I find it funny that before I went to work, I made a post on page 10. After a tedious night of selling porn, I see 5 more pages of quote-replies upon quote-replies. I skipped pages 13 anf 14, only to find I missed nothing. I swear everything was said on page 1.

I think we need a new thread simply to summarize this thread.

As quoted by Jesus himself from a piece of notebook paper I found, "I love Moosehead SLED! It's the only mud any higher power should play!"

I wonder if page 20 will be here tomorrow.

1. Learn the law before you throw accusations around. Slander is an oral falsity, libel is a written one. One cannot be accused of slander for something that is written down. Moreover, it is not libel to say that someone might be in violation of the law if the alleged accusation is true.

2. I never accused you of anything other than to let you know that you may be in violation of consumer fraud regulations as well as susceptible to a civil suit for false implied endorsement.

3. I never said I had proof, only that information had been relayed to me.

If you wish to assume the worse about me that is fine. You have constantly insulted my intelligence and intentions. I never called you an asshole, but your continual diversion of the issues by namecalling and supposition sure lives up to that definition.

Our first priority is making an environment enjoyable enough that players will pay us money for it. Pure and simple. Considering we still have some players spending hundreds a year, who have been playing for 4+ years, I'd say we're doing a decent job of it.

And I don't wonder why the mudding community has always attacked the MUD, because it hasn't. A few vocal individuals have, but their opinions are not representative, and generally to be ignored, as they're not potential players of ours anyway.

And if no one cares about our advertising, how come the ads work? I mean, that's the only metric for advertising that matters. They bring in players, and that's what ads are for.

As for the spirit of the votes, well, that's your opinion, and the opinion of a handful of other vocal people. If you actually object to it though, do you seriously think you're going to get me to care about your opinion by ranting and raving at me? All it's doing is ensuring that the only reason I'm replying to your posts is for the other people reading. That kind of personal attack sure isn't designed to solve the 'problem' you speak of, which makes me wonder whether you care about solving what is a 'problem' in your view, or whether you're just interested in lashing out.

--matt

Oh sure, I understand why they're not voting. I wasn't at all implying that DR and GS3 are somehow screwing up or have an apathetic playerbase. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The success of their games speaks for itself in my eyes. They're far more successful financially and in terms of number of players than we are, and I have a lot of respect for Simutronics, the people involved in it, and the games they put out. Sure, some people don't like them, but that's the case with any game. They've managed to build a text empire that dwarfs any other text company.

(No idea if you're committing a faux pas by posting here, though I kind of doubt you are, as I know some other posters are also not admins or builders.)

--matt

I guess what I am just trying to say is:

Shouldn't your game, on it's own merits, be enough reason for them to vote?

Why taint the results?

And yes, the results are tainted.  Just as runners who break world records have to see those records nullified because a strong wind was blowing in their favor, except in this case, you're tying very strong fans to your runner's backs, putting them on roller skates, covering their lanes with grease, and giving them a 5 second head start on everyone else who's running the race the way it was meant to be run.

As much 'fun' as this thread has been, it's wasting too much of my time. If Adam wants to change the rules, naturally we'll either conform to them, or stop sending traffic here. But until then, it's a dead topic from my end, as there's really nothing else to say. Some members of the community have a problem with it. Some don't. I think that pretty much sums it up.

--matt

OOOHKAAY! I've been following this thread since I first saw the line "Achaea's recent attempt to claim #1" in the Recent Forums section, and followed it up to about page 11 or so, then I simply got too sick to proceed any further. So, I'll throw in my 2 cents here and be gone on my own business...

First, let me give my own (no doubt, highly opinionated) view of how this entire thread came to be:

1. Some person posts about Achaea supposedly bribing its' players to vote for it on TMS. To anyone who's been playing Achaea for some time it was obvious that this post was a result of the lack of readiness to investigate the actual facts, or any care for those facts at all. The post was driven by hurt feelings of a devoted player who's game wasn't in the top slot (and it sure must be there, 'cause it's much better than that piece of trash Achaea, and if it wasn't for Achaea's cheatin', bribin', and lyin' staff, my MUD would be number 1, no doubt about it).

2. Other people who watch the section jump in and support the claims made in the original post, likewise not caring in the very least about the facts, ethical, or at least business considerations.

3. Several posts are made to bring some perspective into this Achaea bashing.

4. And the dirt slinging begins! People post the same arguments over and over and over again, completely ignoring responses to their claims, and attempts to inform them about their misconceptions (btw, it is considered rude to talk without taking plugs out of your ears). People are using vocabulary of an 8 year old school kid: liar, cheater, trash, shut up, asshole etc. The atmosphere becomes dense and humid, the blood is pumping in the ears, the fists are clenched to the point of fingernails ripping the flesh of the palms...

I must admit that I was getting increasingly excited myself, when all of a sudden I saw a reply to one of yig's posts (don't remember by whom), which made everything crystal clear to me and made me calm down immediately. The reply read almost literaly: "Shut up and take a walk, since you have no place being here, where the old folks meet." Aha! I said to myself - that's what this whole thing is about.

As the_logos has already said many times before, but no one seemed to care to listen: the TMS rankings are not to figure out who is best and who is not, it benefits the entire community, since players are exposed to a large number of excellent MUDs and have a chance to try them out if they haven't become hooked on one of them already. I can see the truth in that, since I myself visited the sites of a great many of MUDs in the rankings. However, when a person sees a rankings page in his browser, he also notices a little box with the names of the recent forum posts, and one of those names includes the name of the top ranking MUD, so the person clicks on the link (why not, lets see what maschinations have got them in the lead) and voila - he sees this place...

The place where imms, gods, and very-very old players meet to dig up some slime and throw it on their competitors. Allow me to say that no IG reward for OOC actions (giving a player access to an IG event for a bunch of OOC US$ is somehow justified as being entirely different in your rationale, but I am not going to investigate this logical paradox) can hurt the player's RP more than the posts in this very thread. All I have left from this discussion in my head right now are on one side of my brain the words "Achaea", "DragonRealms", "GemstoneIII", and on the other - "liars", "cheaters", "bribery", "idiot", "asshole", and the list goes on to merge into one single concept - "dirt".

In this sense I'd like to give y'all an advice, which comes from a player who hasn't spent years on any MUD and hasn't been an Immortal or a God anywhere, but who happens to be one of those people who make up your player bases: if you want to bash each other and sling slime on each other, and you have not a care in the world about what people like me or yig think or have to say, then why don't you make this thread private and in its' privacy perform executions of those you don't like or you feel jealous about or who simply needs a good beating in your opinion. That way you'll be able to let out some steam without hurting your own creations - your games.

Someone has said here that Achaea's Immortals slander the high image of Immortals in general, I don't see how they do, but I can clearly see the image of Immortals that this discussion is creating in my head, and it ain't pretty. That is why I won't allow this whole thang to interfere with the fun I am having in Achaea any further, and will definitely not come back to read any responses, which might be posted to this so y'all might as well not bother.

I just want to say I wanted to avoid this thread entirely, but a friend of mine told me about it. I vowed I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but eventually curiousity got the better of me, and I read for 10 pages before stopping.

I want to say the lot of you are some of the smartest and most well-educated posters I have ever read. Some of you are also some of the smartest silly asses I have ever read as well.

To pretend that this mud list was at one point 'un-skewed' is the most ludicrous thing I ever heard. This listing just shows a total vote based on how many times a certain site got clicked, nothing more, nothing less. To say your vote is less skewed than others because your mudders 'REALLY' like your mud and other muds get votes cause someone strongarmed them into it is not true. Both voted. End of story. Why aren't you mad with your players that they don't vote more instead of being mad at other muds that do? Talk about childish.

The poster above me was much more eloquent but I agree that this thread is pointless. All you whiney babies go back to your MUDs and play them instead of wasting time on this board. This place(TMS) is about exposure for your MUD, nothing more, nothing less. Are all of you truly so emotionally invested in saying 'My MUD is the best mud!' so much so that you aren't playing it and are wasting your time here?

Look its bad enough most of us MUDders have no life except to mud. But when we give up mudding to spend our time trying to convince the rest of the world that our MUD is the absolute best like some moon-crazed jesuit is just insaaaaannne.