I'm curious....

Archived discussion from Toril-2.
kwirl
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I'm curious....

Postby kwirl » Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:07 am

Kingdom of Loathing is a text-based (browser, in fact) game that has over 600,000 players (users/accounts/etc). The animations are stick figurish, and the play is almost childishly simple (my girlfriend learned to play in a couple of days). They accept donations, and the owner of the site lives fulltime off of what amounts to a donation-based income of thousands of dollars a month.

Medievia, the only remaining MUD I know of that is still growing and expanding, also accepts donations. The owner lives like 20 minutes from where I live, and he has a personal helicopter that he uses at regular game gatherings.

The DIKU license allows that you can not make 'profit' on the code, but if it follows every single example I know of, it does allow you to generate revenue that can be used to put back into the game. This includes defrayment of operating/bandwidth costs, and to be honest, compensatory allocations for the coders/developers who invest their own time into making the game worthy of earning that revenue stream.

You could also slap some google ads onto the website. This forum gets mad traffic, from all over the world, and I don't think any of us would complain if the phpBB code/template was modified to allow a 60 pixel google adsense bar on the right column.

Some things I would pay money for :

Donating with a character to get double experience from monsters. 50 bucks and my character gets double experience from kills (not damage, etc) - I'd drop that in a heartbeat. Especially if it was an alt. Lower that to 20 bucks, and I'd consider it a requirement for characters.

A container...not all of us have portable holes, but for the rest, maybe a 15 dollar donation would get us a respectable container that was truly weightless, and also indestructable. These items should be !trade/drop/sell/give or anything. You buy it for a character, that character keeps it, for life. New character? Buy a new bag.

A "brooch" or "pendant" equipment location where 25 dollars could get us a resist_all charm, or perhaps something that removes our need to eat/drink. How about faster move/hp regeneration?

There are plenty of other things, but I just don't see any way for this game to grow again without some way for the players to physically 'give back' to the game with something more tangible than votes on a forum.
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Postby Ambar » Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:03 am

rofl no!

donations for hardware upgrades, etc .. but for in game rewards?

hehe no!
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Postby amolol » Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:59 pm

just what a troll needs, faster hp regeneration
i dont know what your problem is, but i bet its hard to pronounce

myspace.com/tgchef
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Postby Alonwynn » Fri Aug 12, 2005 8:19 pm

I thought I saw somewhere that the MUD already accepts donations, and I'm almost 100% positive the gods made it clear there would be no in-game rewards for donations made, a policy I agree with wholeheartedly.
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Postby Nekelet » Fri Aug 12, 2005 9:03 pm

Alonwynn wrote:I thought I saw somewhere that the MUD already accepts donations, and I'm almost 100% positive the gods made it clear there would be no in-game rewards for donations made, a policy I agree with wholeheartedly.


clickety click
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Postby Yasden » Sat Aug 13, 2005 2:07 am

And Medievia wonders why the rest of the gaming community hates them.
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Why Nerox is jealous of me:

Nerox tells you 'man this thing is kicking my ass and i have blisters!'
Nerox tells you 'ok attempting it again put tape on my fingers for easier sliding'
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Postby kwirl » Sat Aug 13, 2005 6:27 pm

you may hate them....but they still have hundreds of players online at any given time. obviously the 'hatred' is not as prevalent as the bitterness of other MUD's that have failed to give the players what they want; alienating them.

besides, flame or not, the point of this thread was to generate discussion about ways to revive the game, not hate it.

i mean, i spend more time playing a web-based game that uses stick-figure animation than mudding, which is sad
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Postby Ambar » Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:52 pm

kwirl wrote:i mean, i spend more time playing a web-based game that uses stick-figure animation than mudding, which is sad
but thats your choice, isnt it?
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Postby Drache » Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:35 pm

Given the author, I figured the title of the thread - I'm curious.... - SHOULD have been:

I'm bi-curious! :P
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Postby kwirl » Sun Aug 14, 2005 2:58 pm

stop hitting on me :P
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Postby Yasden » Mon Aug 15, 2005 2:18 pm

kwirl wrote:you may hate them....but they still have hundreds of players online at any given time. obviously the 'hatred' is not as prevalent as the bitterness of other MUD's that have failed to give the players what they want; alienating them.


Say that to the MUDs who have more players than Medievia, and currently get more votes than Medievia every month. Aardwolf, the #1 voted site usually every month, isn't even affiliated with IRE (Iron Realms Entertainment). Some of those have been up just as long as we have, if not longer.

I'm not flaming anyone, I was just stating the obvious. Most of the MUDding community loathes Medievia for their blatant thievery/misuse of Diku code. Whether or not they still do is not our business (and frankly I don't want to get into that argument on this forum), but the fact of the matter is, you stated yourself that the owner has a freakin' private helicopter. He generated revenue for his own personal benefit in the past when everyone was *certain* of the thievery.

This mud has survived this long because the players care more about the challenge of a real game instead of trying to buy their way through life. While that may not be the case for everyone anymore, I can certainly say that most of us "true to the game" hate things being made easier like that. It's cheesy and retarded.

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Why Nerox is jealous of me:



Nerox tells you 'man this thing is kicking my ass and i have blisters!'

Nerox tells you 'ok attempting it again put tape on my fingers for easier sliding'
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Postby kiryan » Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:53 pm

are you willing to destroy the foundations of torilmud to bring in a whole crowd of people who will probably drive away the people who have steadfastedly supported it and given toril its name and made it the game it is today?

those muds attract different kind of players. toril is not the right mud for everyone, but hopefully its the right mud for more people than who generally indicates.

Why don't you create your own mud that caters to these people? Oh yea, you tried that *smirk* and are back here again.

Don't bother responding, I won't be back to this thread.
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Postby fotex » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:04 pm

Aardwolf has been successful because its name is always on the top of the list alphabetically. :P And I guess it hooks and retains players well too.
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Postby Botef » Mon Aug 15, 2005 5:01 pm

fotex wrote:Aardwolf has been successful because its name is always on the top of the list alphabetically. :P And I guess it hooks and retains players well too.


Random Rant
Those muds suck too...I honestly don't see how people can play the muds on the top of TMC's list. I tried it and immediatly wanted to puke when I saw what their idea of eq looked like.

<#>ThE AmUlEt Of A GiAnT<#> *puke*

Random Rant Over
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Postby Elet » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:01 pm

agree... ive tested it for few days.. and i get bored. imagine you got 300++ hit/dam? wtf is that hehe

toril is much much better :)
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Postby Naled » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:18 pm

I think you all shouldn't discard Kwirl's idea as totally worthless that fast. Though I don't believe in buying in game items since it would destroy the game, I don't see the harm in placing ads on the forums and site. It could generate some cash along with some donations to keep this game afloat. It could even help to pay for things like advertising or god-forbid reimburse expenses the imms make.
We are here anyway making, tons of post, why not make some money off it for the mud.
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Postby Dalar » Tue Aug 16, 2005 4:01 pm

kiryan wrote:are you willing to destroy the foundations of torilmud to bring in a whole crowd of people who will probably drive away the people who have steadfastedly supported it and given toril its name and made it the game it is today?


The game it is today? The other day I was on Ventrilo with some veteran players of this game. Trilca and Allycis. I listen to Allycis talk about Duris and Toril like they were the best gaming years of his life. The stories he talks about make me wish those games were still alive. They aren't. What we have now is some carebear crap with 0 challenge. In my 2-3 years in Sojourn3, I have 0 stories that can compare with any of his. Bring back artifacts!
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Postby Corth » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:10 pm

I like the way dartan put it. Carebear crap. But he's absolutely right. Though I get the feeling that most of those left on toril are in favor of carebear crap. :)

Corth
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth

Goddamned slippery mage.
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Postby Ambar » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:38 pm

No matter what changes are made to the mud, not everyone is going to be happy. No matter what, SOMEONE will whine. Changes make people stop playing their graphical games briefly, but they go back once they decide things are still *retarded* to coin a phrase.

The mud has evolved from what it was years ago, I don't think there is a turning back to the 300 logged on years past. People want things too easy, when they are made harder, people whine. Make things easier, people whine.

We can remember they way things were fondly, just as we can remember forrmer RL glory, but we just cant go back! I'm so sick of hearing the same things from the same people about what needs to change. What I think is that people need ot take a step back once in a while.

Things just arent the same. People arent the same. The game isnt the same.

I see/hear/read people living in their glory, much like the football hero relives the same oober play time after time after time. Yes I was there in those old days, I knew those people, saw the cool weapons, saw the cool equipment. Imagine if it was all brought back to the game the way it is now. Rofl as it is, small groups ROLL the zones that we thoguht were so scary:P Imagine if the oober eq was brought back to TODAY's standards! HAH!

If you are tired of a game, walk away. The older players have walked away, they retired in their heyday, they are now legends. Todays whiners will NEVER be yesterdays heroes!

Dont know what I am trying to say here .. just felt like rambling

-Me
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Postby Mitharx » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:39 pm

I'm not a carebear. I'm a harcore rough and tumble non-stop extreme mudder to the max!

Oh wait, that sounds stupid.
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Postby Dalar » Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:25 pm

Not _that_ many people left to play graphical games exclusively like I did. Most of them left the game because of boredom. Anyone who enjoyed doing new content left because there's no new content. Anyone who enjoyed a challenge left because of invokers.

Ambar, have you ever thought about the direction of this MUD? In 1 year, Homeland zones may be added, conquered in less than a month if Larim and his friend still play, and the MUD will still have nothing new conceptually. The whole tanks e, invokers nuke, yay we win repetition will only be fun for so long, but then again, alot of the people playing are still lifers. Immortals need to add some new concepts into this game. Oh, and the whole log curve for equipment is lame.
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Postby Ambar » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:07 am

My whole point, Brian .. was that no matter what gets added, you will think it's boring after a month or two. Your generation doesnt have the attention span that we did as younger mudders. Consider who two of the coders are for crying out loud! The mudders you honor with your best mudding memories!

No insult at all intended, but look who bitches the most? Your age group. You guys go off to play your new games, say how oober it is compared to this mud, and complain about the things that should change, etc .. but where do you come back to? The very game that bores you!

People do what makes them happy. As a whole, text based games cant hold a candle to graphical, it takes a certain mentality to playa text based game. I am still playing because #1, I can just walk away from an xp group, can't from an instance without pissing a lot of folks off. #2, I still use my imagination about the mud.

Do I think about the direction the mud has taken? Of course I have .. what used to interest you (not you specifically but players LIKE you) has gotten too easy. To change the whole mechanics of the mud would take way more of the coders time then they have available. Consider graphical games have TEAMS of coders to draw from the get PAID for it. The mud has one or two ACTIVE coders. Real life occurs. They dont get paid to mud or to create for the mud. Real life comes FIRST to most. Lets see.. code for a bunch of people you CAN'T satisfy or .. hmm get paid. You decide!

You guys complain and cpmplain and complain, but what active role have you got in the mud? You log in for a few hours every few months to bitch that nothing has changed. To relive the glory of what USED to be. DUH! We didnt USED to have graphical muds to compare things to. This is what we had to drive us.

Looked at the ideas forum lately? Noone really has any new ideas .. they just borrow from this graphical game or that. WoW has this, EQ2 has that. Coders here are limited to what THIS code engine can support.
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Postby Dalar » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:11 pm

I've been playing WoW for over a year now and I'm still playing it. Why? It has replay value and a scale at which your character can actually develop. WoW changes occasionally with new content that's worth doing for about 1-2 months, then gets boring, unless it requires a 40-man raid. Cyric and Dugmaren did a really good job at creating a log curve on how equipment stats increase, which kind of takes the fun out of the game.

Saying my age group has a low attention span is correct, but the statement doesn't explain why the older mudders such as Slavan, Rika etc. have left their MUDs. I know you played WoW and probably read the forums. There are tons of people in my age group complaining. Why? Because my age group doesn't have commitments to family, a house etc. We have the time and energy to complain and you don't. Your age group doesn't complain because you're old and tired, no offense. I'm already tired from 8-5, adding on kids and bills would probably make me not care like you. Also, I am guilded with people your age and they bitch up a storm on ventrilo and have quit WoW because it wasn't changing fast enough for them. Remember Pok? Moghra?

What active role can we take in the MUD? None. I find it ironic that the immortals have a huge trust issue with many players, but they break the rules ALOT more than someone like Klandan or myself would. Why? Because we actually care about information spreading around. I could care less if I was ever an immortal here; I just cared about shit being fixed or done.

I don't relog here every few months to relive the glory. I relive the glory when I'm bored on Ventrilo and the real legends begin talking, usually when we say "hey, I heard from soandso the other day". In fact, we were talking about Kanthas the other day since he ICQ'd Trilca. I come on here to complain because there are some people I still care about here wasting their time on this game. I log off quickly when they aren't at the keys or aren't on. Also, I'm usually at work when I log on. I'll come to realize that they're lifers who will never get a good computer (which is cheap, WoW can be run on a $300 computer), or they've just accepted mediocrity.

What's the point of the ideas forums? Most ideas are borrowed yes, but the unique ones don't get answered either. Adding spells isn't that hard. Homeland did it for a while right?
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Postby Ragorn » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:48 pm

The stagnation of Toril has simply become ingrained so deeply in the game that I think it's too late to hope for change. The slow pace of change means that the short attention span players have probably all left already for other MUDs or graphical games. Likewise, the grouping mentality here has pushed out the soloers and the power players too. The result is that the people who still play Toril are the ones most likely to RESIST massive changes.

Sojourn 2 was my heyday, and that was also the period of time in Sojourn/Toril's life when player power was at its LOWEST. When I retired Ragorn, he was swinging a 29/32 hit/dam, and that was relatively buff. Did anything of note really happen that wipe? The first run through Seers was probably the highlight for me (15 hours), and duoing part of Demi with Valeos. We didn't have any Clerics soloing dragons, nobody dreamed of duoing Jot.

When S2 closed, I played Duris. It was like night and day. My Shaman memmed 10th circle in 5 seconds (a few wipes later, my 56 Gnome Sorc would be memming 10th circle in 1.5 seconds with 140 int), and my Thri-Kreen attacked 11 times a round at 50 damroll. My Bard and a Conjurer duoed Jot. I was ruined on Toril forever. Yeah, I came back at the beginning of S3 and screamed and kicked my feet for a while, trying to impact some changes. Eventually, I gave up and moved on to MMORPGs.

Toril isn't in the same catagory as most current MMORPGs anymore. That's not a quality judgement, but the group-centric, slow-paced play on Toril is just not something you can compare to, say, City of Heroes where you're always moving and mobs die ten at a time in one shot. This generation of MMORPGs caters to the solo- and small group-oriented player who's looking for a game they can play in one or two hour increments. WoW falls apart at level 60 because all of those hour-session casual players are shoehorned into five-hour raid instances, but that's a different issue. Point is, you're not going to attract WoW players to Toril. You're just not. "Our generation," with houses and kids and families... many of us just don't have the time to sit down for an eight hour BC run anymore. In order to cater to the casual, two-hour player, you'd have to turn Toril around 180 degrees and make it a solo friendly, small-group kind of MUD. I don't think the existing players want that.
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Postby fobble » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:51 pm

I'm just glad and thankful to see the mud still alive...thank you immortals.

In my opinion, critical issue is how to draw new players. Social interactions (S) with good game mechanics (G) is what makes it enjoyable and keeps people from coming back. soj already have solid game mechanics for most people... it's just lacking playerbase for social aspect.

S + G = Fun!

Suggestions to further improve game mechanics by add/mod-ing items, zones, challenges, etc. is only one part of the equation and least effective to draw new players. It'd mainly satisfy vets to retain them. Please don't say it will make old players come back, because we all know only some if not few will return temporarily until those challenges are beat, learn/quest new spells, got new items, etc. Plus many vets only hang with their old friends or crew.

So improving already solid game mechanic really doesn't do a thing for new players till higher lvl...but there is no higher lvl if they don't come back right? You can have the best game mechanic but without people to enjoy it with...it's boring and it sucks. Pretend you never played soj and you started today as total noob...you'd probably quit very soon due to lack of social interaction...not because game mechanics.

If you breakdown Kwirl's idea to basics. It's basically saying take donations and use that money to market the mud to draw new players & increase playerbase. To do so, provide perks as motivation factor to get people to donate. Whether people agree what is fair perk for donation is another story. "There is no free lunch" proverb probably fits that best.

As for what would be efficient way to market soj to draw new people...I don't have any idea there...my job is business analyst not marketing =p

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
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Postby Corth » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:31 pm

Like Kwirl I am also curious.. why homeland was taken over by the toril and not vice versa. I'm not going to be mudding anytime soon regardless, so I don't really care much one way or the other. It just surprises me that the players continue to allow the current administration to promise new content and changes, which are invariably not delivered. It would seem to me that there are plenty of people who want to contribute to the mud. If the current lot can't do it (for rl reasons or whatever), why not find someone that can?

Shrug

Corth
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth



Goddamned slippery mage.

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