[MUD-Dev] Pay Muds & Free Muds - working together, or againsteach other?

[Greg Miller]

Ross Nicoll wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Greg Munt wrote:
> > How do pay muds get all their players to part with their cash, when there
> > are so many free muds around?
> The difference tends to be quality. I'm sure, if you looked hard enough,
> you could find free MUDs every bit as good as pay MUDs, but pay MUD admins
> have a lot more time to work on their MUDs, and generally are more
> experienced...

The whole "free trial" thing seems to work well. There are lots of
people that WILL pay if they're first informed that they don't HAVE to
and are given time to get addicted. If a player finds himself playing
frequently and enjoying it, you can get a number of them to pay for
bonuses ranging from the small (extra socials, the ability to capitalize
their names however they want, etc) to the large (selling cheater eq,
bonus stats, etc).

> I wasn't aware of anyone directly associated with pay MUDs doing this. 

Me either, but the answer is "yes"... It probably is in their best
interest to do so.

> > Is it a given that any pay mud that wants to have any noticeable profit
> > needs to be GUI, GUI, GUI, all the way?
> No, look at Avalon, http://www.avalon-rpg.com, and Achaea,
> http://www.achaea.com/. Calmar (my MUD) was also doing pretty well, player
> wise, until the admins run out of time (I'm at university).

However, it's probably a significant advantage, since most game players
seem to insist on graphics.

> is because of either work or university. Pay MUDs would probably try to
> become better still, and failing that, would disappear.

I disagree. A certain inertia would cause people to play whatever they
first run into, even if it's inferior and costs money. Look at the
StockMUDs, people still play many of them even with better alternatives.
When Orin started distributing the source code for EmlenMUD to people
who bought binaries previously (in violation of the Diku and Merc
licenses, of course), there were people screaming bloody murder because
the admins of these systems started changing details here and there for
the first time in a couple of years.

In short, marketing will bring people from outside the hobby to pay muds
*first*, and once they play a given mud, many will never move elsewhere
even if the mud is both terrible and expensive.

> > Sidenote: I tried Avalon a few years ago. Text-only (even when you used the
> > custom-written client!), and looked and feeled not dissimilar to any old LP.
> > What gives? WHY would people pay to use that? I remember being dumbfounded
> > at the time.

I haven't played it, does it seem to fit the situation I mention above
in at least some respects?

> I left it because of cost in general (we pay per minute here, the phone
> bill was costing far, far more than the MUD), although I do still drop in
> from time to time...

And to think that the FCC is considering giving us an actual *discount*
for connections to ISPs in the US :) The real solution for you guys is
to get American communications companies to move in and attempt to take
over your local company's territory. That'll happen, but maybe not until
revenues in the US stop expanding at godawful rates in several areas.
--
http://www.classic-games.com/
President Clinton was acquitted; then again, so was O. J. Simpson.
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