[MUD-Dev] in-game vs web-based boards (was: Geometric content generation)

[Bruce Mitchener]

Koster, Raph wrote:

> UO had bulletin boards, but people preferred the web to the
> in-game boards.  Of course, Dark Ages has an extremely evolved
> in-game politics system.

In TEC, we provide both web-based forums as well as
in-character/in-game mechanisms for persistent communication.
They're used for entirely different things though.  In game, we have
bulletin boards that people can post notices on.  This gets used a
lot for in-character things such as "Wanted" posters for various
bandits and criminals.  I haven't checked, but with our pet system
in use, I'd not be surprised if there were some "Missing dog" things
posted. :)

The web-forums contain, as one would expect, all of the meta-game
chatter.

> An excellent point, Ola. One of the things that most strikes me as
> a difference between muds and the commercial MMOs is how
> externalized the community is in the latter. Web boards, guilds
> that hop games, IRC channels, etc, all surround the game in a
> constellation and greatly enhance it. In fact, there's significant
> power to be harnessed there, because most of the users of the big
> games aren't even aware of this extraordinarily rich community,
> which potentially could lead to far greater retention.

Ignoring the side of this regarding integrating the web community
into the game more effectively or providing some game mechanics to
reward participation in that community ... (Those are all
interesting things, but I'm not qualified to discuss them.)

How much of the lack of knowledge of many of the players is due to
the fact that some of the larger communities aren't hosted by the
game companies themselves or tightly integrated in with the main
game website?

  - Bruce

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