[MUD-Dev] Re: META: list "peerage"

[Michael.Willey at abnamro.com]

On 1/25/99 4:42 AM, "caliban at darklock.com" wrote:
>On 12:36 AM 1/25/99 -0800, I personally witnessed Andy Cink
>jumping up to say:
>>At 08:06 PM 1/20/99 -0800, Matt (diablo at best.com) wrote:
>>
>>Hosting services like mudservices cater to newbie mud
>>implementors.  They sell server space specifically for the
>>purpose of getting new people into running a mud.
>
>Having been deeply involved in Telmaron, the first
>reasonably successful commercial MUD provider, I take that
>a little personally. ;)
>
>Our goal at Telmaron was to give people a place to host
>their MUD where they didn't have to try and explain what a
>MUD was every three days.  We expected that the MUDs we
>hosted would be run by knowledgeable people, people who
>were tired of having to switch servers every time someone
>changed jobs or didn't get his [expletive] stroked enough
>for providing the server space.

As a current customer of Telmaron, I'd suggest that it bears
little in common with a service like Mudservices, whose
advertising specifically targets people who have never seen
the internals of a mud before.  I recall a recent promotion
from one of those services (betterbox?) that offered a 'new
mud account' complete with a precompiled version of the
Diku-branch mud of your choice, obviously targeted at those
so green that they don't even know where to find a stock mud
and how to set it up.

My experience with Telmaron leads me to believe that they do
not cater to newbies; that their prices are slightly above
standard, but so is their speed and reliability.  They don't
cram twenty muds onto a single machine - I believe we share
the machine we run on with only one other mud.  And unlike
providers who don't specialize in muds, they are
knowledgable and understanding about our requirements and
respectful of our project.  I know of other services run in
the same manner - friends have had excellent service from
Godlike, among others.  So not *all* mud-specific providers
are "like mudservices", and I doubt the original poster
meant to imply that.

---
Mike Willey - michael.willey at abnamro.com
Mickelian of Dreamshadow - dreamer.telmaron.com 3333
http://homestead.dejanews.com/dreamshadow/DreamshadowMain.html