[MUD-Dev] Retention without Addiction?

[Sean Kelly]

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Koster, Raph wrote:
> From: shren

>> There are no private parties.  There are no private places except
>> homes, which tend to be very small.  You can't rent convention
>> halls.  You are jammed in with the teeming herd 100% of your time
>> in your game of choice, which explains why said teeming herd
>> tends to act like rats packed into a too-small cage.  If you want
>> to get away from the crowd, the only thing to do is to quit
>> playing.

> That is sheerly a function of the quantity of content in the
> world, not of whether or not stuff is instanced. In a large enough
> world with the right size population, you can easilyt ravel great
> distances by yourself without seeing a soul--consider AC for
> example.

True.  The problem with AC was that there were very few places in
all that real estate that were actually worth going to.  I grant
that this was largely the result of limited developer resources, but
much of the AC world was either just like the rest of the AC world
or it felt unfinished.  I remember going to a few dungeons that were
almost completely empty.  This would have been fine if a guild could
have moved in, claimed it as their own and spruced up the place, but
as it was there was little reason to go very far off the beaten
path.  Having a high space->player ratio is very important, but it
only works if there is some reason for players to disperse into that
space.

>> THERE is overrated.  In THERE, people are waiting in line like
>> shoppers to fight an 'epic battle'.  In THERE, all the monsters
>> have been killed and it's empty.  In THERE, there's someone
>> lurking to kill you.

>> THERE feels more like a tourist trap than, oh, say, a dungeon.
>> I've by and large quit playing MMORPGs because I haven't seen a
>> THERE worth being in for a long time.  It's not the THERE that's
>> broken, but the fact that everyone else is there, too.

> And that sounds like a single-player game.

I think there's the potential for some balance between the circus
ride feeling of most MMORPGs and the personal feel of LAN games.
What bothers me about MMORPGs isn't the overpopulation so much as
the feeling that my presence is completely inconsequential.  If NWN
had better PW support I'd say that it may be an end to my quest.

Sean


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