[MUD-Dev] Richard A. Bartle talks MUD Design

[Davion Kalhen]

Wow. What a great artical. I totally agree with that. He hit on many
major points,  and only brushed on one I think is the main lure for
oldbies/newbies alike. He did hit on the farmiluraity issue, and
socialism briefly and I believe this to be a big part of the game. 5
years ago I started my MUD carrier on one called A Dark Portal. Now,
that mud was pretty stock (It had tons of mods, but nothing to take it
away from the true feel of ROM) except it was largly based around RP.
I found that once I got to know the people more and more, the more I
wanted to stay. ADP shutdown for re-construction and totally
re-created the world. All the area's are re-done, the code is totally
different (It doesn't have the look or even feel of ROM) its an
entirly different MUD, yet, I still play. Why? The people. I have an
addiction to the social realm that is ADP.

Maybe, getting accepted into the cliques is what its all about. With
that said, Newbies tend to be thought of as plagues. Little annoying
twerps who think 'you' is really 'u'! So a certian level of
intellegence is required to surpass the newbie stage. But even those
people get accepted, it just takes much longer.

Because it takes a long time to get accepted, who wants to stay in a
place (especially when they arn't forced [Highschool, without friends
would want to make anyone leave and not show up, but you have to be
there, but not with MUDs, or MMORPGs] ) that wont accept them? Not I.
Usually when one player stays, many will. If a player comes to a MUD
with a group of friends, the mud is playable, and has atleast 70% of
the features they like, I'm sure they'll stay because they are already
thier own group, they need not get accepted, however, I'm sure with a
group, one is going to get accepted quicker than the rest, making the
rest cool by assosiation.

This however, is something totally out of our hands, its in the social
skills of the newbie. I guess we can have our hand in things though,
creating a game to cator to a specific group of people so they'll
atleast have common ground for idle chatter (The begining of all
friendships!) also, keeping a loose atmosphere. No need to be a MUD
Nazi.

Anyways, I think this artical is great, yet, revolution of MUDs is not
something so easily thought of. Because of the lack of graphics, we
are stuck with a type of style. Other than formatting how our output
will look, a new feel or look to a MUD seems a bit out of reach. I
don't believe graphics are superior, yet they do have way more
flexibility. Due to the generic nature of clients now aday's, we must
fit that mold. We can create our own clients, but to do what? Add
graphics? :P Just some post-post thoughts :). Thanks for reading!

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Aaron Smith-Hayes