I am also a mud developer and looking for some good solution to create about the same thing you are talking here in your blog but I don’t know what option number to use - should I use 102 too?

I was about to comment in the previous post but didn’t want to do it twice. XD You could consider using, like Bremen said, a hit counter like the one gostats has. Then you can even find out the country/pages viewers come from. ^^ Not sure whether this version of Wordpress has traffic info…but I’m sure people read this!

There could be a number of solutions to address this, but it should first be officialy declared as a problem, which was never done, unfortunately

To not sound too pesimistic I must add that if one doesn’t care that much about PvP Aardwolf is really wonderful! Thank you for that!

I try to treat people the same in all aspects of my life, virtual or real. Yeah, muds are virtual worlds and there are times when I do RP, but I never ever use RP as an excuse to behave poorly towards others.

If you are a mature, balanced person you understand that being rude to others does not really make you feel any better. If you have personal “issues” try getting some exercise IRL to deal with it or seek a counselor or someone trained to listen.

A major problem with Aardwolf culture IMHO is that too many people confuse snarky juvenile behavior with humor. We probably all have different notions of what constitutes “snarky juvenile behavior”, but I know it when I see it!

What would happen on public channels if people used the grandma test. Would you use that social or crack that line if your grandma were watching? Well guess what, some mudders on Aard ARE grandparents *wink*

Sometimes it takes a special kind of individual to play such roles. Sometimes it just takes an imagination and a little effort. Sometimes it comes natural and sometimes it comes unnaturally.

There’s always a but. Well, not really, just things could be made better. The number of verbs seems a little restrictive. The quantity and quality of the verbs could be enhanced… so let me start here. First of all, all the following verbs can be applied to items or other characters. The ones that seem offensive could be put into place tactfully and entertaining-like.

pinch, poke
kick, lick, duck, gaze, smirk, grimace, kiss, tickle, pull
punch - could be a form of combat - perhaps it already exists
grapple - could be a form of combat - perhaps it already exists
roll, slide, dive
dance - yes, alot of these can get emoted, but it’s easy to configure pre-decided routines that entertain and make exploring the game fun…
snort, sniff, drool, cry, sob, blabbler
wink, blink, frown, smirk, touch
tap - tap a shoulder, item or other body part or clothes?
drop, tilt, tip, turn, wiggle
waggle, gaze, stare, scream, whine, whinny, groan
smack - smack your lips, gawk, pant, bump, nudge, cluck
quack, neigh, oink, purr, howl

Then there’s the 3 stooges… slap, snap, clap, thunk, twick, twiddle

and the list goes on. If you’d like some help, send me an email.

Tawleriji cheers loudly and proudly.

OK, thoughts? feedback? Lame but keep up the good work. It’s really all I have to say. Except find more area developers like Citron and Philondra who know how to make an area that appeals to all types but that’s been beaten to death.

Thank you for having a great Mud Lasher! My escape from reality since 1998

Vilgan - I’m just not that interesting. I think people are more interested in the MUD than me personally, but we’ll see, I’ll try to think up something to post. Most of the things I would want to write about aren’t even MUD related, just observations, rants, etc.

Nick - 10 years time - on Aardwolf I sure hope so, but I’m biased on that one. There will be periods of inactivity and periods of lots of activity, but I’d like to think that we can continue improving it over the years. Also an interesting observation of why it’s hard to play - that is the same way for me too. I’ll play a few levels, find a bunch of things to change, then not play again for a few days/weeks.

I agree with the other posters who said that Lasher is a fair admin - I have certainly found that he is motivated to improve the MUD, rather than being on an ego trip, and suggestions made by players that might improve the MUD are usually well-received and quickly implemented.

As for graphics, I don’t see how Aardwolf could (or would want to) try to implement full graphics, like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars. However what can be done is to improve the player interface, by levering off the power of modern PCs and clients.

As an example, see this page which shows an example of what I have been working on (not yet released) which is a pop-up inventory window, with mouse-over to give stats on individual items:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=8936

This doesn’t change the basic character of the MUD - it is still text - but makes it easier to get information about what you are doing. Personally I find it to reduce immersion if you have to keep typing stuff like:

get 2.sword 3.bag
id 2.sword
put 2.sword 3.bag

With the inventory plugin you can just slowly move the mouse down to “roll-over” each item, and a popup window shows you its stats. Thus you can focus on which sword you want to wield, not get bogged down in typing commands.

I think this general sort of thing can improve the “fun” aspect, without destroying the character of the MUD.

I am not trying to sell a particular client here (in any event, MUSHclient is free), because any other client that implements triggers and can show information in another window can also do similar things.

In fact, I believe that in response to the changes Lasher has recently made to putting tags around various blocks of information (like spells) scripts have appeared for zMUD (and cMUD?) which also make use of that information.

As for the long-term viability, that is hard to say. Having played WoW for a couple of years I admit that the graphical MMOs can become very addictive, but ultimately their weak point is that the enormous amount of development needed to add new areas mean they release new material much more slowly than players can consume it.

By comparison, MUDs can expand much more easily. If anything, my complaint about Aardwolf is that there is too much choice - there are lots of areas for each level, so many I can’t decide which one to go to at a particular level. Probably if I could stop fiddling with client improvements, and play a bit more, I would know what I am doing better.

Interestingly enough, I tried Warhammer Online, which was released the other day. Interesting though it was in some ways, it ran very sluggishly on my “games” PC - the same PC that ran WoW perfectly well (as well as almost every other game I have ever bought), but Mythic has set the bar so high for decent gameplay, they surely must have excluded 80% of existing players from getting a decent frame rate.

Of course, MUDs don’t suffer from this problem, you don’t hear players complaining about “jerky play” or “bad frame rates”.

I think that with a bit of work on the player interface (better representation of player state, inventory, shops, maps, battle information) MUDs in general could rival MMORPGs for newbie friendliness. We may well see Aardwolf with us in another 10 years time.

Blog: I have to say I haven’t kept up with it that much, but that’s mostly because it seems like a repeat of the announce board. You have a lot of experience with the entire MUD world that few can replicate. Instead of repeating stuff from the announce board, branch out! Talk about experiences that you’ve seen dealing with topmudsites. What cool things are people doing out there? What patterns are there (if any) between muds that improving and those that are crashing? What are your thoughts on the ‘for profit’ vs ‘in theory free’ structures? On the subject of Aardwolf itself… what are your hopes/dreams/fears? If a blog is going to be interesting, in my opinion it needs to share something unique or interesting. Open a bit more of thoughts/hopes etc of the man behind Lasher. Just my view anyway.

Other things:

One of my greatest fears is that subclass skills will become a big set of “features” with gimmicky tricks to make people feel unique, rather than core game play depth. Most of the skills so far seem like “ooh here is a cool ability to use” and is countered by “ooh here is one skill that counters it”. I am a bit worried that this will lead to a more congested system rather than a deep one with a lot of oomph to it. Subclass stuff should (in my opinion) enhance and broaden existing concepts and add complexity.. but in a vertical fashion.

Poisons made effective. Mana crushing spells made effective. Enrage as a gateway to more abilities that a warrior can use constantly, but be unable to cast spells. Or call that something different than enrage. In my opinion, a subclass should embrace the uniqueness and the fact I am an “evoker” or a “venomist” or a “shaman” should be a difference felt constantly.. rather than when a nifty gimmicky ability is turned on for a bit. I dunno, these are just my feelings though and maybe the mud doesn’t need to go in that direction. Comments are comments

Other thoughts… I think the academy was a -GREAT- idea. I do think that everything got sidetracked to goals a bit too much after that though. Oh well, past that now.

LUA ROCKS.

player base: This is something that will be hard to fight. All games have a finite length of time that they can maintain interest. Aardwolf has an amazing length that it will keep most people involved. WoW usually aims for a subscription length of 9 months. Then most everyone quits until the next expansion. Aardwolf will grab many people for -much- longer than that.. but how can you attract new players who haven’t played muds? I’m not sure its doable. There are soooooooo many instant gratification fun things to do these days, that the barrier to entry is a bit high. Why play a text game in an unfamiliar and slightly confusing environment when I can play WoW and feel instantly at home? Or when tired of WoW, there is FF11, AoC, WAR, LOTRO, EQ2, Vanguard, etc. And that’s only MMOs. There are also 92380432 console games out there that are a lot of fun, and enough of them that many people will never run out of games to play. MUDs did great in a time when everyone knew what nethack was, and the internet was a cool/newer place. Its now a /lot/ more commercialized, and I don’t know that MUDs will ever be able to compete. WoW has an income stream of $150 Million a month to spend on servers, developers, coders, testers, etc. Its really hard for 1 person and his volunteer staff to compete.

Anyway. my thoughts on stuff.

I agree with Fierabras - advertising on DOS/oldschool-style gaming websites is an excellent idea. I personally attribute a large part of Aardwolf’s struggle for players to the fact that we really don’t have that much “out there” about the game. We’ve got our name on some MUD sites, but we already /have/ a large chunk of MUDders (being, of course, the best MUD there is) - imo we need to get our name out to people who might love a text-based game but at this moment have no idea what a MUD even is.

Any graphics project means more work and a delay of other projects. It’s also seemingly something that the players (at least those commenting here) generally don’t want to see. Seems like a lose-lose situation…. except that the player base is shrinking and an overhaul will be needed sometime in the future to kick the life back into Aard. This can be a long term project - we don’t even have to consider it until after all the V3 changes (subclasses and whatnot) are fully implemented. In the long run, though, I think it would be a mistake to ignore graphics.

Besides the ‘do or die’ reason for graphics, consider that graphics would help alleviate some other problems. Don’t want to worry so much about speedwalks or area maps? In a graphical environment you can give people more visual clues about a place’s layout. Look at what a difference the minimap makes! I use it more than scan to orient myself around an area because it gives me an idea of an area’s layout much better than wandering around looking at room exits. Basically, graphics could render the need for detailed area maps obsolete.

Then there’s equipment and character customization. Just because you have 2D sprites doesn’t mean you can’t draw some neat, detailed items. Instead of (or in addition to) restringing, you could have re-drawing of items to customize them. If you want to wander around Aard with a full suit of AardEQ restrung as a tuxedo, now you can really see the effect. Using 2D sprites it would also be simple enough for anyone with even MSPaint (and its Mac/Nix counterparts) to draw up a new set of equipment. First off, that’s a lot of stuff for players to do right there after they’re bored with grinding. Secondly, a player that’s put a lot of work into graphically reworking a set of gear is going to be less likely to quit than one who just paid for a full set of restrings.

Anyway, this comment is getting too long, but I think you get the idea. Bottom line is that there are plenty of reasons to work on a graphical plugin/extension/overlay for Aard and the only reason I can think of to not work on it is because there are other features that take priority at the moment.

Just to clarify about what I meant on graphics. I see graphics as an extension to the current text environment, not a replacement to it. Its smthg that we could do off test port in conjunction with, say, flash. So all the text and whatever has been done stays there and gets updated per reboot. Players can opt to play via client or login from flash engine at aard homepage and play graphically etc.
====

I agree with Mij - 2 dimensional (don’t even bother with 3D, too much pain for too little) graphics built on the current V3 foundation is the way to go. For example, when a player scans, the 2D graphical map should show in terms of distance & coverage exactly what the current mud client shows - though with better detail.

In 1986 I was wasting a lot of time playing Shard of Spring in the computer lab.

http://www.gb64.com/oldsite/gameofweek/29/gotw_shardofspring.htm

Though the graphics wasn’t that great , even for that time, the story & gameplay was compelling. One of my high points was finding the well hidden smith & getting him to forge a fireball spell on my bastards sword.

As long as you catch the right crowd, you really don’t need the kind of graphics MMO’s have. I was thinking that AardWolf should be advertised more on sites with old DOS games - the kind of people who frequent them generally appreciate great gameplay over eye candy.

The reason I can say this and still be on the no graphics council is that without exception, though they were reticent to try, once they did they fell in love. Every one of them still plays them today, along with the console games or MMORPGs that they would otherwise play. The reason for this is that MUDs are a completely unique gaming experience. I tried playing some graphical MUDs when I first heard about them, thinking that it would be wonderful, but it’s just not the same.

Would Aard get more players with a graphical interface? I’m not sure, it seems to me that some people would start playing it, some people will stop playing it and a third crowd that might have otherwise tried it won’t. Likewise said third party could consist of the opposite crowd if it stays text based. In the end I don’t think it would significantly affect the total player base but definately would significantly affect the experience of playing. It’s obvious that it won’t have anything close to high end graphics unless it ceases to be free, all of which will also affect the total player base down both streets. A bit long winded just to say that I’m against it but there you have it : P

1) I bought a house. I’ve been working on it for 29 straight days, and still have a ton of stuff to do. Thus my recent month-long disappearance. I know it’s a single data point, but I think a good portion of the mud population is in my age bracket (20-35) and may have been caught up in the housing crunch. I personally was lucky enough that I didn’t buy a house during the huge upswing of the past few years, but picked up a foreclosure after the downswing of the past year.

2) Building. Not much I can say here. I helped out on re-vamping 2 stock areas. Neither got much traffic before the rebuild, and still don’t get much traffic since we didn’t pack them with leveling mobs. I’m seeing a basic structure where areas are divided into 4 categories
a) highly trafficed for leveling
b) highly trafficed for short periods for goals/AQs
c) almost no traffic due to no goal/AQ and fewer leveling mobs
d) avoided at all costs due to annoyances - huge random mazes / pk zones / ultra-difficult mobs with no reward
this presents a great deal of difficulty to folks like me, who don’t want their area to just be a killing ground for the level range, but put literally hundreds of hours into coming up with descriptions, backstories, and all other kinds of flavor for their area, but end up seeing their work pan out to nothing due to disinterest.
I used to be head builder on another mud, and put in an area as a joke, that had an auto-repopping mob in each room, 5 levels above the previous room, with no atmosphere whatsoever - it was just a level-grinding, no-frills kind of place, and usually had at least half of our active player base in it at any given time. Since it has been clearly stated that this kind of area will not fly on Aard, I’m not suggesting it, just saying it’s what people seem to want, for the easy, mindless leveling.

and on to the major points - kudos to you, the rest of the imm staff, and myself and the rest of the building/testing team for putting all the time and effort into making Aard a better place, via V3, Lua, Goals System, and so forth, too many things to name, having seen some of it go from raw idea to fully implemented change has been great fun, and given me more insight into the back-end work that goes into this place. I can only hope that you never run out of patience to work on it, and people to make sure it works the way you want it to.

Oh, and for the record - I’m with the rest of the anti-graphics crowd. I’ve played Aard since a month after it opened, and have thoroughly enjoyed it on everything from the sickly-sweet laptop that I got as a present from Acer, to the lowly 486/dx that I scrapped together on parts I got from a garage sale after I got into some major monetary trouble a couple years back. It’s not that I don’t have faith in your abilities to code it and make it sweet, I just don’t think that keeping the mud lowest-common-denominator-capable will mesh well with graphics, not to mention the time you would spend on graphics would likely have a better payout on new features. We’re an oldschool crowd, us MUD’ers, and we like our games like we like our command lines, black background with dark green text =oD

Cecil

Graphics… honestly, I rarely use the maps. I know I should because they’re really cool, but they don’t really work for me. I don’t play aard in order to have graphics and my screen is a bit too small for me to keep track of anything. I can’t have multiple windows, I’ve tried and everything just disappears from my screen too quickly.

Giving game info out instead of making players work for it… speedwalks I agree should be publicly available. The world is just getting too big to be able to stumble across an area. Realistically the clans had the info and it was only the unclanned that were suffering through not knowing the speedwalks. But things like maps of entire areas, keys, equipment… I tend to think it is better off if players have to work for it. There are those who mud not just to level, but to explore, and produce stuff. The ability to create maps or add eq to databases appeals to them. No reason to take away the part of the game they find entertaining. Aardwolf is completely playable without maps and equipment databases. It is no longer truly playable without speedwalks to areas.

And a side note… I personally wish maps didn’t list key locations. Some of them and wrong and a newbie will sit there for a long time rekilling the same mob while thinking the key is random drop. Newbies no longer know how to ‘explore’ at all. They tell me they keep typing ‘explore’ and nothing gets explored…

Yes, I agree that it may be resource intensive and the risk is there. It could be a ‘wow, looks great in initial testing’ but then degen into ‘ok, graphics went live but not popular’ thingy. Imo, it just seems a waste to have the lua engine for text but not utilize the full power of it in graphics. Then again, we’ll never know

Yes, I keep coming back. I like all of the variety to Aard, and would like to also see more crafting abilities — not like the grind to progress like WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, etc… but ability to use items as components or reagents to create new unique, one of a kind items and enhancements (either perm or temp).

This of course being after subclasses!!! Thanks Lasher for the continuing effort both you and the IMM staff put in here. - AT

Lua vs. Mobprogs: Obviously Lua is somewhere on the order of 200 times better than the old system, and I am content with the fact you are still expanding it and making it more flexible and more interactive with the underlying Aard code. If nothing else in v3, you are really to be commended for this and how much better it will make the areas coming down the pike in the future.

Goals: In my opinion as one of the hardcore AQ solvers of Aard, I like the system, but not necessarily the implementation of the goals that have been added so far. I haven’t been on testport for goal testing because I don’t want to know about them before they go live, but in my experience, except for a few areas it has dumbed down the AQ process to Step 1: go here, Step 2: do this, etc. Some people are pleased with this I’m sure, but maybe I’m masochistic in the fact that I take enjoyment from banging my head against a hard problem in an area for a few hours, or even having to shelve an AQ solve and come back to it later with a fresh start. I am also somewhat annoyed at some of the conversions that have been ‘lets rename everything in the area for no good reason’ - I realize in some cases (copyrighted material) its better to do so, but I’m one of those people who like seeing what the original builder wanted me to see, and one of those people who would be quite disheartened to see one of my own areas ‘re-done’ by someone else. I am also slightly annoyed by the fact that the ‘default’ for goal conversions seem to be one-time-only, or worse, branched so that if you don’t do a certain branch of the goal, you never have the chance to again. There should be only really serious reasons for a goal to not be repeatable, and if that reason exists in an area, the reason should have a good look taken at it. Things like uber pieces of EQ - if it is so great that you should only get 1 shot at it, it probably should be toned down, or made so you can get it once for every X amount of work you put into things. Some of these problems probably exist because we haven’t seen an area written and structured with lua and goals in mind - everything has been a conversion so far. I think we will see some really beautiful areas down the road with these two systems.

Graphics: I’m in the ‘don’t go there’ crowd. I play some graphical games, and if Aard were to go graphics, I probably would just stop playing. Not knocking the Aard team here, but if I’m playing a graphical game, I’m going to play one of the ones with hundreds of professional designers working on it rather than a couple people working on code and handful of volunteers doing other stuff. In a similar vein, I’d say if you want to do graphics, start a new project and keep the two separate - because the amount of change that would have to happen would mean you’d end up with a completely different game anyway.

The Client: I don’t use it, but awesome anyways. Especially the fact that once I get my lazy arse moving, I can extend the client I do use with the new features. Great.

Subclasses: Glad that these are now the high priority. Once fully fleshed out, they will bring a lot of dynamic to the game and move from a somewhat negative change (where we split off subclasses, added a handful of skills, and there it stayed until recently) to a very positive change where your choices have impact and pros and cons, and that cooperative/competitive gameplay requires a few roles (hopefully roles that can be filled by more than one subclass).

The Future of Aard (as I’d Like to See It): Cooperative/competitive gameplay is where it’s at. There comes a point fairly early on in the power curve where fighting mobs is never going to yield a challenge - it is just grind from there on. When you reach that point, what is left is exploration (exploring, cps/quests, goals/AQs) which still has a 100% point that is only temporarily fixed with new areas, and cooperative/competitive gameplay (PK, wars, GQs, epic areas, raiding, etc). Personally I’ve reached the point where I’ve more or less maxxed the exploration part, I’m far enough up the power curve where levelling has turned to grind, so what is left is the cooperative/competitive stuff. Why is it fun? I think the biggest part is because there isn’t always a 100% chance to succeed. I can lose GQs and wars, someone more powerful or with better strategy can PK me, raids can and will fail - it’s that point where you are pitted against a challenge or with/against other players who can help you succeed or fail that builds the adrenaline and makes the game fun. Therefore, imms and builders alike, don’t be afraid to add more challenge to this fine game.

That was probably longer than it needed to be - and some people may not agree with some (or any) of what I said, but there’s my thoughts.

-Rau.

Through all of this I’ll say one thing before moving on to topics brought up here. Out of all the muds I’ve been on, and I’ve been on a lot, some even as part of the admin team, Lasher is by far the best mud owner and implementor I’ve known. No no, I’m not sucking up. My main reason for saying this is fairness. In ten years, not once have I seen a power trip, and I strongly believe that’s part of what has made the mud so successful. Professionalism and fairness goes a long way. You screw up and say F the rules, and you’ll get punished. Play by the rules and be respectful, you’ll get the same in return. But there’s no playing favorites, and no banning because the mud owner’s on a power trip or had a bad day. You just can’t say that about a lot of muds. No one’s perfect and I’m sure there are things I’ve missed,b ut in general. Not to mention for the most part, constant updates. The mud isn’t just sitting there doing nothing. Not only that but for me at least, there’s always a sense of being kept in the loop as a player. While we may not know everything, Lasher, and most of the imms if not all, arent’ afraid to tell us what’s going on and even admit to failures and setbacks. And on top of that, as a blind player, I appreciate the willingness to implement features that make it just a bit easier for us. This mud has a huge player base, which many coders of any kind like to use as an excuse to not implement things that will only benefit a very small minority. Never have I felt that attitude at all.

Ok, so on to topics!
runto, absolutely wonderful! I lost all of my speedwalks in computer crashes, and dreaded having to recode every, single, new area especially since the old speedwalks wouldn’t have worked anyway. Admittedly, as a builder I’d enjoyed waiting to see who could find the tree of life first, but the real joy of areas is the lasting play anyway, at least for me. Now if only there was an easy way to recast spells that have worn off without spending hours scripting… (Don’t worry I’m mostly kidding there.)

And speaking of spells, the spelltags are sweet! I’m on an unusual client so still haven’t gotten everything working right, but triggering off affon and offoff works a whole heck of a lot better than coding for every dadgum single wearoff and cast message. I’d love to see tags for area repops myself.

Graphics, fine with me so long as they aren’t required to play, kind of like how I’m sure the overhead maps are great, but you don’t have to use them to get anywhere. Lasher’s got a good point though about if so much work went into that that there were no other updates, there are some of us who would be wondering if we’d ever get anything new.

Easier leveling, in truth, aardwolf is hundreds times easier than it used to be. Who remembers the days when getting from 190 to 200 meant going between hark soldiers and other 30 exp mobs? I remember being absolutely thrilled when dungeons of doom came in, and when I built tree of life it was made to fill the major gap in the 170-200 range. the mud has changed significantly since then. there’s a risk to making it too too easy, you get a lot more people reaching that t9 point quick and going what now? And they get bored. As for areas, I do agree that it seems kind of pointless to have an area whose main purpose is to be the biggest and most annoying trap or maze. My favorite areas as a player are the ones that are leveling areas with goals scatters around that don’t actually affect play but can be fun to try to figure out in the process of doing what you’d normally do. Take Orlando, for instance, and many others.

Goals and LUA, OMG! I love it! Both as a player, and as a builder. The ability to give and get hints, to track progress, to have more than eq as a reward, to get a special reward that can’t be gotten over and over and over again, but not requiring reboot only stuff that only the super people can get, it’s absolutely amazing.

and subclasses, can’t wait to see it. I love how now, not every person is just a carbon copy of everyone else. The stats plus subclasses have made a huge huge difference here. I think it tends to increase the learning curve which is not necessarily a good thing, but it also adds variety which in my opinion was desperately needed way back when.

Ok, end of ramble!

#4 Ecla - Thanks for posting. We’ve discussed and acknowledged some of the issues with recent areas many times and I think we’re on the right track now. Not everyone will like everything in every area, particularly as lua can make them so much more unique. However, since we started moving new areas to the test port before live, a lot of people point out ‘playability’ issues there and many changes are made before they go to live.

#5 Rhenda - You said, “As always, my knowledge and judgement was bad. You knew very well what you were doing and it’s ended up adding new and interesting things to the game.”

It wasn’t bad judgement at all, there was a time when we were all so completely burned out on V3 it looked like it might not make it. It was not a fun thing to do and I’d never do it again. Thankfully, it turns out well in the end.

#6 Deathr - Good to know. One of the main reasons for creating the blog was so that players who don’t have the time to login to the mud very often could keep up with important changes.

#11 Mij - You said, “In some other forums that I’m also active on, players do post strategy guides, compete for best guide of the month”.

There was a time when MUDs hoarded info and players tried their best to pry it away and post it on webpages themselves. RPGs going mainstream and map pages, guide pages, speedwalk pages, etc made us have to rethink some fundamentals. Giving away speedwalks to all areas 10 years ago would have been unthinkable. Today, the thinking is more along the lines of “They’re going to be on webpages anyway, they might as well correct and easy to use”, so we made the ’speedwalks’ command, later followed by the ‘runto’ command.

I’m not sure how far we’d want to take this. I’d quite happily host a section of player created maps on aardwolf.com. If our areas were Euclidian I’d probably even create code to do it automatically, but they’re not.

I actually wouldn’t even be opposed to making a database of equipment available. Obviously (non open) claneq and some other special pieces would need to be excluded. Not sure I’d put this on the site itself so much as make it available to developers who want to do whatever with it. We’d also have to
remember that many items can have random stats.

#14 Bauder - This one is discussed often too. I’m not sure if the power gap is the “reason so many people leave”, or if it is more that “when people do leave, it is often their reason”. I wonder how many also stay because of it. I know I personally don’t want to spend 3 months on a MUD then be maxxed out with not a whole lot to look forward to. I tend to play MUDs where my character can see steady progress and grow over time, a long time, before hitting that wall. It is very possible I’m wrong on this one, my thinking is still quite “old school” when it comes to games….

#11/#14 - Mij/Bauder, I’m torn on graphics. On the one hand, it would be a great addition that might attract new players. On the other hand, we know we can’t even come close to competing with big MMOs on graphics. It could be that anyone who *really* cares about graphics is already playing them and isn’t going to be WOWed (pun intended) by 2d or isometic graphics. I’d hate to spend a year working on a graphical environment to find nobody really cares and in the meantime we lost a number of dedicated text players who, once again, missed the regular enhancements and updates to the text environment.

A lot of these comments/responses could easily be expanded into separate post of their own and discussion topics. If anyone wants to pick one and write more around it as a guest post I’d be happy to put it up on the blog.

In the meantime, thanks to everyone who posted and keep the comments coming!rry it took a while to get to replying to this folks.

Imo, when a mature online game is unable to increase player base despite making improvements, its a sign that there are serious issues in the players themselves. It could be due to weak social interaction, unbalanced PK, insufficient feedback, soloability, skewed economic system, lack of civil players etc. Games that attract selfish players tend to end up being selfish and narrow in game design, while one that focuses on beneficial teamplay or groupwork tends to blossom into cooperative games. It could also be that the game itself is not dynamic enough to cope with changing gameplay trends or that the game design did not factor a broader variety of gameplay behaviours into it. Whatever the reason, its usually the small insignificant problem that was never raised/caught before it snowballed into a really big problem. Newbies don’t care cos they have yet to experience it, vets don’t care cos they are too jaded, admins don’t care because they are too busy, developers don’t care because it would take a lot of work to revamp the foundations. Every other player don’t care because its a game, not rl. Despite my comments, I think that it’s still a tad too early to decide and judge whether v3 is done and what impact it had on the player base. Perhaps, another 6 mths to a year is required before we revisit the player base issue.

runto (I’m a very lazy man.)

lua (Far better than mobprogs)

and finally

goal system (Egads the possibilities!)

This isn’t to say I haven’t liked all the other things that have gone in, but personally these 3 have probably had the biggest effect. I’ve had an area on builders since about 2000. It still isn’t done. Most of what’s there was probably done by 2001. After that there have been some spurts of activity but various connectivity issues (not having an isp on my side!) for a few years and the co-builder being MIA for other periods plus growing disinterest in mobprog coding
kept me from really working on it.

Lua and goals have changed that and I’ve started getting ideas again lately. After Diamond Reach is finished I’ll probably be more active on builders for a while rather than test or live.

V3 has been a huge success. AQs are definitely more accessible than they were previously. The client is a great touch and makes it easier for newbies to jump into the game. Same goes for the Academy.

Unfortunately, text games aren’t as popular as they used to be and attitudes are changing, as Lasher noted. The “entertain me” attitude is only going to hurt Aardwolf as fewer players contribute new content and the MUD stagnates. As the MUD stagnates, fewer people would feel inclined to contribute because nobody’s around to appreciate their work. We’re a long way from anything resembling stagnation, but I’m just sayin’. Without graphics it’s difficult to even get people to try the game. For some people, like many of my RL friends, the idea of a MUD is intriguing, but they don’t want to read quite so much in a game. The new client provides a partial solution…

I wonder if Mushclient could be overhauled to the point that it can display the MUD as one of the old Nintendo RPGs… like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. Graphics like that wouldn’t require a multi-million dollar budget to create and I think it would bring a LOT of people to Aard. Just a thought…(more like a pipe dream :D)

Concerning Goals and Runto, I cant add anything that isnt already said. Both features are great.

I have one concern thou. I might be wrong on this one, but if we want to get new chars here, that just isnt alts, we should make the gap between new chars and established high-end tiers smaller. I could imagine a new player looking at some of the T9’s we have and then looking at the day they were created, thinking “will it take me that long to get where they are at?” I know we have players that have spend a lot of hours and hard work (myself included) to get where they are at today, and I know that “levelling has never been easier than it is today”, but maybe we could keep more players here on aardwolf, if it was easier to get to T9. And dont forget that if you want to be a strong T9 SH, it also requires a lot of work sitting and pupping. There is a lot more to it, than what I just wrote here. And should this be considered, please dont make it easier to level, til I hit T9 x7. I dont want to hear complains saying, I only suggested this for selfish reasons
Im T8 x5 btw, so I should be there in 6 month

Tossing an idea here, that has already been mentioned briefly (cant remember who and when): But would it be an idea/possibility to implement ‘random’ eq., working in the same manner as TP’s found on mobs ? It could be eq. that has even or maybe better stats/resistances/whatever than eq. bought from clanshops. Of course those pieces of eq. should be very rare, but could add some nice surprises when killing mobs.

Bauder

There’s no way to make all of the people happy all of the time, but I think most are thrilled. You’ve taken a basic game and made it into a true work of art. The goals are great - the academy really helps the new player (if they take the time). The subclasses are great - now no two characters are alike. Lua has made the MUD quite unique and I have to say I am completely addicted to the overhead map. New areas and area changes all the time, keep it interesting and fresh for me. There definitely is the challenge of the T9, but the future of raiding will probably add some fun there as well.

My lack of creativity stops me from being able to recommend and suggest. I can’t wait to see what comes next. I just have to say a big THANKS! More of us really appreciate what you guys do than you may hear about.

Nuala

Other than subclasses my main concern would be that even though there is an enormous number of areas in Aard there are few that are worth leveling in, whether due to number of MOBs/exp inconsistency/difficulty of fights vs other areas/ease of navigation,etc. This leads to severe crowding of very specific areas while any number of others with the same level mobs are completely deserted minus cp/gq/quest targets. That’s not to say that there aren’t alternatives to the popular spots but it would be nice to have others that were just as good.

Having said that though, after 15+ years of MUDing and well over 200 MUDs played this is very likely the best kept MUD with one of the most devoted IMPs I’ve ever encountered. Keep up the good work.

On a side note, imo, graphics is NOW a very big draw in gaming compared to 20, 30 yrs ago. I’ve seen really content lacking games that exploit the latest graphic developments yet they do sell. Even while I’m mudding, I DO have other windows open on graphic games or just plain fiddling around with Actionscript or some other engine. I suppose that its time to really look into graphics for continued and sustainable development.

Re: goals and participation
I like the goals. I’ve always been a puzzle person, but as much as I tried, I could hardly solve any of the old AQs without needing a few tips. With the goals, they are finally lowered down to my intelligence, and I can now solve them. In fact, I like the goals so much, I don’t want to test them because that would spoil it for me, and it would just be a chore to run through them on the main port again. I suppose that’s sort of selfish of me though.

Re: runto
I didn’t think I’d like this command, but it’s great. I always had a problem keeping my desktop and laptop speedwalks synced, so this is very nice.

Also, I agree with a lot of the things rhenda mentioned. There was a very long time near the end of v2 when things were very dull, but I can now see that it was worth it as well.

As for the things you need help with Lasher. I’ll post that on Personal.
Thank you again for all the work and endless hours you and the support folks have poured into this game. I love being part of it.

Khelda

Sometimes i feel every new player is an alt.

According to my primary language -which isn’t English- can be and useful to expand Aardwolf to other languages, in a long term. I think: Yes, we can!

With a another room-id and tagged, every player community speaking in the same other language than English, can start aliasing every command and finally translating ever desc room, mob. even this can be a script in client side. A lot of ways can be done.
Some first thoughs about and these cannot be a primary tasks on Aardwolf.

But a real easy goals can be:
- Adding channels by every language which are primary language of most of non-English player base. a channel can be talk in his primary language. they and I can be discover new friends if i can share language and country even.
- Adding a new sub-flag type for advisor/helper showing language for newbies that can talk better in other language.
[Advisor] [French]
[Helper] [German]

We can attract new communities, and I could attract my community.

I feel these questions you had been talked.
If this is right, my apologies.

Thanks to Lasher,Nick and everyone involved.
I think client is important part for new players and I’m impatient to discover new inventory script and the way how it has been implemented.

-Evh

I also love the runto feature as well as the goals (which I’m saving as a treat and as a break in the routine). I like the goals a ton more than the old AQ’s!

I have tended to be like some others. I’ve taken for granted what has gone into Aardwolf…earlier versions included. I was just going to note this but I think it’s better being public if it makes a few others think about it. It must be fantastic the amount of time, work and love that has gone into making Aard what it is. I’ve never voiced appreciation but this is a great time for it. Thank you Lasher for all that you’ve done and continue to do. You’ve made an all-text game fun, interesting and best of all…not boring. And that’s saying a lot! I’m happy I had the sense to come back and I “do” ell others about Aard so that it attracts new players. Hopefully it helps.

Some of recent building has left a sour taste in my mouth so to say. Some builders seem to think they dont need to worry about what players want, and only build for themselves, trying to outdo one another to make the most obscure exit, the most annoying area etc. So many areas have gone in recently that no one goes to unless they have to, and many of those players quest fail automatically. Such a waste. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud builders and the time and effort they put in, but I would like them to remember there are a few hundred players on the mud besides themselves.

Before you even start to reply to start an argument… don’t. Lasher asked for personal comments, and this is mine.