[MUD-Dev] Re: MMO Communities

[Matt Mihaly]

Brad McQuaid wrote:

> I gauge it's success on sales and retention numbers -- when I left
> there were over 400,000 subscribers and we had about 60% of the
> people who'd ever tried the game still playing.  That's what I'm
> very proud of

And you most certainly should be. You are clearly an excellent
designer.

> Matt Mihaly wrote:

>> I seriously doubt the truth of this statement.  I can't speak for
>> Brad McQuaid or anyone else on the design team that developed EQ,
>> but I have to believe they were trying to do more than just make
>> a quick buck with the game.  I know it has received a lot of
>> criticism for the way it fosters "addictive" behavior
>> (Evercrack?), but do you really think that they sat down at each
>> meeting to figure out the best way to turn a profit with every
>> design decision?  At some point, they must have considered things
>> like the "fun factor" and ways to advance the genre.  Besides, I
>> seriously doubt the idea of "multi-boxing" was expected to become
>> much of a factor at the time.

> Very true.  We tried to capture what made the MUDs we played so
> compelling.  And I think we succeeded, and Sigil intends to use
> the same core principles to build upon with Vanguard.  And no,
> multi-boxing wasn't really anticipated -- probably because it
> wasn't allowed in the MUDs we played and we weren't thinking about
> the scale of EQ and how policing something like that wouldn't be
> realistic.

Ahh, that quote above is misattributed. I didn't write it.

--matt
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev