MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

I frequently see people proclaiming the death of MUDs. However, while it's true that the environment has gotten more challenging, I have a recent data point that suggests it's possible for MUDs to prosper.

, which launched to the public in September, 1997, just had its best month ever in June, even adjusted for inflation, and not by a small margin.

Achaea's having such a good year, in fact, that it hired a third full-time person last month (in addition to myself and another part-time person) and of course a lot of volunteers.

Come find out why people are still willing to pay a long-standing MUD enough - in 2014 - to have its best month ever.

, on our custom client that works on both PCs and mobile.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

I have been playing this game for about 4 years, and I can grant you that it is constantly improving. No, I am not a fanboy because I do not have much RL time to play, I am just being honest!

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Glad you're enjoying it! We are always heads down, working away to give you a better experience.

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Nice advertizement attempt from you guys.

As a matter of fact, others can not verify any of your statements at all - they don't have access to these statistics or logs and do not know whether you tampered with it or not. Now sure you can claim that you did not tamper with it, but how can OTHERS verify that?

I think MUDs have been slowly dying and I can refer to LPC-muds here.

I recall in the 1995 to 2000 range, a MUD I used to play a lot managed to have peak activity at about 70 players maximum, and on average well above 20-30.

Come 2014, the same MUD has a peak activitity of at max 20 players, and an average of 1-5 players.

So those numbers are speaking for themselves.

That is not to say that all MUDs are dwindling down, mind you, but for most MUDs, the great days are definitely over.

The whole www changed meanwhile in those 20 years guys.

MUDs are dying and there is no way to stop that trend.

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Thanks! Not really an attempt though. It's an actual ad, posted in the promotions section. ;)


Yep, for sure - most MUDs are slowly dying.

Achaea's current population isn't as big as it used to be, though is currently stable, but the number of people playing isn't how we measure success, as all players aren't equal. Last month was our best month ever in terms of players spending money - we've never brought in as much revenue in a month as last month, even adjusted for inflation (the previous best month was 8 or 9 years ago).

What's happened with Achaea, at least, is the population has aged up and matured. We used to have a lot of teenagers playing (most of whom never spent money) along with the expected 18-35 year olds, but now our population is almost entirely 20 years old+, and the average player is much more likely to be able/willing to contribute to the game financially than she was a decade ago.

Achaea's also got more full-time and part-time paid staff on it now than it ever has, reflecting that success and hopefully paving the way for more as we continually and ceaselessly work on making it and all the Iron Realms MUDs better, day in, day out.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

Try to log in, play and see it for yourself. I am a casual gamer, though. I am 41 years old and I have little time to play as you may imagine.

Anyway, even if MUDs are facing a survival of the fittest scenario, I grant you personally that Achaea's staff is working like hell to preserve and improve the MUD. I have seen it with my eyes.

My character in Achaea was created on 7/8/2010, and - as of today - I have been playing for 63 days, 1 hour and 58 minutes, and I am super-satisfed .

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Perhaps Achaea would be happy to be the first MUD to participate in ?

Maybe some Achaeans would be willing to try out new games and help prop them up so that the MUD community doesn't die out everywhere but 3-4 games.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

That's what participation in TMS voting is already about. It's a traffic exchange. We send players here, exposing them to new MUDs, and in return other MUDs do the same, exposing their players to us.

Granted, people probably only ever really see the top 10 in terms of rankings, maybe the top 20 (the bottom 10 generally require some kind of scrolling to see), but there's always the opportunity to expose yourself to people via the ads available here on TMS.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

My biggest objection to voting is seeing servers like Abandoned Realms in the top ten (they're #11 now). That server has 340 votes so far, and the server itself has an average userload of 4 (5.0 votes per player average per day). Meanwhile, Aardwolf only has 1450 votes with an average userload of 310 (0.27 votes per player average per day). Similarly, Achaea has 752 votes with a userload of around 180 (0.25 votes per player average per day). How a game can have 19 times the voting ratio of known good servers and not get flagged is beyond me.

With blatant cheating like that on the front page, I didn't even bother asking people to vote until I felt we could get enough to at least make front page. Speaking of which:

There's no point in traffic exchanging via the voting system unless you're at the top. If you're a small server and you're looking to get larger, focus your efforts elsewhere until you're sure you can get in the top 20. If you can't make first page, don't even bother. You'll just be wasting your players' time.

This is because much like Google, the only entries that get any real amount of traffic are the ones that are displayed in the browser window when the page comes up; if the user has to scroll down to see more entries, or go to the next page, your entry will see virtually no traffic (compared to the entries at the top of the list.)

There are some pretty easy fixes for this unfairness problem, if the TMS owners want to actually make TMS a fair traffic exchange. For example, it would be more fair to display a randomly selected list using the votes as the selection weight. Change the list once daily so that servers stay at the top long enough to be noticed and for people to hit low-load servers en-masse. The highly voted servers will still get a lot of air time, but smaller servers will also occasionally see the light of day as well.

That said, I understand that TMS is associated with some of the top ranked servers, so it seems unlikely that this sort of thing will change. Certainly if AA was in the top ten, I wouldn't want the ranking system to change either.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

The owner of TMS is the owner of Aardwolf, but as far as I know he's not associated with any of the other MUDs.

As for Abandoned Realms - have you emailed him to complain about Abandoned Realms? That seems like the first step before complaining that he's not done anything about it. I certainly wasn't aware they had so few players, and if they do, they're certainly and blatantly cheating. I'll email him right now, pointing him to this thread, in fact. He's always been good about reacting to complaints of cheating in the past.

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And within minutes of mailing him, Abandoned Realms (which has been caught with suspicious voting patterns previously) is gone. All it took was a simple email!

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

Yes, I've sent a couple of emails over the last year or so, but AFAIK they were just blackholed. I was rather hesitant to post it publicly, but since the other methods weren't working...

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

I agree with dentin's response to this.

Achaea is not going to lose much if it encourages its players, through both the forum and in the game, to go out and try some other MUD. It will do a lot more to help the MUD community than merely bragging about how well your game is doing while others aren't going so well.

It's kind of a slap in the face to struggling MUDs for a game like Achaea to brag that MUDs don't have to die just because Achaea has a big core of regular players. Achaea could just as likely have been one of the many MUDs with once-thriving communities that now have maybe 10 people on during a good day.

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So you send me an email at 10:53pm my time and post this 1 hour later because you hadn't gotten a response yet?

As explained in that response, the reason you were given so little benefit of the doubt this month is because you were removed last month due to massive proxy voting (hundreds). A little switch around of the gateway page and the votes suddenly dropped to 0. Not 2 or 9 per day, zero. Other than a handful of votes they stayed that way for the rest of the month. You either didn't notice or didn't care enough to email about it.

Fast forward a few days and you're going to be mad that nobody is in a big hurry to work with you further on this, maybe even genuinely wondering why.

Glad to hear this won't cause you any actual harm. Were those 130 'out' clicks yours?

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To me it's fairly sad that someone would rate success on a mud from how much the players pay, rather than from how much they play.

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Sure, it could have, but it's not, and that's not an accident. It's a result of consistent, smart, hard work, year in, year out. If a MUD once has a thriving community and now has 10 people on in a good day, there's one place to point the finger: the administration of that MUD.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

To me it's fairly sad (and quite rude) that a MUD admin would jump in on a promotional thread to try to disparage the success of another MUD. It's also kind of ironic for you to be telling us that success for a MUD should be based on how much the players play when your MUD - 4Dimensions - has a whopping six players online currently, one of which is the newbie I just created to check.

However, for the benefit of other people who are actually interested vs looking to troll:

MUDs are not just a hobby for us, and that fact is one major reason we're thriving. Revenue matters more than play time (though both matter, as no players = no revenue) because we're professionals that earn our living from this. We have mortgages, rent, bills for kids colleges, etc. 100 thirteen year olds who spend no money but run around going "LOL I R an RPer!" don't do much for us. I'll take 10 mature 25-40 year olds that do what they can to support the game any day of the week.

Personally, I look at it quite opposite: I'm thrilled and honoured that players love our MUDs so much that not only do they play the heck out of them, but on top of that, they're willing to spend money to support us. It's quite a gratifying expression of their love for our MUDs.

Stop by most MUDs today and look at how much effort is being put into making them better, day-in, day-out. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find too many that get the kind of work poured into them that Achaea does, and the fact that we're able to be paid to do that work is why. We're not distracted by other jobs. This isn't a side-gig for us.

This is our lives, and revenue means that we can pour more resources into the MUDs. Hired a new full-time developer on Achaea this month, in fact, as a result of the excellent year we've been having, which means more cool stuff for the players to enjoy. And of course on top of our paid full-time staff we also have a cadre of community volunteers that are in-role as Gods as well as help out behind the scenes.

If you want a MUD with an active playerbase that has very active, productive staff, come check out it. recently had this to say about Achaea:
"It remains immersive to an astonishing degree, even compared with contemporary games—it has its own social mores, cultural life, history and folklore. Its political systems are complicated and well-developed."

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I love seeing posts like this, it always creates a perfect opportunity for me to talk about DBE and brag about how big our playerbase is, especially for a DBZ MUD. DBE has a 15-30 player average at all times with 40+ at peak hours. The reason DBE has so many players and has retained those players over 12 years is because of the same reason Achaea has a large steady playerbase. I don't just sit around and nazi my players all day long, I actually build, code and host events almost everyday. My other admins do the same but much less than I do hehe but I make up for their slack easily. Players on DBE always talk about how they enjoy the constant updates, DBE even gets people who have no clue what DBZ is but they play DBE because all the other MUDs they played with their friends were stale and lacked any active admins.

You could have the most badass MUD in the world but if you don't update it and keep an active staff, no one will care about your prized MUD. I'll never forget all the haters who told me DBE would never get a steady playerbase and DBE would never have more than 10 players online or how DBE would shutdown in a year or so. Now all the DBE haters are sitting in their dead MUDs wishing newbies would sign on but they don't because they're probably playing DBE or some other MUD with admins who care and enjoy MUDding. Honestly, most people have no business being a MUD owner or builder, they're usually in it for the power control and ego boost.

I may as well take the time to say this month is DBE's 12 anniversary. 8 more years to go and I've reached my goal of keeping DBE open for 20 years and that's just the start.

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Just saiyan but your changelogs aren't very detailed or filled with anything of substance. They mainly appear to be bug fixes upon bug fixes(that many bug fixes isn't a good thing because they shouldn't have been made in the first place) and a lot of nonsense like "suck it bug" "hail mary" "bananas" and "herr derr". You can't brag about your change log and bash other coders when your changelogs make you look bad. Honestly, from the looks of your changelogs, your MUD looks to be very unstable and full of bugs.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

I think it has more to do with Achaea's premium content than administration. People are less willing to leave and give up whatever money they spent if they've spent it for years on just one game. Besides, Achaea's premium income made it possible for more dedicated (read: paid) staffers to get involved. Not every game followed the same premium content model.

You said yourself that your population is aging. Well, so did all of those fading MUDs which had thriving communities now; their population aged, and their players left because of adult responsibilities. They probably did not feel compelled to remain because of their financial investment in their games if their games had no premium content.

Refresh my memory: is Achaea the MUD where combat is basically a war of scripts and attrition? I remember some game where every player had hammerspace where they stocked a billion status-curing items and pulled them out with a script every time their opponent dealt a bad status effect to them, and the loser was the one who ran out of stuff first.

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Git doesn't show larger posts for bigger changelogs, it's just that the number of small commits is larger than the number of large commits. This is a fairly normal looking changelog for a project of this size. Also, your fmud is down and you should fix it. #spoon on quakenet if you need help.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

FMUD shutdown a while back and my website admin has been MIA. I really don't care much about my website, it doesn't get DBE new players and it's more work than it's worth. I rather focus on my MUD, not some silly website that isn't needed. I used to care about the website but now it's lost in a sea of google searches that involve the Dragonball Evolution movie. Plus as most players have told me before in the past, they don't play DBE to visit the website, they play DBE to play DBE.

Now you say this changelog is normal for a project of this size but I'm pretty sure my MUD(project) is much bigger than yours and is way more in-depth but the change logs don't look like that at all. DBE's changelogs are filled with actual content and balance changes. Maybe you are doing a lot of cool updates on your MUD but you need to have your changelogs reflect that. Most people who see those changelogs will only notice the rampant bugs, bug fixes and gibberish changes. Even if your most recent change is boring, you should make it at least sound interesting to appeal to a potential new player. I'm not saying you need to add fluff to your change logs or make up lies, but they could use a little more detail and less silly changes that aren't actual changes.

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You know, I spent some time earlier logged into your MUD and found a lot of things I didn't like but I think I'll just summarize my thoughts by saying in my time on this forum you're the most hostile person in this community I've come across. It's unfortunate because this thread is about how MUDs don't have to die. I don't like the pay-to-play model but I have to respect people who are earning a living doing what they love. The folks who play Achaea clearly love it, or it wouldn't be profitable. I hope you change your attitude at some point.

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Our changes are posted to players the way you described it. They get posted in game and relayed to facebook. That file I shared is not publically linked, and normally sits behind auth.

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I read threads like these and remember why I rarely read the posts here. For ****'s sake. You're all adults. Play nice.

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I cannot agree more. I tried other MUDs, and I have to say that Achaea staff cares a lot. In my opinion, Achaea is either far better than other MUDs or it matches my RP taste better. This is just my opinion, so please do not feel offended, I respect you all. I try MUDs constantly, as I am very curious about the whole phenomenon. Of course, Achaea has defects - as everything - but it does not matter that much. The IRE community as a whole, staff and players, are very active, super daily active. So there is always something new to discover, to try etc… I am not tied to anyone of the staff, nor I am a volunteer or anything of the sort. I am just being honest, and this is a neutral opinion from and end-user of the product. Sadly, I am the only player in my country, I believe, which is Italy.

Some players tried other MUDs but in the end they did prefer Achaea. I think that the reason for this is its quality. Anyway, the staff is doing everything to improve Achaea, and this stimulates players' support as to content and money. Trust me they react quickly, very quickly.

On the contrary, I believe The Logos replied excellently already. Additionally, if the MUD staff need money for coding and such, players should support it. If the players feel cheated by the staff, the players will stop paying, and playing as well. It is a delicate balance that the staff must preserve at all cost, as a matter of survivability.
If Achaea and AArdwolf are doing well, people should start thinking about these MUDs as model to follow, an experiment to learn form, and not to go against.

Finally, getting back to the topic, I have one long-shot analogy that came to my mind, and could be interesting to discuss. "Video killed the radio stars, as graphic games are killing MUDs." i.e. the impact TV had over Radios. However, Radios are still alive, and fairly adapted to this dramatic shift in how content is consumed by the population. Maybe the Admins could think about something to improve their player base somehow. Same could be applied to TV channels vs. Internet.
I do not know, it may be interesting for you or not.
Forgive the wall of text and typos, and/or grammar mistakes.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

Maybe this is how the pro engineers in the real business of doing pro engineering stuff track their changes. Perhaps this is what makes them "significantly more qualified than some jackoff 'pro' mud coder"?

Tried that game. Typical stock DIKU with 5 immortals for every player. 15 years old and 50% of the areas are stock. Yet he comes here and blanket criticizes other MUD coders. Lol.

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There is no evidence that AR cheated the vote, neither this month or last month. This was a massive screw up. More information in this post:

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

Actually, its how a place treats its players that counts.. Even those who are slow.

Granted, none of us here play at the same speed and level. But to mistreat people because they're slow to grasp how the Game works or are unable to catch a subtile hint directed at them, that, to me at least, is grounds for blasting the MUD from exsistance--or to have it removed from voting consideration here until those responceable for such cruelty have been dealt with.

Playgrounds have rules of conduct. So do MUD's. By proving that, MUD's can thrive, even in this visual age of gamming. If the bullies and other cruel players aren't reigned in and punished, then MUD's will die because such people will constantly turn the majority of interested players away.

That's how I see it.


Darren Brimhall

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

Come play at GateWay MUD. That's gatewaymud.org 6969 The place is nice and clean. No dirty players mucking things up. No spam, no gossip. Just you. Imagine the bliss of having a whole MUD to yourself.

Re: MUDs Don't Have To Die
 

I haven't poked around here in quite a while, and was so surprised at how little has changed!

Matt, would you say that Achaea's record-breaking revenues are enough, that your recent personal success in the face of the death of so many others MUDs is enough, that you will finally be able to pay back all of the BETA testers for Earth Eternal who bought micro-transactions only to have you sell the game to an outside company that then wiped their characters before shutting the game down shortly thereafter?

As always, your ability to con players into shelling out ridiculous sums of money for a Pay-to-Win game, when there have always been better products out there for free is a major reason why MUDs are dying. You've spent years treating games designed by people who put full-time hours into developing them for free, driven only by their own passion, creativity and talent, like competitors. You've used bullying tactics and cash to promote an average, uninspired product at the cost of supporting a struggling community as a whole.

Two things surprise me about the MUDing community, currently:

1) That we (the MUDing Commuity as a whole) are still around at all, despite how far graphical games have come since our inception. That we're still inspired by such a simple interface, as a community. It's an impressive, strange, and beautiful thing.

2) That you (Matt) are still able to make any money at all as a MUD administrator after the way you've treated the larger community and failed so hard financially at reaching for even mediocrity shim-sham. Talking about Earth Eternal again.

I, for one, will not be celebrating your financial success. I, for one, feel that your players deserve better than to be treated like addicted gold-mines personified, even if they do not.

My apologies.

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you know what, with that post i might actually come to your mud, simply to be a dirty player mucking it up. MWAHAHA