[MUD-Dev] mud vs. mush membership

[Marian Griffith]

On Tue 27 Jul, Jay Carlson wrote:
> Adam Wiggins writes:

> > Here's my informal poll from the mud connector.  (BTW if your favorite
> > mud isn't listed on the mud connector, or is out of date, bug the admin -
> > especially if YOU are the admin. :) This thing has been a great
> > resource to
> > the mud community for a long time.)

> No.  My favorite mud isn't publicized, and the users and the administrators
> are pretty happy about that.

> There are a lot of, say, MOO and MUSH servers out there that have
> substantial steady user bases that are not seeking publicity.  JHM isn't in
> mudconnector, and I don't think anyone really cares whether it gets listed
> there; the one I care most about now will be actively pissed off if it gets
> listed.  Obviously stealth will distort those kinds of statistics, but I
> have this gut feeling that the more social muds will care more about being
> stealthy in the long term.

While this whole debate is in fact a bit silly I had the same impression
that social oriented games are far less eager to advertise their presen-
ce. I guess they fear an influx of new players will endager the IC state
of their games.  A social/RP oriented game  can absorb only so much  new
players at a time because it requires a much closer involvement of other
players to familiarise new players. The new players must become familiar
with the social  and political framework of the game,  with the informal
rules and the quirks of the gameplay. On combat oriented much it is much
easier to assume a new player has a basic understanding of the game  and
the concepts.  You only have to concern yourself  in depth  with totally
new players.
My initial remark about there being more players for non-combat oriented
games than there are combat mud players was based on an old (!) mud list
that had the mushes and such outnumber the muds by about 2 to 1. I added
to that the observation  that the average mush that I know of has a sig-
nificantly bigger active player base than the average mud that I know of
and  came to the conclusion  that it would surprise me very much  if the
statement  that social oriented players were a negliciable percentage of
the mud players.  Hardly reliable statistics I admit,  but at least that
is how I arrived at my conclusion.

Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey




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