[MUD-Dev] Affecting the world

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Wednesday, September 17, 1997 4:54 AM, Adam Wiggins 
[SMTP:nightfall at user2.inficad.com] wrote:
> [Jon L:]
> > The majority of existing muds allow one to succeed/win/maxout/havefun
> > without any imperative need for player cooperation.  There also exist
>
> I know it may be a bad word on this list, but don't forget about the
> dikus!  This is a fundamental problem I've always had with LPs - 
cooperation
> is not only not necessary, but it's often frowned upon.  On any diku 
worth
> its beans, 'soloing' is usually pretty unproductive, and in many cases 
there
> are puzzles, quests, and fights that you just can't get past without 
large
> groups of people.

I consider the vast majority of other MUD players to be idiots or 
bungholes, so I'm pretty much stuck working solo, period. On a game with 
400 people logged on and at least half of them stupid, with half the rest 
idling and half the rest acting like total jerks, that leaves 25 people, 
and in all likelihood many of those are staff. So there are perhaps 15 
decent characters I'd enjoy playing with, and chances are they're all 
significantly different in level (many of them undoubtedly Avs, and all of 
them already firmly entrenched in a community where they don't want much of 
anything to do with people sitting around on level 10 or something) -- 
which means I basically *can't* play with them, even if I could convince 
them that I'm a decent enough guy. Which is why my characters on MUDs tend 
to get to level 30 or so and then stop, because above that it becomes very 
difficult to 'solo' much of anything that can move you upward in level in 
less than a week and a half of effort. This becomes tiresome, so I tend to 
throw out the character. It's not like it matters whether he stays around 
or not.