[MUD-Dev] Requirements for MM (was Complexities of MMOG Serv ers)

[Koster]

From: Dubious Advocate

>>> I like the current categorized system.  Please consider an
>>> explicit category for player-managed worlds, or perhaps instead
>>> add the distinction as a qualifier.  NWN would be the ancestral
>>> enrollee.
 
>> As soon as a player starts managing a world, he's an admin (as he
>> quickly discovers!). The distinction is irrelevant.
 
> Disagreed.  The distinction is commercially-owned versus
> hobbyist-managed efforts.  Any other interpretation could not, for
> example, distinguish a vintage Corvette Collectors club from
> Chevrolet.

Other than the fact that Chevrolet manufactures them and the club
doesn't.  :P

My point is that administrative headaches between running a hobbyist
mud (of whatever stripe, be it NWN or something else) and runninga
commercial one are the same in kind, though perhaps not in
magnitude. When one begins to run a game, one ceases to merely be a
player of said game.

Given that most non-commercial muds of all stripes are generally run
by ex-players, there does not seem to be the need for a new
distinction here.  It's the same distinction that has always
existed--some muds are run for profit and some are not.

> Clearly not irrelevant, the category or qualifier draws attention
> to a mostly untapped market niche, and promotes aftermarket
> spinoffs.  Bioware is currently the sole provider to this market
> niche.  And they've been quite profitable by doing so.

The sole currently successful, commercial provider. To say otherwise
ignores dozens of mud codebases, stuff like The MMORPG Construction
Kit (which is commercial), RunUO, and so on.

Again, I don't see justification for this as a genre. I can kinda
see the need to apply a label to "commercially sold graphical mud
codebases and clients" I suppose.

-Raph

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