[MUD-Dev] Of interest

[Jeff Freeman]

>--Dave Rickey wrote:
>    Here's a question, though: Do emulators actually hurt subscriptions for
>online games?

I run one, and seriously doubt it.

>Figure that many of those people still have UO account, 

Virtually none of our users do.

>and most of the rest are burnouts who would have quit UO anyway, and 
>you have to wonder if there's any point in getting worked up over 
>emulators.

Virtually all of our users did (burnout and quit, that is).

And then they played EQ for a while and likewise quit that.

>    My own opinion is that it's nothing to worry about.  Free worlds can't
>get the same production values, 

Like what?

>and (in spite of all the complaining) big
>corporations are generally considered more trustworthy with the power that

Than OSI?  There's an awful lot of mistrust toward OSI among our users.
Corrupt GMs selling things on eBay, having sex with the volunteers, etc.
All the dirty gossip that pops up on Lum's.

We get our share of accusations, of course, but we're not even in the same
league as OSI when it comes to players mistrusting the admin's.

>comes with running the world, since they have a financial interest in not
>playing favorites.  "Free Shards" for whatever game just aren't a
>significant threat, any money you lose from subscription fees you could make
>up by selling the server executables as a seperate product.

I doubt they're losing any subscription fees at all.  Our users wouldn't
play on OSI shards anyway.

OSI has sold some clients that they wouldn't have otherwise, but that's
about it.

Now the SPHERE folks have a freeware "UO client emulator" they've just
released.  So... it's nearly a moot point.  You could create a custom
worldmap with WorldForge, have your users download it with Sphere's client,
play on your UOX (or SPHERE or POL) server.

Only thing left to replace is the art and sound (and networking protocol
maybe?).  Art and sound isn't used by the server anyway.

Thing is, it is a completely different audience.  People that want a
Massively Multiplayer experience can't get it from us.  And what our users
want (multiplayer, but not massively so), OSI doesn't offer.


--
  http://atlas.spaceports.com/~dundee/




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