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

[diablo at best.com]

On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laurel Fan <lf25+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
> Date: Tuesday, January 26, 1999 9:26 AM
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: META: list "peerage"
> 
> 
> >Perhaps there should be some way of showcasing new, original muds, like
> >a mudlist in which an imp would submit her mud, and a volunteer would
> >evaluate the mud for uniqueness and non-stock-ness, and write a short
> >review containing his first impressions.
> 
> 
> I seem to recall that at least one person was going around reviewing MUDs
> once. I don't remember who it was or where they were, but I definitely
> recall that I had serious problems with their taste; it wasn't so much that
> the reviews were bad, as that the reviews were specifically oriented toward
> people who liked to play the same way the reviewer did. I had expected at
> least a cursory nod to impartiality. But I have this problem with most
> laypeople's reviews in general, whether they're reviewing software or games
> or movies or books or what have you. The real irony is that these reviews
> are generally a response to the perception that existing reviewers -- if
> they exist -- are not appropriately considering their perspectives. Sort of
> like starting a hate group because someone else started a hate group and
> hate groups are wrong.

We were the first mud reviewd by something called www.mudreviews.com. It
was supposed to be linked from mudconnector, but I have no idea what ever
happened to it. They had four seperate people review our mud and the level
of sheer incompetence in the reviewing staff was staggering. Not a single
one of the reviewers played more than 20 hours. We consider people newbies
until they've put in about 100 hours. One of the reviewers apparently
didn't even play long enough to discover that we had classes (nevermind
that you are constantly urged to join a guild and thus gain a class).
Basically their reviews said entirely different things and it was very
clear that what you are saying about the reviewers being heavily biased
towards their style of play seemed to be very true, although in these
reviewers case, a complete lack of professionalism and a complete lack of
any sort of reviewing standards seemed to prevail. Even though two of the
four reviews were favourable (we were still in Alpha...moving towards beta
when reviews), the ones that weren't spent half their time talking about
the character creation sequence (they didn't care for it). 

I think one problem with reviewing any non-stock mud is the time required
to get to know the game in any depth. Unless you play for at least a
couple hundred hours, your review is, imho, akin to reviewing a movie
without bothering to watch the whole thing.

--matt