of a gap in the entire debate so far...

People who build commercial games want money. This is why they're "commercial" games. Because they want money, the implement parts of the game that use RL money as a means of advancement.

On the other hand, a game that is inherently unbalanced or creates major problems with the structures that use RL money will not be played. Games in general that are unbalanced and allow for social, material, or any other category of trend that players don't like will not be played. So it's in the creator's best interest to create a game that is balanced overall. The argument that "paying for MUDs is a bad thing"....most of you probably don't run out and wait at the door for HL2, nor do you pay for any of the other (in my opinion) limited FPS games on the market right now. But ask yourself: why does anyone?

Also: players who play commercial MUDs have more invested in a game than time. Time is an interesting commodity; those who have a lot of it rarely value it at all, and those with none of it eventually end up wanting it more than money. Money is an entirely different beast. For some ridiculous reason, everyone wants it, and all they can get, regardless of how much they have currently. But SPENDING money is where it really gets interesting; when you spend money, you expect results. Whether its the thrill you payed for at Six Flags, the screw you paid for doing its job, or the credits you buy in Achaea holding their worth and still be useful in 6 years (because Achaea is still around in 6 years, a rare thing for a MUD nowadays), you EXPECT results. So you do more to make sure you get the results you want.

Logos and his administrators keep the obviously destructive influences away from their normal pbase, and in turn the normal pbase keeps itself pretty happy by being a (relatively) mature group and finding excitement in their gameplay. How is this different from CS, UT2003, Warcraft, or any other game you pay for? Is it because it's not a one-time payment and then thousands of hours of fun? (Because it would seem that this could be the model you choose for Achaea....) Is it paying for the games at all? Is it the notion that time is worth more than money, or money is worth more than time? (Because both seem to be useful and allow for the acquisition of power on Achaea, maybe not equally, but that was never a debate as of yet)...

Instead of bickering, I would strongly encourage those of you out there who have a serious and vehement opinion out there to go publish your feelings and make points (even without valid references -- Kavir, we're not all engineers. You're allowed to have a gut feeling every once in a while...I think you actually did earlier in the discussion with regards to the feasibility of making a MUD profitable in 6 years) that we can all view. I'll volunteer to create the website and order the points of view in as objective and comprehensive a way as I can manage, and we'll be done with the #### thing.

Meanwhile, congrats to Iron Realms for being a business that didn't tank in the current economic setting. Hope we eventually see some OSS from you sometime soon so we can start increasing the overall quality of MUDs again.

-Visko

I’m just an ignorant yet often accused too vocal an old man and I’ve read this nine pages of combined rant, whine, intelligent rebuttal and scathing innuendo and I’m frankly amazed intelligent people miss the point so often. I firmly believe we are two different disciplines, hobbyist and entrepreneur and while I believe those who run graphical or text MU*s for personal profit are exploiting the children of today, but I actually applaud them for success at it since somebody has to. I’m even more impressed they stoop to share the plethora of administrative, qualitative and historical knowledge they’ve garnered over all the years with we, the deprived hobbyists.

Let me elaborate a tad before I ruffle too many feathers. I mean deprived in the perspective that we don’t work from analyst driven models of money making ideas, paid coders nor elaborate degrees and training in interpersonal social skills. I’m not saying all of you do, but you should and I applaud those with the vision to take advantage and make money, but you transgressed the hobbyist stage IMHO. Our, the hobbyist focus is perhaps a bit different in that we have a vision of a world and whether by kink, twist or persistence, hope to make that vision a place that attracts players who also enjoy our vision. That’s part of the challenge to us. Would I want someone to pay us/me to share that vision? #### YES! Do I care if they do? Nopes, as a hobbyist my over 30k hours in seven years online building and managing has the reward of seeing happy people, amazed at certain things, whining about others, but typically enjoying themselves. In my experience, even those that dabble in the realms of Everquest and Aechea eventually return home to our Phoenix after a while because it’s ‘HOME.’

Molly tried to explain but sadly she didn’t really articulate her issues well because of perhaps two different frames of reference, exploitive versus nurturing. I do share her views in most respects but I hope I’m articulating them somewhat better. Players play out of a sense of wonder at abilities given the medium, visualization or dream of reality substitution, or the illusion of another world where you can be that knight in shining armor or hero of the realm that real life circumstance has relegated most to only dream of. In a Mu*, we’re all equal to begin with, none of the social inequities that determine “which side of the tracks” you belong on, regardless of country of origin, upbringing or any of the other social stigmas applied. ANY application of affluence in real life taints that persona to a great extent. I’ve heard and believe there are “time” payment ways to compensate for lack of affluence in quite a few places, but isn’t time more valuable to reach the same goal and not equal to coins, the modern shortcut to notoriety? I wouldn’t really consider that a concern of entrepreneurs since the dollar is the bottom line goal, but it exists and something the valued hobbyists I know concern themselves with. I’ve often kicked someone offline cause they needed to get their buns to school. Silly of me, I know, but they are my kids and I’m not a Nintendo or Playstation game since I care.

Idealistic, altruistic too much, perhaps, but we are successful in our limited perspective and definition of ‘successful’ as are Molly and KaVir and Brody and Ntanel and Samson and quite a few others. I’m perhaps a bit jealous that I can’t earn money for something I love to do, but oh well, I’m happy with the other rewards and I get graduation announcements as well as personal notes from our players like we are all members of a family.

All obeisance and attaboys to Logos et al, I’m proud of you and jealous. I hope Rapture rewards you well and maybe perhaps you can contribute some of that amazing profit back to the rest of us to promote the hobby.