Furthermore, who are you to tell other people how to run their muds?
Anyways, if you know a MU* rewards it's players for advertising, or voting, like every single MU* in existence has done and will do, then it's time that most of you learned to act like an adult. This does not mean repeatedly posting threads about the same problem; it means learning from your experience, and more importantly, shutting your #### mouths about it already. Move on; it's such a petty, pathetic topic. Don't downplay the MU*.

Synozeer?  He's the person that runs this site.  He can't tell people how to run their mud, but he can certainly refuse to list those who don't follow the TMS guidelines - just as a mud owner can refuse to let people play if they don't follow the rules.

The words "gross overgeneralisation" spring to mind.  A small handful of muds cheating is not the same as "every single mud in existence" cheating, nor is "they do it, so why can't we" a valid excuse for not following the guidelines.

It's amusing to see that some people enjoy adding to threads that have taken no interest at all in reading.  You assumed correctly that the owner of Achaea's opinion ( and my own as well) were not contrary to the facts, in that there was no rule you could not give incentives for votes.  I *HAVE* read the thread and nowhere do I see that mud claiming any type of justification after the rule was introduced.

Apparently you have some type of information he is not privy to then.  I'm sure he would be quite happy if you were to share it with him.  I'm sure many other forum members would be quite happy to hear about it as well, nothing quite like some good dirt about other muds.

It seems to me they have fewer votes than before. Further, the first voting session after the rule change is not indicative of anything, as players are still used to voting. The real test will be 6-8 weeks from now. Until then, it is too early to tell.

When Merentha started to be listed on this site in 2001 we were consitantly #1 or #2, and on the rare weeks #3 on the list.  Then, because I personally feel any advertisments on your MUD's webite is somewhat rude and should only be done if it somehow rewards your mud (maybe you need $ to run it).  So anyways I took our main ads for TMS off, and concequently fell from #2 in the lsit to about #80.

This is what I found:
1 - our web stats halved, we started getting only 1/2 the visitors
2 - our playerbase and the number of new players we were getting did not change

Conclusions: having your mud on the top 20 page is a nice little ego boost, but it does nothing for your playerbase.  The growth of Merentha over the last 6 months is comparable to the previous 6 months when we were listed either #1 or #2.

Who said I was addressing Synozeer? All of you act like it's some right you have to personally judge other MUDs. Does it matter if they cheat? Not really. Does it matter if they reward players for not voting? No. Does anyone care if they do? Yes, because it gives people some petty, unimportant thing to nitpick to death.
<Mass stupidity='crymerci'>
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The problem I have with the Top 20 muds thingofmuhbob is that people don't vote for their MUD. The Pattern's End (TPE), the MUD that I play, is probably ranked like 83 if we're lucky. That's because nobody votes. If all the players who play there everyday voted once a day, we would be higher, but we don't.

Also, I've heard that some MUDs make sure that their players vote every 3 hours or whatever the limit is so that there is like 4 votes from the same person. Personally, I think that is wrong. I think you should have to register to Top Mud Sites (like for the message boards) and only have one vote per user name. That also has its flaws, but it would work out others.

*shrug* Some of those MUDs prolly deserve it, I dunno.

Achaea beware, I shall single handedly one vote myself to the top your reign of terror has come to an end, IRON REALMS SHALL TREMBLE BENEATH ME..... ok well maybe not, but I love the dramatism, didn't you, I hear Emmy, maybe I can get Brad Pitt to play me and Sean Connery to play the evil Matt Mihaly, what do you guys think?

Oh yeah top 20, well they deserve to be there, all except I do believe the pay for ones, should be contet with their big A#s# banners at the top of the page, you guys oh sukie sukie. We know you're good, how about actually turning off votes for like a month just to allow pure homegrowners to play?? No thats on a serious note, just to have a pure FREE to play mud let us battle it out *I'll one vote myself to the top MWAHAHAH*

But seriously p2p guys, consider doing that, letting us battle it out for heck maybe just one voting period (the 15 days) would be kinda neat to see.

Let me know what everyone thinks of that Idea.

Heck Acheaa I'll label a Discussion Thread ACHAEA ranked #1 and keep it at the top bumped up...come on Matt, come on, you can do it, I have a twinkie in my pocket.........

I personally feel that people shouldn't be able to vote every 3 hours, or whatever the specified time is for being to vote again. I feel that only one IP address should be allowed to vote once. I definately know there are MUDs out there that could have 30 people there saying its the best, but they have 90 votes? I don't think that's right. You don't see people getting to vote everyday during elections and what not. It isn't fair to the muds where people vote once, and then don't remember to vote everyday or whatever. I know if this happened, my mud's number of votes would probably drop, since I do this too.

This would bring the top 20 list even closer to a list of muds with big pbases. As it is now, players of muds that they highly enjoy will take the time to vote for their mud more often then those who don't like it that much. Having each person only vote once would just be a measurement of the size of the pbase.

Under the current system, players who like the mud will vote for it. Under a "one player one vote" system, players who like the mud will vote for it.

The only difference I can see is that people with fixed IPs would count the same as people with dynamic IPs.

Isn't this a good thing?

Changing the timer to 3 hours would be a nightmare. If anything should be changed, it should be increased to 24 hours, not decreased.

Voting is a nice way for players to show their loyalty towards their favorite game. If players felt the need to remember to vote every 3 hours it would be a stressful and annoying process which in the long run would result in less traffic to TMS.

I'd mind.

No mud should get special treatment just because its free. Furthermore, your idea would result in all the arguments about what constitutes free. Some people do not even consider a mud to be free if they accept donations.

The point of the voting system is simple: in exchange for having your mud displayed high on the list, you send a lot of traffic to the site. The ranking is a direct reward for the amount of traffic you send to TMS.

Rewarding people for NOT sending a lot of traffic to the site is not beneficial for the site or for the games listed here as a whole. In the long run, more traffic benefits everyone.

Threshold: I'm finding 'free' excessively easy to define.

The check for 'free'? Is money accepted for -any- in-game benefit, whether that benefit be playing or training sessions?

If no, then it is free.
If yes, then it is not.

It makes deciding what is free and is non-free for auditing purposes excessively easy.

Eh.

Doesn't bother me that much with pay to play MUDs on the listings - however, if you note, the major pay to play MUDs that everyone kicks up a fuss about are all owned by the same company.

Splitting up pay to play and free MUDs makes a lot of sense, and with that definition of free, it's easy to discern between a pay to play and a free MUD.

Furthermore, I'm noting that certain MUDs have usurped the definition of 'free' after looking at the listings. But considering some of the manufactured/generated quotes used for advertising in the past, I'm not surprised in the least.