[MUD-Dev] mud vs. mush membership

[Greg Miller]

Adam Wiggins wrote:
> mercs which rarely have a single player on them running.  I would say that,
> if anything, the social muds are more likely to have a very steady playerbase.

Indeed, I'd gotten the impression that RP and social environments (and
make no mistake, they are two signficantly different things) attracted a
much steadier, but smaller crowd. I suppose I could be wrong about
either or both, but it always seemed so clear-cut and extreme that I
didn't bother to do much research beyond noticing how few MUSHes I saw
mentioned or advertised.

> The exception is on the high end: high-quality, long running GoP muds like
> Arctic, BatMUD, or the Sojurn derivitives often have steady player bases of
> several thousand players.  (Meaning 100-400 online at a time.)

Or, in some cases, low-quality, long running GoP muds like Medievia :)
Lately, I'm beginning to suspect that the key to Medievia's continued
success (I know it got a huge boost in the early days due to the flame
wars over Medievia's code theft, but that only attracts players, it
doesn't keep them) is that it leans very heavily on the carrot--the
stick is almost non-existent. One of the things they teach you in high
school psychology is that people react more strongly to punishment than
reward...

Perhaps the best way to make money on a pay mud would be to emulate that
aspect. I suspect a mud could be made considerably harder than medievia
without the stick entering the picture very often. Theoretically, the
same level of depth can be achieved entirely with punishments of various
sizes, with rewards of various sizes, or anything in between, right? If
so, why are there so many muds where death can set you back for days or
weeks of login time?
--
http://www.classic-games.com/
Conspiracy theorists mistakenly assume others think before acting.
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