[MUD-Dev] Re: Selling Godhoods!?!

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 25 Apr 2000 11:09:52 -0500 (CDT) 
Mud Imp <pkme at hub.cyberwizards.com> wrote:

> shrug. I want my imms to be people that I've hired to do a job not
> people that have cash. Cash doesn't mean competence. I want my
> imms to be people that have played for quite a while, expressed a
> real interest in the game and it's development, have shown over
> time that they are willing to work and are capable of doing the
> job I need done.

I dislike being an apologist for others, but let's either keep this
thread at least somewhat focused on the actual example presented,
and not on the larger (and very unweildy) abstract case of purchased
status positions, or lets seperate this thread into two distinct
sub-threads: the case Mihaley presented, and the more abstract case.

The two are very different.

As I see it the basic questions of Matthew's thread are:

  -- Will my MUD community accept this model, and if not, what
     problems might I expect and how might I handle them?

  -- Can I usefully use/leverage this model in other ways with my
     MUD community, and if so, what are the risks/benefits and any
     concommitment techniques I might involve?

  -- What generic problems may I (Matthew) expect, and how might I
     handle them?

  -- Am I (Matthew) overlooking something dire, and if so, what is
     it, and is it preventable?

  -- Does this present a possibly useful model in general that might
     be applied in other fashions to my MUD or for other niche pay
     MUDs, and if so, how?

I find those rather interesting questions.  I can see some concerns
they raise, which I've posted on, but I definitely don't see any
definite answers to any of them other than, "it depends", which
really isn't very useful.  

> No ammount of money they can hand me will substitued for that. You
> want to sell posistions on your mud that's your business but I
> dont envy you the headaches you're setting yourself up for. I dont
> suggest you give any of those people important passwords.

Per Matthew's statements about Achea, and per my own wandering about
the neighborhood, he has a fairly well established community with a
rather definite sense of identity and internal culture.  Given the
market he is targeting and how long he's been doing it, this should
be no surprise.  This presents a VERY different backdrop then that
of most "free" MUDs in that the community is rather tight, well
focused, has (apparently) low internal churn levels and shares a
common sense of commitment to the game as a meta-abstract.  Some
older free MUDs ala Legend, Artic, MUME, BatMUD, LambdaMOO, and
others also share these qualities -- but these are games which have
been out for many years, and are proportionally very unusual on that
score alone.

--
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...


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