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

[Greg Munt]

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?

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

Is it a given that any pay mud that wants to have any noticeable profit
needs to be GUI, GUI, GUI, all the way? 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 (?) - so
what would happen if mainstream free muds gradually started to become higher
quality? If the stock muds of the future came saddled with GUIs? How would
this affect the pay mud arena?

In terms of advancing muds in general, what role do pay muds play, and what
role do free muds play? 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? Can a pay mud be profitable without relying on combat-related
player conflict? (That seems to be mainly what UO is about, maybe its just
the misrepresentations of the media?)

Sidenote: I tried Avalon a few years ago. Text-only (even when you used the
custom-written client!), and looked and feeled not dissimilar to any old LP.
What gives? WHY would people pay to use that? I remember being dumbfounded
at the time.

Greg.




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