[MUD-Dev] Community Relations

[F. Randall Farmer]

A question: In what way do you manifest yourself as the immortal?

The services I've been involved with have never had manifested deity,
even when the universe had a mythology (as was the case in Dreamscape.)
We've never needed an immortal "in-world."  [Of course, I've never
built a combat-mud like most of you here seem to build.]

The closest thing we had to an "immortal": Lucasfilm's Habitat had
"The Oracle" which was a fountain in the middle of town. If you spoke
to it, the reply was always "I'll see what I can do." and it logged the
message for later admin review. The Oracle never made appearances.
(Every Habitat since then has featured a fountain in the middle of town,
but they aren't "a transmitter for talking to God" like the original.)
Dreamscape has Morpheus who, of course, has many faces but also never
appears.

We've always used a combination paid and volunteer moderation model,
usually tiered, with the paid folks at top. :-) Each tier has a reserved
title. Administrative capabilities are usually tiered, though there is
not always a one-to-one correspondence with moderator tiers. A classic
example of the difference is the separation of "authoring" capabilities
from "crowd control" capabilities. As I'm sure most here will agree,
these are two different skill sets. :-)

Back to the question: In the products I've been closely associated with -

Product                 Immortal Manifestation        Live Admin offices
-------                 ----------------------        ------------------
Lucasfilm's Habitat     The Fountain Oracle (batch)   Guides
Club Caribe             None (no myth)                Guides
                                                      Guardian Angels
Fujistu Habitat         ???                           Oracles
WorldsAway/Dreamscape   None (Morpheus myth)          Oracles,Acolytes
The Palace              None (think CHAT)             Owners, Operators
                                                      (formerly Gods,Wizards)

Randy

F. Randall Farmer                "Home pages are passe', everybody's
Communities.com                  building a palace" - Time Magazine
Cofounder and VP Services        http://www.communities.com
   
randy at communities.com            




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