Member Discussions

I was lurking over at mudbytes yesterday ( Hi guys! *grin* ) and saw a thread about the TMC listing stats. It is in a nostalgic way depressing to see the decline in active muds (listed on TMC, can't speculate about other listing sites' numbers) but I think it is a necessary situation and healthy for the community overall.

For awhile I have been convinced that there were just too many muds for the number of players willing to play them, the turnover rate was just awful! 3-4 years ago we would gain maybe 50 new listings in a given month and 90% of those same muds would be closed down just 30 days later. I used to clean out the mudlist every month just to keep up but as the decline began to rise I would stretch the time allowed before we'd delist a mud hoping they would come and update their listing or re-open. As was posted on mudbytes we are purging now maybe once a year, I dont exactly recall the last one but another is coming very soon, I sent the de-listing emails out to the mud admins yesterday ( most of them bounced ).

Tyche wins a prize (hug?) for speculating that the number would dip below 1000, I think it'll be around 920-950 or so after the next purge.

Anyway, back to my point. I do think this is healthy for the community overall and that the number of muds running will keep slipping until there is an equilibrium with the number of active players, unfortunately we have far to go before we hit that equilibrium.

I will speculate that until we see less than 500 active muds ( average of all of the mudlists, not just TMC because there are quite a few mud admins that dont want to be listed here ) the decline will continue. I am interested in hearing your opinions...

-Iccy

I've seen speculation (with well reasoned argument) over the
years about there being ~10k active MUD players. Despite what
some doomsayers might have you believe, that number isn't
declining, MMOs or not. The actual problem is that the number
isn't growing, but that's a discussion for another time.

If we go with the ~10k number and assume that the average
player will play at least two MUDs at a time, how many would
that support? With 500 MUDs, that would yield ~40 players per
MUD. Whether that's enough depends entirely on perspective, I
suppose.

I think the relevant question here is, how are players
finding muds?

Certainly there are some that post 'in search of' topics
here and at TMS, and I imagine there are some just searching
the database, and some who try out a mud based on an ad.

But my guess is that the vast majority of players find their
muds by playing the muds their friends play, which leads to
my conclusion that the number of muds in the database is,
contrary to what you hear pretty regularly, not an issue.

You could say that if the 'population of friends' is
distributed among many muds, then you'll never reach
critical mass on a large number of muds, but I'd say that
network effects dictate that the population of friends
wouldn't ever be distributed like that in the first place.

Now that's not to say you shouldn't prune dead muds out of
the database, I think you should. But I think that issue is
not in any way related to the decline of player numbers on
muds over the last decade.

Great points so far.

I don't have any hard statistics to contribute but I do have one comment. The bar for starting your own MUD is and always has been very low. Which is a blessing, and a curse. It seems to me that in order for the number of active MUDs (not just listed ones but any) to drop to 500, the number of mudders worldwide would have to drop to 1500 or so. I'd rather not see that happen, ever.

I think role-play muds/mushes have reached an equilibrium of sorts. It seems that just as many start up as go down. I think pure text hack-n-slash games will continue to shrink because the competition for attention with graphical games is pretty tough.

I've seen speculation (with well reasoned argument) over the
years about there being ~10k active MUD players

I cannot prove that number or disprove it, but it seems a little low to me - but probably not by much. The last time we looked at a Webtrends traffic report the page views were about 700k and about 60k unique visitors. 10k users could conceivably generate 60k visits, so unless somebody else has something more useful than my guesstimations I'll accept it. 40 players per mud would likely yield just a handful on at any given time most likely, the concentration being at peak times. I guess very small intimate muds would find that acceptable... BTW - if that 10k number is accurate than I reserve the right to lower my equilibrium mud count to more like 80 muds or so *yikes*.

But my guess is that the vast majority of players find their
muds by playing the muds their friends play, which leads to
my conclusion that the number of muds in the database is,
contrary to what you hear pretty regularly, not an issue.

I'm not saying it is the _issue_, I believe there is a simple supply and demand relationship which models how the number of mud players affects the success or failure of a given mud, and so affects the number of muds that are running. Discounting completely how the players find the muds, if there are not enough players muds will close and eventually there will be a happy medium where there are an adequate number of players available to populate the muds that are still running.

-Iccy

If we go with the ~10k
number and assume that the average player will play at least
two MUDs at a time, how many would that support

According to mudstats, there are 12k players connected right
now during US primetime. How many of those are multis?
Impossible to tell.

There is a definitely over abundance of muds. Personally I
see the total number of players declining even further as
the aging mud population gets hooked on other mmorpgs or
even their careers. It's hard to get new young mudders.

I hate to be a dooms-dayer, but it's my opinion that the
decline of the number of muds is a good thing to help
sustain those that are afloat. The number of players are
only going to decline.

I'd guesstimate around 300. I'd also guess of the 900 are so MUDs that are currently still listed,
at least 1/3 are probably "good as dead" anyhow, and maybe about half of what's left has a healthy
playerbase. I'd also guess we'd probably be about another 5-6 years before we reach that point.

Like I said on MudBytes, part of me hates to see the number falling so much, but I also feel like
it is necessary, as the fewer MUDs there are, so long as to some degree the number of players stays
the same, the better it is for the rest of us. I just also hope that it's the less good MUDs that
are dying off too. It might increase competition, as well, if the bad ones are dying off because
it leaves mostly just the good ones, but from an overall view with regards to the hobby in general,
I think the higher concentration of good MUDs we have, the better.

For the prospects of my game, however, I'm quite encouraged. For a game that isn't officially
open, is -only- listed on MudBytes (being a developer centric community, I don't look for player
recruitment on that site), and that almost exclusively recruits by posting occasionally in the
forums here, we do remarkably well on both new logins and player retention. We retain at least 50%
of new people coming in, and just the other night, we had 11 people on for a good bit.

My point being that even a game within the stage that mine is, and with things even the way they
currently are in the community overall, there is still obviously plenty of life left in the hobby.

I do believe, though, overall MUDing is in an irreversible decline. I don't think it's dying,
persay, and I do echo the sentiment that there will be probably be an equillibrium that is reached.
Short of some sort of unexpected "retro gaming" interest popping up from a lot of the MMO crowd,
however, I don't see an upswing coming.

I think it's hard to get new mudders because mudding is an almost entirely unknown genre, not because other types of games have eclipsed the playability of muds or because muds themselves are naturally in decline or inferior to video games.

I can't speak for non-RP muds, never having played one, but an RP mud at least is a special place. I am a huge fan of video games but there is nothing like a mud. The style of the genre itself is unique, and, to someone like me with a background in books, highly appealing.

Many of our players now have full time careers which involve desk jobs where they have computer access, and they play from work. I don't want new "young" mudders, myself; I want new mudders with some maturity and ability work into some really great stories. And I think they are out there, waiting to be found.

If I had the resources, I would love to see an app made for our mud. Not one like the ones currently out there where you actually connect to any mud (if you know any) and which expect the user to know what to do, but rather a fun, single-player tutorial experience to get the player familiar with the basics of mudding and to showcase some of our best story features, something playable start to finish in an hour or so. And then of course a "Would you like more?" feature at the end to connect or instruct them how to connect to the real game.

The genre is solid in my opinion. It just needs exposure.

Sidonie wrote:
I can't speak for non-RP muds, never having played one, but an RP mud at
least is a special place. I am a huge fan of video games but there is nothing like a mud. The style
of the genre itself is unique, and, to someone like me with a background in books, highly appealing.

I agree with you here. Even on regular 'ol, not necessarily RP MUDs, I've been part of fostering
very "special" RP environments. I have a wide and extensive roleplay background, from AOL chatrooms,
to various types of MUDs, to D&D, tabletop and LARP White Wolf systems, GURPs, Rifts, etc. Despite
that, some of the best and some of my favorite roleplay has come from MUDs.

I also agree that MUDs don't really have a wide level of awareness, but even still, I find your
optimism about it vs. other "games" a bit unrealistic, mostly from my own personal experience with
friends and such. Having been working on MUDs for over 12 years now (and playing for 16), and having
been a relatively active participation in various gaming circles for about 11 years, I've done
everything I could to try to introduce many people to MUDs. Particularly recently, the group of
gamers that I've most recently gamed with have ZERO interest in a MUD, largely because when they
aren't MUDing, they are playing WoW, and these are hardcore roleplayers I'm talking about, too. I
even lost a friend who was playing the game and was slated to take a prominent clan leader position
to WoW.

I think when it boils down to it, even among hardcore RPers, we just can't compete with the graphical
games. MUDing seems to be a pretty specialized thing you either get, or you don't, and with all of
the "similar" types of professional and graphical games, I think the entry barrier to MUDing has
gotten a whole lot higher, and made it a lot more difficult to recruit brand new MUDers. I'm of the
opinion that our best bet for gaining new MUD players in general lies in the disillusioned MMOer who
is looking for a smaller, more intimate setting with a greater chance for roleplay. Basically
somebody who has already gone the MMO route and got tired of it :\

The Bedlam guys would probably be the best ones to consult about how well their 'brand new MUDers'
recruitment is going, as I imagine they probably have the highest number of total newbies logging in
of any other MUD currently given their apps and such.

This is digressing a bit into the "future of MUDs" topic that HK opened up. HK has made a lot of good points, and my own experience backs many of them up. I applaud optimism and excitement about going after true MUD newbies--I think that's what we all should be doing more of. At the same time, I know for sure how thorny the road can be.

Even on slow days, our mobile app brings 30+ people who've never played a MUD before. The conversion rate is pitiful, for many reasons. In addition to reasons already mentioned, the throngs in the App Store are almost exclusively casual gamers. The "ideal" mobile MMO is one where you don't have to pay much attention, and where you can do well in 5-10 min. sessions a few times a day, regardless of skill level. The "ideal" mobile MMO is immediately accessible (graphic) whereas we lose 90% of folks right off the bat because they don't like reading, or can't read English well or fast enough. The "ideal" mobile game presents all of itself within the first 5 min. whereas even the most simplistic MUD takes a few hours to unfold its basic qualities. Those are all huge liabilities that can't really be helped if you want to stay within the MUD paradigm. Even silly browser-based games are better-equipped to attract casual players than MUDs are.

At this point, most of our conversions are people looking for depth and intensity in a sea of casual games. Prior MUD experience helps tremendously, even if the person tried a MUD only once for 5 min. in 1995.

Good evening.

First of all, a topic at TMC with 10 replies without someone
trolling, it must be a record. Thank you everyone for not
doing it. Must be the first in some years now...

I just want to share, though, that I think MUD's will
survive with (relative) health to MMO just like books
survived cinema, theatre, television, radio, etc. I also
believe the ones that want to start a new MUD are
enthusiasts, so the less new muds can mean less players or
older community. So I guess it is good to have an high
number of muds even if they turn defunct one month later.
On a sidenote, beyond the usual advertisements at gaming
sites, something that may attract attention outside MUD
community is a bet in "new technology". Kavir's snippet,
clients for iPhones/smartphones, a super-mega client that
put's graphics over a MUD and both text-based and graphic-
based players can play it at the same time, a client for
Facebook... even the use of smartphone G-sensor to aid in-
game movement :P Well, stupid light-saber or beer cup apps
(use G-sensor to make light-saber noises and empty the cup)
for smartphones had hundreds downloads, so it can be used to
introduce MUDs to new players.

I've thought about trying to raise awareness of my game, as well, through posts and activity in 'theme'
based sites. Chrono Compendium being one of the big places I've considered, as that is an active
community that puts a lot of weight behind fan projects. I think reaching outside of traditional gaming
places like that might be a good way to try to pull new people in.

I'm wary, though, on trying to have -too- much recognition of my game, though, and content to fly under
Square Enix's radar, which will obviously stunt too much of a recruitment effort on sites like that.

Many of our players now have full time careers which involve desk jobs where they have computer access, and they play from work. I don't want new "young" mudders, myself; I want new mudders with some maturity and ability work into some really great stories. And I think they are out there, waiting to be found.

This comment gave me a flashback to grad school, I used to teach college algebra at UNCG and whenever I was giving a test or a quiz I'd break away to the PC in the corner of the room to log in to Valhalla ( but it was still just called Diku II then ). A number of my students discovered MUDs this way, unfortunately they probably learned more about the internet then Algebra ... :(

If I had the resources, I would love to see an app made for our mud. Not one ... And then of course a "Would you like more?" feature

I will never forget my first MUD experience, it was towards the end of my udergrad career and somehow I found my way into playing multiplayer Scrabble on the internet. I was always a math geek and not too fond of Scrabble but I was taken in by being able to play and chat with other people -- and then one of them suggested we all connect to this other game, which ended up being Hidden Worlds MUD. One step in and I was hooked - it was the combination of having an RPG style game and other people that could player it with me.

Sorry for the derailment there! The point I am getting to is that the single player tutorial experience will lack ( and this is just my opinion ) the thing that hooked me - having other people playing also. The important thing, as I see it, is giving potential players a quick and hassle-free way to get into the game ( mobile app or make use of social media like FB ), and from there let the game itself hook them - eg a sandbox inside the MUD where the player follows a storyline-driven flow that unlocks the features of the MUD.

I agree with you that the genre is solid and that there will always be a certain type of player that will find nothing else as enjoyable as a MUD, but unfortunately many of the RPG gamers are getting hooked on the eye candy of games like WoW and they'll drift away from the MUD community or never even find it. As you suggested its the readers that will find the appeal of MUDs, they'll be less likely to be dragged away by the eye candy...

-Iccy

I've seen speculation (with well reasoned argument) over the
years about there being ~10k active MUD players.

Way too low.

4 Dimensions has about 30,000 characters. I doubt the average player has more than 3 alts. That'd put us at over 10,000 players alone. They're certainly not all active any longer, but I refuse to believe that 4D has had more players play it over the years than the entire MUD community as a whole has left.

Icculus wrote:
I cannot prove that number or disprove it, but it seems a little low to me

To be fair, I've actually seen speculation anywhere in the 10k to 20k range. I just went with the lower end estimate, because
I assumed people would start bickering if I used the upper end estimate ("No way that many people play MUDs! MUDs are dying!
Rabble rabble rabble!").

Icculus wrote:
The last time we looked at a Webtrends traffic report the page views were about 700k and about 60k unique visitors. 10k users
could conceivably generate 60k visits, so unless somebody else has something more useful than my guesstimations I'll accept
it

Let's assume 15k users who are actual MUD players, and another 15k who are general web users accidentally stumbling upon the
site. That would leave 30k unique visitors generating 60k visits. That's not much of a stretch at all when you consider
developers/frequent users like myself, who probably connect to TMC 60 times in a month from 10 different devices/IPs.

Icculus wrote:
40 players per mud would likely yield just a handful on at any given time most likely, the concentration being at peak times.
I guess very small intimate muds would find that acceptable... BTW - if that 10k number is accurate than I reserve the right
to lower my equilibrium mud count to more like 80 muds or so *yikes*.

If we go up to the 15k estimate on players, that would yield ~60 per MUD. During peak times, you'd tend to have 6-18 players
logged in (10-30% of your base). I know a lot of players and administrators who consider that a "comfortable" amount. Fewer
leads to OMGNOONEPLAYSTHISMUD Syndrome, effectively killing new player retention. Any more than that number, and it starts
diminishing the community aspect, and substantially increasing administrative workload.

By your reckoning, the average MUD should have ~250 players each (2 MUDs per player, so (15k * 2) / 120 = 250). I took the
liberty of multiplying your estimate of 80 MUDs by 1.5, since the estimate of active players also increased by the same
factor. If you had 250 players per MUD (and assuming an even distribution, though there won't be), every MUD would have 25-75
players on during peak times. Essentially, you're arguing that every MUD be in the upper echelon of player activity by
current standards. Those numbers just seem a bit high to me, and I won't even go into the logistics related to increased
server operating costs for what is largely a hobbyist community, or the issue of being forced to discard many niche genres
due to insufficient market capacity. I'd keep the equilibrium number around 500 MUDs - your initial estimate. That helps
preserve diversity of available genres and community sizes.

Drizzt wrote:
Way too low.

4 Dimensions has about 30,000 characters. I doubt the average player has more than 3 alts. That'd put us at over 10,000
players alone. They're certainly not all active any longer, but I refuse to believe that 4D has had more players play it over
the years than the entire MUD community as a whole has left.

How many years is that over? You're failing to take into account that people leave and join the pool of active players (which
is what the *10k number references). When you talk about the entire history of MUDs, you're talking about multiple
generations of humans. The average new player most MUDs will get these days wasn't even alive when MUDs first started.

I can also offer other arguments as to why the number of characters is higher than the total number of active MUD players. My
game has over 12,000 characters since 2004. You'd be surprised at how many times a player creates a character, abandons it in
the first few minutes, comes back several years later without remembering ever trying the game and proceeds to create a new
character. I've seen the same people do it numerous times, too. Eventually, they even come back at the right time, or in the
right mood, and end up staying. They go on to create alts, only later realizing they already had half a dozen old newbie
characters still lying around. You then end up with one person having 10+ characters.

I'm not arguing that the above scenario is common - but it may contribute 2-3% of total characters. Still, there are other
scenarios to consider, as well. I can tell you right now that 10+ characters out of the 30,000 cited on 4 Dimensions are
mine.

*Note: See above where I have revised my estimate on total active players.

The point I mean to make is that I think in looking among current RPGers for new mudders, we are looking in the wrong place.

Kavir often quotes that bit about how your first mudding experience dictates the kind of game you like as a whole, and I think that is also true of RPGs in general. If the first time you fall in love with an RPG, it's Skyrim, that's what you will always love most. If it's a mud, especially a great mud that isn't cluttered with antiquated syntax and is full of dynamic new features, then you will always love muds. So I think that by looking in game communities for mudders, we are looking in the wrong place. A better place would be where readers who have never tried RPGs can be found.

I agree the multiplayer aspect is the best part of a mud, especially on a small mud where you can really -be- somebody, but I think it is really, really tough to learn to mud in a multiplayer environment while on a smartphone or even a tablet. There is just too much streaming. By offering just a little bite, which those casual gamers can consume in one sitting while they commute or before bed (or whatever), I think that seed could be planted. A well-designed area with a good story could hook new players into the game as a whole, I think, especially when they realize that they could play the part of the spymaster or the vampire or the assassin or whatever awesome role the snippet of story highlights.

I don't have a strong grasp of how many mudders in general are out there either, but to try to contribute to those who can extrapolate from such things: our little mud has had about 300 unique players over 13 years, with about 100 currently active (most of whom have been active for a good chunk of that time). That translates into just over 2000 max-level characters and twice as many in various stages of training.

For the prospects of my game, however, I'm quite encouraged. For a game that isn't officially
open, is -only- listed on MudBytes (being a developer centric community, I don't look for player
recruitment on that site), and that almost exclusively recruits by posting occasionally in the
forums here, we do remarkably well on both new logins and player retention. We retain at least 50%
of new people coming in, and just the other night, we had 11 people on for a good bit.

That is very encouraging, sounds like you are doing something or several somethings right! That is an awesome retention rate!

-Iccy

Icculus
wrote:

For the prospects of my game, however, I'm quite encouraged. For a game that isn't
officially
open, is -only- listed on MudBytes (being a developer centric community, I don't look for
player
recruitment on that site), and that almost exclusively recruits by posting occasionally in
the
forums here, we do remarkably well on both new logins and player retention. We retain at least
50%
of new people coming in, and just the other night, we had 11 people on for a good bit.

That is very encouraging, sounds like you are doing something or several
somethings right! That is an awesome retention rate!

-Iccy

I should mention that I consider a player retained if they continue to play for at least 2 weeks after
first creating. Most of the time, though, if they stick around for more than a few hours, we have them
for at least a few months. Right now the game is capped at 50 (although very close to being able to
extend that a bit and open up a significant more of the game) and on average, the players coming in
will play up to that wall, get sometimes 2-3 characters there, and then many do wander off to other
games waiting on the cap to be raised. We've had numerous stick around for years though, and there are
a healthy number of people that check back every so often to see if class promotion is open yet and if
the level cap has been raised. I'm cautiously optimistic that a good portion of those people will
return to stick around once we do reach that, which I'm hoping to have done by the end of summer.

I'm not sure how my definition of retention holds up to others, so I felt I should clarify.

I'm sure everybody's definition of retention varies, mine used to be that if they made it through char creation or newbie school they were ours to keep - not a very robust def I know. ;)

For the last few years a common misconception has been that all you need to do was grab a copy of (insert codebase here), set it up, post a listing on the mudlists and boom, success. That may have been somewhat true around the time I started since then the big barrier was getting free hosting ( which is why so many popped up on university servers ) but now you really need a to offer quality and work hard to promote it. You don't seem to be having to work hard at promoting your mud but you have the advantage of having players come and join up in the middle of the dev process, which is something not too many players get to take part in. I think it helps lend a sense of ownership for them being there for the beginning...

-Iccy

By your reckoning, the average MUD should have ~250 players each (2 MUDs per player, so (15k * 2) / 120 = 250). I took the liberty of multiplying your estimate of 80 MUDs by 1.5, since the estimate of active players also increased by the same factor. If you had 250 players per MUD (and assuming an even distribution, though there won't be), every MUD would have 25-75 players on during peak times. Essentially, you're arguing that every MUD be in the upper echelon of player activity by current standards. Those numbers just seem a bit high to me, and I won't even go into the logistics related to increased server operating costs for what is largely a hobbyist community, or the issue of being forced to discard many niche genres due to insufficient market capacity. I'd keep the equilibrium number around 500 MUDs - your initial estimate. That helps preserve diversity of available genres and community sizes.

Thats alot of assumptions, more than I am comfortable with. I cannot agree that every player has two muds they actively play, I'd guess that most people only play one mud regularly and have a backup for downtime. I never played two muds actively, but I did have a backup I would hit only when my mud was unavailable. There is also the assumption that 10-30% of the playerfile is on during peak times, I'd wager its much less for well established muds and only that high for very new muds with low playerbases.

One other thing I think is overlooked is that I feel the population in general is in decline, if we do have 15k active mudders now I would not expect that to be the case by the time an equilibrium is reached. I know not everyone agrees that the population is in decline and I have seen posts from well established muds claiming the opposite and it certainly could be for their specific populations, but judging by what I see here I disagree overall.

-Iccy

Icculus wrote:
I cannot agree that every player has two muds they actively play, I'd guess that most people only play one
mud regularly and have a backup for downtime.

You're right, not every player plays two MUDs simultaneously. Plenty only play one MUD at a time. Others play six at a
time. I think an average of two is a fairly safe assumption to make.

Icculus wrote:
There is also the assumption that 10-30% of the playerfile is on during peak times, I'd wager its much less
for well established muds and only that high for very new muds with low playerbases.

The 10-30% number was of active players, not the total of all characters existing. For instance, I previously mentioned
that my game has 12,000 characters. Drizzt mentioned that 4 Dimensions has 30,000 characters. If you divide those numbers
by 200, you MIGHT be approaching a reasonable estimate of "active players". Then take 10-30% of those numbers - yielding
6-18 and 15-45 respectively. Given what I know of my own game, and of 4 Dimensions, those are realistic ranges for players
on during "peak times".

The key to all of this is "active players". That's what the 15k estimate was. That doesn't mean there are 15k people who
might have played a MUD once and plan on doing so sometime again. It means 15k people actively playing MUDs (for certain
values of active...let's say once a month).

Icculus wrote:
One other thing I think is overlooked is that I feel the population in general is in decline, if we do have
15k active mudders now I would not expect that to be the case by the time an equilibrium is reached. I know
not everyone agrees that the population is in decline

You're right, I don't agree about the decline. I touched on this earlier. There is a decline relative to overall
population (of other game communities, of various age groups, of the world...). Thus, the only real issue is a lack of
growth. Nevertheless, I assure you that for each person who was once part of the MUD community and left it behind, another
person either comes back from hiatus or newly discovers MUDs through a friend. I see it all the time, and I have no reason
to think that my experiences are somehow outside the norm.

Thus, the only real issue is
a lack of
growth.

A lack of growth will eventually lead to an overall decline.
That's simple math. If you're not growing, you could be
stagnant for a while, but eventually someone is going to
leave, even if a friend replaces the player.

The main thing about muds that encourages me are the great
innovations coming about. Mudding has only gotten better,
and this is the main driving force behind keeping the
community together.

I'm sure i'm really just reiterating a theme here, but I don't think most muds have touched what the depth of possibility of in-game interaction. There often seem to be a lot of immersion bubble bursting hurdles. Granted I haven't serious played a mud for more than a week at most ever and it's been a while since I tried one (though there are few I'd like to try if i could find the time).

I do think though that if games could find their way to including more role-play with the hack and slash it would help. There are certainly still plenty of people playing D&D and varying other RPG systems on paper on table. Any mud that can capture the essence of that kind of play and the flexibility that comes with it has a fighting chance at an active playerbase, even if it's only ~20-50 players total.

In any case, I wish I could see features in a game like the ones described as ideas here -> http://textgaming.blogspot.com/
It'd be nice if that dude would write some more, some of those ideas sounds like they have potential. Not saying they don't exist anywhere, I just wouldn't expect them. Wouldn't mind interactive fiction level natural language parsing either.

In my own personal mudserver writing project I really would like to include those kinds of features, but I have little time sometimes to poke at it and I don't have solid or feature-ful enough code with an iota of the features necessary for any mud on here as it is. There isn't much infrastructure to overlay flavor on. There is one major upside to writing a codebase more or less from scratch, and that is nearly ultimate design flexibility. Someday I have get a good look at the internals of coffeemud, because it's so hard to understand how it works or how it could be modified when you're just scratching at the surface (it'd be kind of sad to spend forever writing something, even just for fun, and find that it doesn't really deviate at all from ANYTHING).

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To be more on topic: I don't think a mud with less than 10 active players (not including staff) will survive for long, 50-100 is a healthier number. I'd be really quite surprised to find a mud with more than a few hundred active (say 200-300) players at the max (let's assume that at any time a minimum of 25% of them are online at the same time). At some point you start to strain the limits of flexibility of character interaction.

MMOs don't have much real character interaction either, and have much less flexibiltiy/leeway in that regard than a mud(at least for equivalent development time), but what little they have is much more immersive in some ways because of the graphical aspect.

Istarian wrote:
In any case, I wish I could see features in a game like the ones described as ideas here -> http://textgaming.blogspot.com/

I'm pretty sure they've all been done, but generally speaking they're not the sort of things that are likely to draw in large numbers of players.

Look at his latest post for example - he's discussing a dynamic description system. Those have been around for donkeys, there are even several public snippets for adding them, but most people just aren't interested. And please don't get me started about his mud client...

Personally I'm strongly in favour of interesting mechanics and innovations, but if your primary goal is to build up a playerbase (which is the direction this thread is going) you'd be far better off sticking to tried-and-true features and standard gameplay, and focusing your efforts on polishing and marketing.