[MUD-Dev] [Tech] MUDs, MORPGs, and Object Persistence

[Greg Munt]

-----Original Message-----
From: Derek Licciardi <kressilac at home.com>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: 13 May 2001 7:03 AM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] [Tech] MUDs, MORPGs, and Object Persistence


> I do believe that to accomplish some of the ideas that people
> express on this list, it will require larger servers.  This will
> more than likely change the scope of a MUD that wants to be that
> ambitious and turn it into a full fledged commercial venture.  The
> next wave of ideas we discuss here will most definately require more
> than just a single man shop running the game on spare hardware in
> some ISP or school.

Which ideas do you think demand larger servers? Why? What is your
definition of a "larger server"?

Your supposition that only commercial muds can advance the state of
the art is flawed. Commercial muds have to be popular. Popular does
not neccessarily imply good. It could even be argued that players of
commercial muds don't *want* their mud to change in any highly
perceptible way. Free muds, on the other hand, can get by on no
players at all, if need be. They can concentrate on making muds
better. Players are important, but their needs do not have to
influence the direction of the game's growth. On a commercial mud,
there is no choice. If players leave, the game (and the business, more
importantly) is dead.

Your implication that free muds will soon be dead is not one that I
can support. I can only assume that you place zero importance and
value upon free muds - or that you consider muds that aren't massively
multiplayer games to be stagnant and nowhere near the direction that
'real' muds are heading. I happen to think that free muds have the
potential to be much more ambitious, and much sooner, than commercial
muds. (That potential is rarely realised, unfortunately.) This is
mainly because their "success" does not have to be defined in terms of
the number of players that they can attract.

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev