[MUD-Dev] Pay Muds & Free Muds - working together, or against each other?

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Greg Munt [mailto:greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, June 04, 1999 5:20 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Pay Muds & Free Muds - working together, or against
> each other?
> 
> 
> A couple of things that I just thought of:
> 
> Is it possible to get even a rough guesstimate on the 
> proportion of members
> and/or posters that are involved with pay muds, rather than free muds?

Me. :)

> How do pay muds get all their players to part with their 
> cash, when there
> are so many free muds around?

I can only speak for the graphical pay mud crowd, but the answer is,
"graphics." In some cases, it's also a different play experience.

>  Is it in the interests of 
> people involved with
> them to promote the idea that all free muds are stock (rather 
> than let's say
> "higher quality") muds, or so-called "derivative muds"? 
> (Please don't get
> defensive about this one.)

Not in the case of the graphical guys. :)

> Is it a given that any pay mud that wants to have any 
> noticeable profit
> needs to be GUI, GUI, GUI, all the way? 

No. The Simutronics muds (Gemstone, DragonRealms) have made MILLIONS of
dollars on text, text, text. How MUCH profit is very dependent on many
factors, though. I would imagine that the graphical pay for play games are
making orders of magnitude more money than the pay for play text games.

> Obviously it is 
> expected that if you
> are going to pay to play, then the mud needs to be 
> *substantially* 'better'
> than free muds - if they weren't, they wouldn't get any 
> players (?)

Not necessarily--remember, people tend not to migrate unless they can take
their social context (eg, their friends) with them. So people on those
Simutronics muds would continue to pay to play unless all their friends
pickedup and moved to free muds too.

>  - so
> what would happen if mainstream free muds gradually started 
> to become higher
> quality? 

The pay for play ones will have that same gradual improvement, of course.
There's a major profit motive for pay for play games to keep abreast of the
state of the art.

> If the stock muds of the future came saddled with 
> GUIs? How would
> this affect the pay mud arena?

Going GUI, GUI, GUI at any high level of production quality is pretty much
going to require a pay for play model for the foreseeable future. As an
example--there are 15-20 man years of artwork in UO.

> In terms of advancing muds in general, what role do pay muds 
> play, and what
> role do free muds play?

Hmm. If I had to list the most interesting things going on in muddom today
that are actually running, I'd be having trouble listing any text muds that
are contributing much right now. This may be because I am out of touch.
Perhaps other list members can comment? Are there new free text muds that
are advancing the state of the art in the way that the muds in the FAQ did
in years past?

Whereas I'd immediately list Achaea, Gemstone, UO, Asheron's Call, and
Furcadia from the commercial realm as advancing the state of the art in one
way or another.

>  Does a pay mud need to be a certain 
> 'type', or cater
> to a certain group of players (cf Bartle's Suits) more than 
> others, to be
> profitable?

Roleplayers get rarer and rarer, in my experience, as the audience grows.
And hack n slashers and pkillers both grow more numerous. But my feeling is
that a balance of the suits becomes even more crucial, because you make your
money off of player retention.

>  Can a pay mud be profitable without relying on 
> combat-related
> player conflict? 

Sure!

> (That seems to be mainly what UO is about, 
> maybe its just
> the misrepresentations of the media?)

I'd call it misrepresentation of the media, but then I am biased. UO's
intent, which is largely accomplishes (but not entirely) is to be a virtual
fantasy world. So it has controls, but not prohibitions, on PvP combat. But
it also offers standard hack n slash, player-run shops, player building, a
wide range of crafting, economies related thereto, a lot of social structure
stuff (16,000 guilds at last count), etc etc. Think a typical
fictionally-oriented MUSH like a Pern MUSH mixed into a hack n slash game...

-Raph


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