[MUD-Dev] Some survey results...

[Matt Mihaly]

On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, Andrew Wilson wrote:

> Hi,

Hi to you too.
 
> a while back someone detailed a quick survey they'd made of the
> popularity of muds out there.  I couldn't find the email in the
> archive, so either I'm imagining it all or it's just a paragraph
> in a bigger post.  No matter...

Nitpicking: Popularity can't be measured by people online. You can
generally get a sense, but there are things that distort it, like
whether you allow your players to sit AFK, how much time each player
is spending online (for instance, a game with only 150 players, each
of whom are logged in 24 hours a day does not rate, in my book, as
more popular than a mud with 5000 players, each of whom plays half
an hour a day, though the first example will average more people
online).
 
>     325  ********************************  tapestries.fur.com 2069
>     257  *************************  muck.furry.com 8888
>     174  *****************  lambda.moo.mud.org 8888
>     152  ***************  discworld.imaginary.com 4242
>     106  **********  achaea.com 23
>      75  *******     spr.ctrl-c.liu.se 23
>      68  ******      shangrilamush.com 9999
>      48  ****        resort.org 2323
>      46  ****        treyvan.com 4999
>      46  ****        mush.elendor.net 1892
>      41  ****        mud.lysator.liu.se 2000
>      40  ****        merentha.com 10000
>      39  ***         pern.mccr.org 4201
>      36  ***         aetolia.com 23
>      32  ***         btech.betterbox.net 3065
>     AVERAGE NUMBER OF USERS CONNECTED
 
> Here are some trivial observations on the table relating to the
> nature of the muds surveyed.
  
>     o    Two of the top 10 muds out there are run by Achaea LLC.

Your numbers are surprisingly accurate for Achaea and
Aetolia. They're within about 3% of the actual averages, based on
total minutes online. Our usage seems to vary more than most MUDs
I've seen, incidentally, with the peaks being about 33% higher than
the troughs (we're currently in a trough, after being at a peak in
mid-October due to much new content going in), and with a gradual
steady rise of both peaks and troughs.

However, I don't believe that those are the top 10 muds in terms of
usage. I can't imagine that Dragonrealms and Gemstone III would not
be the top 2 text MUDs. (I'm assuming you're excluding graphical
MUDs on purpose.) Their numbers are significantly higher than the #1
MUD on your list.

Also, I can think of a number of MUDs off the top of my head that
easily beat out the numbers listed above. Duris, Two Towers, Wheel
of Time, Materia Magica, Aardwolf, Batmud, Arctic, Realms of
Despair, Medievia, Terris, etc. I'm sure there are others. Achaea
MIGHT make it into the top 10 in terms of players online in a list
of all text MUDs, but Aetolia definitely would not at this stage
(it's only been open a month and half).

>     o 3 of the top 20 are in Linko:pings University in Sweden.  o
>     The top 2 and a 3rd also in the top 10 are Furrys.

The top text MUDs in terms of usage are definitely not Furries. Most
of them are of the monster-bashing variety.

--matt



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