[MUD-Dev] RE: In game bulletin boards vs. Web based.

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Elis Pomales [SMTP:pomales at caip.rutgers.edu]
> Sent:	Tuesday, June 09, 1998 2:54 PM
> To:	mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject:	[MUD-Dev] In game bulletin boards vs. Web based.
> 
> I would like to know what your opinions are on bulletin board systems
> within Muds. My belief is that a web based bulletin board systems is
> alot easier to develop, fancier and more reliable than an online one.
> Is
> this true? Do you agree?
> 
All I can offer is my experience.

Legend has a bulletin board system that supports threading, a very
simple text editor, and which uses a semi-local model for keeping
messages. You can only read messages when at the board in question, but
messages on a given board are replicated to all boards of that same type
in the mud. Legend also has a web board using the ubiquitous script from
Matt's Script Archive.

On Legend, the welcome (general) board, and discussion (game design
board) and other such boards get a LOT of traffic, requiring their
periodic archival to the web, and periodic cleaning. They are extremely
popular. And the web board sees almost no use at all.

UO has a bulletin board system that supports threading, a visual editor
that supports cursoring around, etc. It uses a fully local model for
keeping messages (there are no global boards). These boards also receive
automated postings of things like simple quests, playerkilling activity,
etc. And UO has not one web board using the script from Matt's Script
Archive, but rather dozens, run by players, on all conceivable topics. A
typical UO board site will have at least five themed discussion boards.

The in-game boards in UO receive almost no use at all, despite the great
similarity they have to the Legend boards. And a typical
general-discussion UO web board gets several hundred posts a day.

So I guess my answer is, uh... who knows? Too much depends on the
community playing your mud, the scale of the game, the accessibility of
the boards, the typical types of discussion, the purposes to which the
boards are put, etc. Perhaps a key factor is whether the game admins
post on a given board--on Legend, they use the in-game boards, and that
is where the players are. In UO, they use the out of game boards.

My advice would be to do both. :)

> In that vain should help be web based? With minimal help in-game? Or
> do
> you think that help is so critical that it should be on the mud?
> 
Help is so critical it should be in the mud. No question, in my mind.
And something which UO didn't do, to my continual chagrin. It should
ALSO be on the web page.

-Raph