Member Discussions

I added two new paragraphs based on your suggestions - one at the top to emphasize the lack of graphics and and one at the bottom ( though it does feel out of place down there ) about screenreaders and muds ... I marked the new ones with a temp tag that will be removed before I link the page.

Thanks,
-Iccy

I really do think that it's better to have people click around to find stuff rather than have too much in one screen, simply because as you say "they'll see the first screen dump full of text and flip out and go to another site that has flash games". I think the first screen has the perfect amount of text but there is just information overload in the second. It's all good, definitely, but just too much at once in my opinion.

I concur, it does appear out of place a bit.
I'm not sure where to add the bit about screen readers. But I
do feel it would be a useful advertisement ploy.
I'll think on it. It might be possible to integrate it into
the main paragraph bodies, but...

How about a more prominent page listing MUDs with user-friendly web apps or graphical UI's? The current "Graphical MUDs" pages are pretty hidden and 99% of the links point to discontinued or empty projects.

There are now quite a few lively MUDs on Facebook, etc. If the newbie user can go to a page with familiar Facebook buttons, they're more likely to click through.

On a general note, being able to tweet or FB-post a review or forum post or a MUD listing via a button would increase the site's capacity to spread content virally.

I really do think that it's better to have people click around to find stuff rather than have too much in one screen

I agree, changed it so all of the command descriptions are hidden by default - still alot of text above them though and not sure if they are hideable ...

-Iccy

How about a more prominent page listing MUDs with user-friendly web apps or graphical UI's? The current "Graphical MUDs" pages are pretty hidden and 99% of the links point to discontinued or empty projects.

There are now quite a few lively MUDs on Facebook, etc. If the newbie user can go to a page with familiar Facebook buttons, they're more likely to click through.

On a general note, being able to tweet or FB-post a review or forum post or a MUD listing via a button would increase the site's capacity to spread content virally.

I cleaned up the graphical section completely yesterday, as far as I can tell all 50+ graphical muds still listed are reachable and running and I added two new obvious ones that got overlooked. *cough*

The graphical muds have their own link on the Listings pull-down at the top as well as links from the contents page, listings page and sitemap page. Not sure where else I would put them without starting to overshadow the main focus which is the text-based games...

I do alot of FB integration through my work and plan to be incorporating that at some point! :)

-Iccy

I have some muds that I am exploring as possibilities for the quick connect button - am posting them here and asking that if anyone has an objection to any of them please either post or email me:

1. Discworld ( fantasy )
2. Lensmoor ( rp )
3. LegendMUD ( rp )
4. 4Dimensions ( rp + time travel )
5. Alter Aeon ( fantasy )
6. Star Wars: Legend of the Jedi ( sci-fi | star wars )
7. Wheel of Time ( fantasy )
8. God Wars II ( PvP )
9. BatMUD ( fantasy )
10. Federation II ( rp + sci-fi )
11. Dark Risings ( rp )
12. Toril ( fantasy )

Can anyone recommend another PvP oriented mud that meets the other criteria? If not I am confident GWII will satisfy the bloodthirsty folks ... ;) Also note this list is not complete and I have not yet gotten to looking at all of the suggestions. If you have objections that you do not want to post here you may send me an email and I will keep it private - any other suggestions here are welcome! :)

-Iccy

(Comment added by Icculus on Thu Apr 26 15:36:28 2012)

Add Dragonball Evolution to the list!

I would tentatively suggest ConQuest for the other pk mud.
It's also manual combat, crafting heavy and almost entirely
pvp. However, the player base has dwindled over the last
couple months due to a resurgence of school I suspect. Still,
I know for a fact there are still 5-8 active players.

Alternatively, Duris might function as a pk option. It's more
standard and uses the kill style of combat, but it's largely
pk based and also has a fantasy element to it, as it's based
off of the Forgotten Realms series.


(Comment added by Sevrior on Thu Apr 26 16:15:58 2012)

Note that Duris generally has 40-60 players on at any given
time, though you can't actually view the players on the
opposite alignment side, or in this case the opposite side of
the racewar, on the who list. Rather, it will say total
connections. If you run into someone from the opposite side of
the racewar, they'll appear with a generic short desc.

Icculus wrote:

I cleaned up the graphical section completely yesterday, as far as I can tell all 50+ graphical muds still listed are reachable and running and I added two new obvious ones that got overlooked. *cough*

I guess I'm not sure what the guiding principle is for the selection of games listed under "graphical MUD".

We have "A World of Kallen", an empty browser-based adventure last updated in 2006. There are at least a thousand better and much more active Browser-Based MMO's on Facebook, so why this one exactly?

I also still see completely dead links like http://www.anthro-morphs.com/crpgnet/.

And I see links to games like WoW and Ultima Online, which don't need any advertising, and which seem unlikely to get anyone interested in text-based games.

On the other hand, I don't see links to the graphical GUIs of BatMUD or GodWars2, or links to MUD apps on Facebook like the Two Towers: https://apps.facebook.com/thetwotowers/?ref=ts . To me, such clients are much more deserving of the moniker "Graphical MUD" and they're much more likely to be the gateway into text-based gaming for total newbies.

One thing that's missing from the site altogether are resources related to mobile MUD play.

Plamzi - I'll send you an email, the conversation seems to be heading outside of the purpose for this thread...

-Iccy

Alternatively, Duris might function as a pk option. It's more
standard and uses the kill style of combat, but it's largely
pk based and also has a fantasy element to it, as it's based
off of the Forgotten Realms series.

I was considering Duris earlier and not sure why it slipped by - I could happily add that to the list for another PvP mud.
Thank you for thumping my brain!

-Iccy

I think Star Wars Mud (SWmud) would be a really good choice to add into the quick connect feature that you plan on using Swmud has a real healthy population and has an awesome track record of being up plus its players are extremely friendly and it'd offer something different than your typical fantasy theme and diku style mud. Swmud has an average of 14+ players on at all times and peaking at about 30.

P.S. I'm not even a Star Wars fan. I found this mud back in 94 and just loved the features it had and looked passed the SW theme so that should be saying something about it also?

Thanks for considering Dragonball Evolution, I was a bit short on time when I made that post. DBE focuses quite a bit on grouping, PK and boss fights. RP is encouraged but lately PK and boss fights have taken over. DBE also has a full newbie academy and an extensive list of help files. I'm also open to make any new help files that a newbie believes should exist to help them learn the MUD better. If added to the list, you won't have to worry about DBE disappearing or having any extended downtimes. DBE is my life hobby and I take my MUD very serious.

Icculus wrote:

I think AA would be a good candidate for this. I believe we fill all five of your requirements. We've also worked to make sure we have a lot of the common mudding commands from other games aliased, so transitioning to/from other games shouldn't be too hard.

How would you categorize it? Its hard to tell from the tmc listing...

-Iccy

It's general fantasy/D&D for the theme, and the playing style is superficially similar to Diku. It's PVE by default with various forms of pk.

I'm not sure what else you're looking for; I just noticed that it fills all five of your listed requirements. What else would you like to know?

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD
http://www.alteraeon.com

Sidonie wrote:

One thought is that it's a lot of text and, at least on my screen, small.

TMC is one site where I have hit CTL + several times in Firefox. It's all very small and hard to read to me. Luckily Firefox remembers the magnification setting.

hit CTL + several times in Firefox

Mind = Blown

Thanks Tyche!

BatMud is a great mud, but you may want to reconsider putting
it on the list. The text/map formatting looks funky for new
players unless they input specific commands to fix it or use
the batmud client.

I would strongly suggest putting Materia Magica on the list.
The game literally has it all, including a superb website,
loads of new player support, and a very healthy and helpful
community.

Iccy,

Ansalon is pretty newb friendly if you need Diku-ish muds.
For years we've had it so that newbie commands are entered when they don't match, to show us 'what they try' and we've addapted the parser to match.

Things like 'go west' 'walk east' enter store' etc, all work.

Also interactive commands are much more forgiving, ie: put my sword into my backpack, interps down to 'put sword backpack' so that the newer players can use full English if they want. That kind of parsing is all over.

As for players, we've never been huge, but normally have 15-20 players around. Many 'helpers' who see the newbie helps as well as any missing helpfiles the lowbies try for.

It was Rom 2.3 in 96, but I've worked on improvements for about 12 years since 2k, trying to 'Take the Duh out of Diku' (see the parsing above heh).

And we don't PK them until level 15, I swear :).

Hey folks, so adding these to the proposed list - if anyone has objections or comments please post or email:

Ansalon
Duris
Dragonball Evolution

It was suggested that we replace BatMUD with Materia Magica - does anyone have a comment about that proposal?

I think we have enough to provide a few (random) options for each of the categories - all of the proposed muds seem to meet the newbie friendly and minimum players criteria ...

While I am waiting for some more comments I'm going to go ahead and finish that page up and get the script working that'll provide a connect button ...

-Iccy

(Comment added by Icculus on Fri Apr 27 9:58:51 2012)

I think I wrote part of that wrong, my intention is to add Materia Magica to the list, but I am curious to know if anyone else has a comment about the BatMUD interface potentially being a problem for new players due to the fmud client. Not asking if you think its a great MUD or not, but whether for this purpose it is suitable. :) -Iccy

(Comment added by Icculus on Fri Apr 27 10:21:29 2012)

Sorry, forgot to mention that I want to add this one also:

Star Wars Mud (SWmud)

My only concern with Materia Magica is that it is a pay for
perks mud, and the introduction explicitly states free playing
time as a benefit to muds. It would seem then that having a
commercial mud as a automatic connection would be contrary to
the original message.

Still, it does fulfill some of the criteria.

My only concern with Materia Magica is that it is a pay for
perks mud,

Enough said, its unfortunate but that is what I want to avoid so we'll nix that and move on. Thanks for pointing that out!

I still need help filling two more slots, I only have two muds for the categories:

PvP + RP - Dragonball Evolution and Dark Risings
PvP - God Wars II and Duris

I'd like to have 3+ muds for each category to minimize a time when all of the muds are listed as unreachable. Thats hopefully rare but with only 2 its more likely to happen. So if anyone has suggestions for those slots I'd like to hear them!

Thanks,
Iccy

(Comment added by Icculus on Fri Apr 27 12:04:23 2012)

Also adding CyberASSAULT as a prospective mud for the sci-fi section -- please speak up if you have any objections! :)

I looked over the newbie intro page. The first page looks good. On the second page, I noticed a rather important (and nearly
universal) command that isn't mentioned: 'help'.

A 'commands' command is also relatively common.

As for this...

5.
The mud should be a combat-oriented game, though it can also be RP-centric -- RP alone may be a draw.

Unless I fail to take proper meaning from the phrasing, why must it be combat-oriented? There is typically a large interest in
crafting-oriented games, too (I want to bake bread!). Of the games suggested so far, how many of them have a major focus on
crafting?

Although I do see the benefit to the MUDding community as a
whole with a feature like this, I wonder if it may come as
the expense of some of the newer, developing MUDs? With
TMC's current lay-out, the "new" MUD listing takes centre
stage and is often where (I believe) many players start when
looking for a new MUD. In past experience, I've seen a major
bump in activity while a MUD maintains a position on that
list. Integrating a "Play Now" sort of feature on the main
page may shift the focus away from some of the new upstart
MUDs and push it to MUDs that already have an active, if not
thriving, pbase.

I understand why we would like potential new players to a
have their first MUD experience in a MUD with atleast some
sort of population, as opposed to an empty game world, but
this may lead to a "rich get richer" scenario.

I'll just throw out the idea here that perhaps there should
be some sort of standard for being on this list, and perhaps
an active rotation of qualifying MUDs who may which to covet
one of the 3 slots in their MUD's genre.

Its nice to see some actual positive discussion happening
here again.

I am not certain, of course, but I'd guess 90+% of the people who have no idea what a mud is visit TMC, have no idea what to do or why a new mud is important to them and leave and go to the next google search result.

The list I am working on is to _help_ ensure that the new players' first experience is going to be a positive one: a game that has a history of being online, has a poulation adequate enough to make sure there are players there around the clock to greet new players, and content that has been in development for long enough to be tried and true.

I just don't feel a new mud is going to hit these points! A new mud is likely to be going through constant change and as a result have some downtime while adding new features or debugging, and likely to not have the player base to ensure there are others to play with at any time.

This list won't be static by any means and I will happily add muds to the list as myself and the TMC community here feel they meet the above criteria.

Keep in mind that most of the muds on the current list were suggested by the community in this thread or have been emailed to me!

-Iccy

Good suggestions Lyanic:

1. help has a paragraph devoted to it already but I will make it more clear that it is a command, that was overlooked.

2. The commands command will be added as well!

I am an avid crafter in the games I play and have played, but I always felt that crafting was something that went along with the combat-oriented games.

Can you suggest a mud ( or three actually ) that are devoted mostly to crafting where combat plays second fifdle? I am open to adding a category for those, or if the muds you have in mind already fit into one of the other categories ...

-Iccy