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

[Matt Chatterley]

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On Tue, 9 Jun 1998, Elis Pomales wrote:

> 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?

Harder to develop to my mind (this depends entirely on your own skills),
more of a hassle to use (I grumble at loading anything other than Lynx;
particularly for communications orientated to a specific mud). Fancier,
yes. This is not always a /good/ thing. Reliability is kinda irrelevant -
I see no huge advantage to either situation, except the mud-based one will
use standard situations which everyone accessing the mud will be able to
cope with, while browsers differ hugely.
 
> 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?

If I log into a game, and typing 'help <fairly obvious or partial topic
name>' does not work, and one or two reasonable variations do not work, I
leave. I will not visit a webpage to obtain help on a game (it's a
hassle!). If basic help were available (or rather, all the help in a basic
form), I might peruse an enhanced (hyperlinked, prettied up) version at my
leisure. When I first log in, I want to know what I need to know in order
to dive in.

If you really want to provide these things in a fancy frontend, consider
some sort of custom client (or add-on, for instance an application users
can run, similar to ICQ, to access communicative areas of your mud with a
special frontend, while the basic information is all still available to
those who do not use it, through the normal mud FE).

- -- 
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.." -John Lennon (Imagine)

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