State of the MUd - August

Started by Chalgyr, 08/06/07, 12:02

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Chalgyr

Hello everyone,

I figured I should tag these by month in the title since there's actually two now.  Of course you could just read the posted by date to get a better idea of when this was put up, but then there's self-proclaimed lazy players such as Daklore, and I should after all, be sensitive to their laziness. ;)

So, where are things at these days?  Well, summer is quickly drawing to an end sooner than later it seems.  The new move, job and so on has definitely kept Gilly and me quite busy, but it just seems like the summer months flew by a lot faster this year than the prior few.  It also seems like our playerbase is doing better than it was about a year ago as well.  I was talking with Thalia about this last night, but there were plenty of times a year or so ago when my character Rylee would be the only one on for hours at a time during the mid morning to early afternoon.  However, when I type who right now, I see 11 mortals and 2 imms.  A couple of nights ago we had 21 people on.  While that's nowhere near approaching our 40-something nights of 5 years ago, it's definitely an improvement over a year ago.  I have been doing some advertising on TMC and MUDMagic here and there, but I think some of our players have been spreading some good word of mouth too, and that really does help.  It tends to not only bring in new blood, but also people you yourself have played with or know and generally would enjoy spending more time with.  I appreciate the efforts and hope to continue building on this recent upswing in the coming months.

We have a festival coming up this weekend.  We've been somewhat sluggish with these in recent months, and for that I apologize - it's always a good time to advertise for new players, but also for our existing ones to get together, find some new rp lines and hopefully have a good time while getting lots of rewards, bonuses and perks.  We have a few new types of mobs for players to interact with on this front, and hopefully those subtle additions will be welcome by those of you who have played at these festivals before, and for our newer players as well.

In other news, I'll be starting up fantasy football here by this weekend as well, so I'll post a sign-up sheet on the MUD about it later.  I really think that is part of what makes us work as a MUD - there are a lot of people here who enjoy doing things with one another outside of the MUD, whether they're real-life friends, fans of the NFL, enjoy playing other games like World of Warcraft against one another and so on.  Of course not everyone gets along with everybody, but I've seen a lot of good friendships - both new ones made and older ones fortified - helped out by playing on a community game such as this.

Beyond the festival, we have a handful of things in the works as always.  I realize I have produced exactly 1 new zone in about a year and a half.  Considering I made 30 in our first 18 months, this can easily be seen as a significant drop-off in production.  The good news is two-fold.  A) I'm nearly done with all of the slow backend stuff like editing up Mesilena's descriptions (I'd say I have less than 15% to go now) and xyzing the OLC for the zones (like Armengar, which will see it's descriptions revert to what they used to be about a year ago).  B) We've got a few new players who have expressed an interest in building, and I'm hoping that they will provide us with some new energy and ideas that will help the game along.

Additionally Thalia has been juggling new code, unfinished code, kitchen knives and grigs - but has wrapped up a handful of lingering projects and is still finding the time to fix bugs, listen to new ideas and try to help the game's overall balance, which is still better than most MUDs (and I dare say even many other professional online games) - but is also a constant work in progress.  She's been doing a great job handling all of these problems and also dealing with my lunacy at times, so I wanted to take a few minutes to thank her for all of this hard work she's been doing for all of us, imp, imm and player alike.  I encourage you to make a post on here, make a bug note, etc - if there's a problem, let us know through our established channels and not just complain about it on a channel that might be turned off by an imm, or said at a time when there may not be any staff around.  There's plenty of good ideas out there to be had, and while they may not all fit with what we have in mind, they should all be heard.  So don't do yourself the disservice of not making them audible to the staff.

Lastly, Mira has been working on helpfiles so if you notice one that's wrong or needs a serious update, drop her a quick note with your suggestion.  Gilly has also agreed to give the website a facelift and add some new content, so drop her a note with ideas and thoughts as well, and she will have a better idea what direction to take it to better suit your needs.

Hope the rest of your summer goes exceedingly well.

- Chalgyr
I must be here, 'cause I'm not all there.