[MUD-Dev] Justifying twinking

[Frank Crowell]

Raph Koster wrote:

> The second inflection point is after they start playing. Everyone has horror
> stories about their first play session on a mud. The most frequent words
> tend to be "confusing" "directionless" "boring" "monotonous" etc. It has
> been empirically shown that meeting a friend in the first five minutes
> results in a MUCH higher chance of getting past this inflection point. In
> fact, I bet you have had this experience with a friend or colleague (I know
> *I* have):
>

In my case, several years ago I was looking for a mud to replace the one I had
been on.  I entered an LP-type mud, was met by the goddess at the entrance and
warned not to travel along. Within seconds some newbies come running up to me
and take me to an underground newbie area.  A slightly higher level char called
Mother, is directing some of the newbies.  Everyone is busy essentially twinking
each other: money, armor, weapons, and experience. Yes, even the experience was
shared by rotation (grouping wasn't implemented yet).  I wasn't there more than
30 minutes when we were in deep hostile mob territory and hit a reset.  We must
have had about 8 die in matter of seconds.  Then we got our act together,
recovered from the disaster, killed more things, and loaded up on loot.  Then as
a large gang, we all rushed to the store to sell our stuff and split up the
money.  Meanwhile a few other were out panhandling and got some better equipment
for the newbie gang.

It was a most amazing experience.  I stayed on to get over 3000 hours on the mud
and to be one of the old time nobles.

Later, I created a newbie character and had the chance to give some of that
experience back by creating another gang of newbie players where everyone helped
each other.

frank




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