03 Sep, 2007, Darwin wrote in the 1st comment:
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A friend and I are working on a new site for MUD listings and resources as well as other things we haven't figured out yet. Please, if you would, check out the site and leave us some feedback either here or there on the forums. You may also submit your mud to the listings to help us flesh out any errors or problems that may crop up.

Site: Alternate Realm Entertainment

Thank you for your time.
03 Sep, 2007, Conner wrote in the 2nd comment:
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As if we all need yet another mud listings site.. ok, signing up so I can list my mud yet somewhere else.. Does this site have a banner I can toss onto my web site to indicate that it's somewhere else that we're listed now?
04 Sep, 2007, Darwin wrote in the 3rd comment:
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You can use this button image for your link.
04 Sep, 2007, Conner wrote in the 4th comment:
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'k, thanks :smile:
16 Oct, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 5th comment:
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I remember back in the day when there were only three places to have to go to check the forums, boy, those were the days! I am feeling like an old man at the age of twenty-two reminiscing on all of this. Its good to see that even after the whole "WoW boom" there are people working on MUDs (more importantly, new people). You'd be surprised the amount of people that I found at college that would be interested in such games. So there is always hope!

There is something about WoW that just isn't as fulfilling.
16 Oct, 2007, Kayle wrote in the 6th comment:
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It's the fact that it gets boring as hell after about 6 months. Especially when you spend most of that 6 months leveling.
16 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
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I think it also has to do with a much lower barrier to entry. You need less time, less hardware power, less money (for both hardware and subscription), etc. You also aren't tied to a particular computer: you can in principle telnet in from anywhere (although I suppose most people would only use their computer with all their triggers and stuff on it).

I'm not sure that playing MUDs in general is less boring than MMORPGs in general, although MUDs also have a much lower barrier to entry for actually making your own, coding for one, etc. So although playing I think is rather similar for both in the end of the day, MUDs give you a lot more room for customization if you choose to do so.
16 Oct, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 8th comment:
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Well, MMORPGs are nearly impossible to start on your own. The closest that we ever got was running a dedicated server for the Torque engine. The coding isn't the hard part; its managing the project. Whenever we got our hands dirty in anything that required more tiers we always ended up faltering due to nobody wanting to simply manage the project. I always ended up scripting or coding (depending on the project, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Unreal, etc) and shifting off managing to some of the other guys.

Anything with more magnitude than a MUD requires other skillsets as well. Sound engineers, level designers, artists and then all the leads to manage each subset. It gets pretty crazy. I always found it easier to just do something on your own, grab up some people and then go from there. That's what I ended up doing here and what I continue to end up doing with the research stuff at college.

So, in essence, the barrier for entry to create a new game is possible with MUDs, not so much with MMORPGs. I'm not saying that it is impossible. Just very improbable.
16 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
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That's a good point. I forgot to mention the time it takes to create the medium itself. Text is easy: just type in "there is a dragon here" and poof, there's a dragon. Graphical engines need all the stuff you talked about: 3d artists, 2d texture artists, sound, ……

Due to this, MUDs are also a much nicer test bed for complex programming techniques. It's a lot easier to make stuff happen in the world, so you can focus on high-level concepts rather than the nitty gritty details of skeletal animation and positional sound playing.
16 Oct, 2007, Hades_Kane wrote in the 10th comment:
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Not trying to be flamey… but what does your MUD resource site offer that the others are lacking?
16 Oct, 2007, Darwin wrote in the 11th comment:
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We don't quite know yet. Like the subject says, it's still being developed and in a beta stage. We're asking for feedback to find out what others would like to see or have available to them on such a site. Since we have received so little feedback, we haven't done much work on it since we got the MUD listing module functioning, saving and retrieving the data entered.

So, if you have any suggestions, we're all ears.
17 Oct, 2007, Cratylus wrote in the 12th comment:
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Quote
We don't quite know yet.


This is probably a problem. If someone promises to
offer a service to a community, one of the first things
I look to is that person's likelihood to provide a
*reliable* service.

If that person appears unaware of the details of
what they plan to do I tend to think they are
unlikely to be around for long. It's a symptom
of lack of direction, which IMO is an excellent indicator
that a project won't last long, and if it does, it
won't be very active or useful.

There are exception, of course. Perhaps you are
one of them.


Quote
it's still being developed and in a beta stage. We're asking for feedback to find out what others would like to see or have available to them on such a site.


No offense, but it's really not a mystery what people
want, which is probably why you're not getting much
feedback. Under some exceptional circumstances, I
can imagine your project stalling because of lack
of feedback, but from what I've seen, you're just not
sure what to do. I suggest that research into what
other listing sites do…particularly the *popular*
ones…will be a lot more helpful than waiting around
for people to tell you what to do.


Quote
Since we have received so little feedback, we haven't done much work on it since we got the MUD listing module functioning


This tells me you're just not that motivated to
do it. In my job, when someone says they're "waiting
for customer response," everyone smirks because it's
effectively a euphemism for "I don't feel like
doing anything."


Quote
So, if you have any suggestions, we're all ears.


Just get on with it, and behave like you're
motivated, focused, disciplined, and have a purpose.


-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
17 Oct, 2007, Hades_Kane wrote in the 13th comment:
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The main reason I was asking what you felt like your site would have to offer that the other ones don't is because I don't see the use in another listing site without something quite different.

As an example, TMC is very heavily biased toward it's paying sponsors, and nowhere on the site can you distinguish between free, pay to play, pay for perks, donations, etc. Mud Magic is ran by a raving, paranoid tyrant where you can't expect to do good business with him, and honestly the site just kinda sucks. TMS is rife with corruption…

In that regard, MudBytes opened up as a place free from the commercial influence (and thus corruption) that pervades every avenue of the other sites. It lists what type of pay model the site is, and is basically the answer to the issues that people have with TMS and TMC's being held near hostage by IRE. Likewise, with it's code repository along with it's MUD listings, it's a true alternative to Mud Magic, where we don't have a raving, paranoid lunatic running the site.

All of the above mentioned sites allow near any MUD that wants to list, and hence Mud Quest opened to bring a focus on a smaller genre of MUDs… free and quality.

In both MudBytes and MudQuest opening up recently (relatively speaking) they were both meeting the needs and requests of a vocal part of our community that weren't being met elsewhere. Neither seemed to have any agenda other than doing something positive for the community.

So, if you created a Mud Resource site that had only the features of X site or Z site, then why bother? I support MudBytes and MudQuest because I felt, like I said, as if they were meeting a need that wasn't met elsewhere. So, that's why I ask if you have anything planned that isn't being met elsewhere.

In regards to what I think the community is looking for in a MUD resource site?

-Mud Listings with plenty of details, including pay model.
-A Forum to discuss things
-Code repository
-Area repository
-Free banner rotation*

*The reason I bring this up is I notice that you feature, rather prominently, a banner for a specific MUD in the top right corner of the site. To be 100% honest with you, that comes across really strongly that you and a few buddies made a MUD, and was sitting around thinking "How can we drive the most traffic there? Oh, I know! We'll create a MUD Resource site that's heavily linked with our MUD and prominently advertise it so that way when people come into our resource site, our MUD will be one of the main ones they try! Hey, it works for IRE and TMC, right?" Now, I'm not accusing you of that, but I am cautioning you that if that isn't your intent, you might want to reconsider prominently displaying a banner for a single MUD. If that is your intent, you might want to reconsider your scheme :p But yeah, if you rotate banners in that spot like MudBytes do, that should be ok.

Regardless, even with all that above, you will still be just another resource site, and with TMC, MudBytes, and MudQuest covering everything, I don't really see the need for another one without something different or unique to it. People seemed to be annoyed enough at trying to keep up with the same discussion across TMS, MudBytes, and TMC (I know I've seen at least two threads just this week that are near identical on TMC and MudBytes), and I don't know that yet another forum to keep up with would do anyone any good. I don't see another code repository doing anyone any good either, as MudMagic's repository is rather large, and you see of what MudBytes does have, that took over a year and quite an investment to build up, and that was this site's original intent and focus. I don't see many area repositories, so that might be a bit of a selling point, but really it would only be useful for new startup stock games as anyone who has done -anything- with their game will soon find their areas are no longer compatible with stock games, and I imagine the only people who would really be interested in using an area repository are the people who wouldn't have the capability of taking an area not compatible with their game and converting it. So, I think that's a very limited target audience, at best.

Overall? I don't really see the point in another resource site. So if you come up with something unique to sell for your site, I'd be sure to try to draw as much attention to that as possible.
17 Oct, 2007, Cratylus wrote in the 14th comment:
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Quote
we don't have a raving, paranoid lunatic running the site


Oh?

Quote
The reason I bring this up is I notice that you feature, rather prominently, a banner for a specific MUD in the top right corner of the site. To be 100% honest with you, that comes across really strongly that you and a few buddies made a MUD, and was sitting around thinking "How can we drive the most traffic there? Oh, I know! We'll create a MUD Resource site that's heavily linked with our MUD and prominently advertise it so that way when people come into our resource site, our MUD will be one of the main ones they try! Hey, it works for IRE and TMC, right?"


Strongly Agree. IMO what a new listing site could bring to the table
aside from the obvious requirements is a lack of conflict of interest.
That's pretty much the only thing missing from the current big sites, afaict.


Quote
Overall? I don't really see the point in another resource site.


Somewhat Agree. I can see a new resource site being great if it
brought something new and useful to the table, and/or did what the
current ones do but better. However, a site whose admins are sitting
around hoping to be given a direction to take is a most inauspicious
start to such a resource.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

PS In the interest of full disclosure: I run a mud resource site of my own.
It focuses on a specific kind of mud, however, and doesn't do listings.
I just didn't see a point in reinventing the wheel.
17 Oct, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 15th comment:
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I thought your site was pretty interesting, Cratylus. I've been meaning to find out more about LPMUDs for a while and yours looks like a great place to do just that. I'm not interested in LPC per se – I think I can do the same by embedding Lua, instead of interpreting LPC. Nonetheless, I'm eager to see how other people are solving these problems, esp. that of having an interpreted language running on top of a core of some kind, and the division of labor between the two. I also believe that LP systems have some kind of access level protection for various functionality, which is very interesting as it would let builders write code in an appropriately sandboxed environment.

But sorry for the tangent as far as this thread is concerned. I agree with much of what has been said: for such an endeavor to succeed, you need more than a willingness to implement what people suggest. You need to actively drive the development. Even if you do exactly what others do, and do it better, you won't necessarily get a following unless you give people a reason to break the inertia they have of being where they already are.
18 Oct, 2007, Guest wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
Quote
we don't have a raving, paranoid lunatic running the site


Oh?


Oh come on. I'm not paranoid for God sake!
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