[MUD-Dev] size

[Matt Mihaly]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Sheela Caur'Lir wrote:
> From: "Matt Mihaly"

>> Yeah, but there are thousands of muds out there and a handful of
>> EQ's. I'm not willing to make universal rules based on the
>> experience of a handful of games.

> With all respect to text MUDs, but I think EQ alone have had
> almost as many players alone as almost all the text MUDs combined.

EQ probably does have as many players as all text muds combined. But
this isn't mud-player. It's mud-dev. It's also not
EverquestWannabe-dev.  There's a troubling (if understandable) and
ever-increasing trend on the list to focus on a handful of games and
worse, a handful of games most of which don't diverge much from a
single mold.

> I would certainly not call them just a "handful of gamers" and
> dismiss them as nothing - Especially when considering that EQ have
> some of the most hardcore style players.

But I called them a handful of games, not a handful of gamers. Big
difference. I just don't see Everquest as more interesting than a
LOT of smaller games unless you equate size and financial success
with interesting in which case it's more interesting than anything
but Lineage.  And that's fine generally but I'm not sure it's fine
on this list, whose charter gives no particular preference to
commercial vs. non-commercial, big or small, etc.

> However they do show a trend, I think :

>   - If a MUD (text or graphic) manages to get a big enough
>   playerbase, there will be players calculating formulas on things
>   you didn't supply them a formula for, since there will then be a
>   big enough mix of explorers / achievers that there is a "need"
>   for them to know what is realy going on. Mostly because they
>   have figured out all the rest and thirsts for new things to do.

Sure, this rings fairly true. But most muds never get to the point
where there are virtual encylopedias of info available on the
web. That's all I'm saying.

--matt
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