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Saving MUDs?
chewedtoothpick asks: "My absolute favorite game of all-time, Exile [Archive.org mirror], is a MUD that is about to be shut down, and I've noticed that MUDs have been diminishing in number, especially lately. Why are they all quitting, and what does it take to resurrect them? Is it a matter of buying the code off the creator? Is it a matter of making your own and hope it comes close to the one you want it to be like? Is there nothing we can do to save the classics that define multi-player games?"
Who needs a mud when you have Slashdot, our beloved MTF (Multi-Troll Forum)?
"Argh! I just took 3 points of mental damage from a Jon Katz post!"
"Does the vorpal sword work against the ravening Goetse?"
"In Soviet Russia, orcs stab YOU!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
MUDs are essentially MMORPGs without graphics. MUDs allow for greater developer depth (the Avatar MUD has 23 races which can be mixed with around 10 classes, and a huge world to explore) and player depth (you can be a lot more creative in a game with text instead of graphics), but it's not easy to go up against the fancy graphics and content factories of big companies like Sony Online. It's not just fun to look at better graphics, but can be easier on the eyes, and a lot easier for people with mild dyslexia (a surprisingly common problem). I think a lot of MUDs are going to dissapear, but I also think that they'll be around for a lot longer, and maybe never fully dissapear.
Blatant self-promotion: Jerek.net
I work on a fairly old DIKU/VieMUD based mud called NCMUD (www.ncmud.org). The way we keep it running (11 years and counting now) is that when the current implementors get bored we just promote two more implementors from the immortal ranks to add new features and run the game. That's how we have kept going this long.
Some problems I have had with running a mud:
A) Hosting... I'm a broke college student and so are the other implementors of NC(at least the ones who currently run it). So we really can't pay much for hosting. When it comes to hosting a mud as large as NC, we transfer about 11 gig up and downstream a month, take up about 2 gigs of harddrive space, and chew up and spit out memory, it's hard to find anyone willing to host us. Right now we might be going off line for the first time in 11 years because we are about to lose our free hosting and can't find another.
B) Player Base... The player base is aging we aren't getting as many young players any more. Most of the people who start NCMUD are old verterns of muds or foreign teenagers. Seems like Everquest is kicking the mud communities ass in this area for sure. Eye candy seems to make up for a lot.
C) Implementors... Most MUDs are started by high school or college students who want to play around. This leads to an inflation of shitty muds. It's extremely hard to find a good mud, and even harder to find a great mud to play out there anymore. Everyone is using a codebase and adding patching, not a whole lot of people are doing their own thing.
That's a few thoughts from me.
- John