[MUD-Dev] Text Muds vs Graphical Muds

[Edward Glowacki]

On Fri, 2002-06-28 at 09:33, Dave Rickey wrote:

> Threshold problem.  Each new player who joins the server is one
> more player to interact with.  At around the 500-1000 mark
> (100-200 peak population), each player that joins the server does
> more to increase the number of bad interactions than good ones,
> and effectively "crowds" someone else off the server.  Past 2500
> (500 peak), this turns around, the bad effects of additional
> people have gotten as bad as they are going to and now each
> additional person is a net gain for interactions.  You can hit
> other thresholds, your world may have a "carrying capacity", and
> certain rulesets (especially "agressive" PK+ rules) can push that
> capacity down.  But I think the next social scaling problem would
> set in around 50,000 players per world, and I don't know where
> stability would set in again (which makes TSO especially
> interesting to me, since its population will be in one world for
> social purposes).  The next one down is around 250 population
> *total*, or 50 peak.

I'm pretty sure I've heard the figure "250 people" for a max
community size before.  I'm not sure about the rest of your numbers,
but I'd guess that they are largely dependent on the organizational
structure of your population within the game.  I'd also wager that
if you can subdivide the population somehow, then you can
effectively keep the communities small or otherwise stable.

In Medievia (the MUD I used to play), clans (50 people max per clan)
were a good social division.  Ally a few clans together and you have
your 250 person social group.  Anyone else online I pretty much
ignored, except a few scattered friends in other clans.

I also suspect that if the players have the proper game mechanics
available, when they start feeling overcrowded, they'll move
somewhere else and somewhat avoid the problem.  Just like real life,
though it can potentially be a lot easier and safer (i.e. magic!) 
than some of the colonization journeys people have taken around
Earth.

The advantage of the virtual world is that land can be virtually
unlimited.  Not enough room on your one continent?  Add some
surrounding islands.  Then another continent.  Tired of continents,
add another planet.  Too many planets, make a new galaxy... ;) Of
course, this all really only works if you can add enough content to
these worlds to make them viable.  All the land in the world isn't
going to help if your hack-and-slash game only has 2 dungeons, in
which case the limiting factor is content, not social structure.

-ED
--
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
Michigan State University	
"...a partial solution to the right problem is better than a complete
solution to the wrong one." (http://uiweb.com/issues/issue14.htm)

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