This is going to be long. It's going to cover several topics.

I have logged maybe 1 hour of actually playing CF over the last month. I have put many more hours
into other CF related crap, like this post, because instead of being able to spend the time I
set aside to play CF in October, the opportunity I expected to be there was not (shifter forms).

1) How did the orc part of Orctober go? I obviously haven't logged enough hours to know, first hand,
but I suspect it was a flop, as is usual from my experience. If you are interested in suggestions
about how this could be improved for the future, feel free to reach out to me. I'm reaching out to
you, all you have to do is reach back. Doing so via these forums is not likely to be successful,
which I'll go into below.

2) You cannot have honest dialog so long as you care more about control/power than you do about
actually communicating with your players. Your unofficial forums and unofficial discord are both
much more active than your official (and only) channel of communication. Both are also available
to you to use. Both have much more lax standards for moderation/censorship. These are related.
As I stated in the ROTD, http://www.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?3,1110812,1110812#msg-1110812 if you
shut down conversations and delete posts, the message is clear. We (staff) don't want to talk to
you. We (staff) don't value your opinions. We (staff) don't value you as players. The forums
are not marketing material.

You need look no further than Scrarab releasing posts sympathetic to him re: Hell closing and not
releasing those that are critical to see that you value controlling the conversation more than
an open dialog. The end result is simply you have no dialog.

3) The love it or leave it attitude is, and has always been, harmful to the game. The opposite of
love is not hate. The opposite of hate is not love. The opposite of both is apathy. I do not hate
CF. I hate parts of the experience. I also love CF, or I wouldn't put effort into any part of it.
Apathetic players stop posting. They stop playing. If your goal is to have more people enjoying
you game, this should be the thing you fear, not someone complaining on the forums, but the silent
ones who simply grow apathetic and leave entirely.

4) "Any player can have input on these changes", "Take the time and sink the effort into becoming a
member of the staff." This feels really disingenuous, especially to me, since I tried to do exactly
that and wasn't even afforded the opportunity to fail the HeroImm process. I suspect Murphy feels
similarly. I was honest and forthright in every part of my application. I do not believe I was
dealt with in kind.

Ishuli suggested player ideas could be implemented. By whom? Every idea that requires coder work
is dead on arrival if you've got no one to actually code it. This is a serious problem that you are
unwilling to address in a timely fashion.

5) Finally, a case study in a game that is very much within the genre of CF. It may be graphical,
but it is certainly "low" graphics, instead of "no" graphics.

From Wikipedia articale on Runescape:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape
"RuneScape, sometimes referred to as RuneScape 3, is a fantasy MMORPG developed and published by
Jagex, first released in January 2001."

So a game released 5 years after CF. Clearly retro and from the same general genre, if not
specifically a MUD.

From Wikipedia article on "Old School Runescape":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_School_RuneScape

"Old School RuneScape (OSRS) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and
published by Jagex. The game was first released on 22 February 2013 in response to the declining
playerbase and negative update reception of the original and then-current version of RuneScape. OSRS
was originally an exact copy of RuneScape as it was in August 2007, but has since received engine
improvements, new content, and quality of life patches. Proposed gameplay updates to the game are
voted on by players, and are only implemented if 75% of paying players accept them. Despite having a
smaller staff and a slower relative update schedule, OSRS had more than twice the active players that
RuneScape had by 2017. A mobile version of the game for Android and iOS was released on 30 October 2018."

Finally a graph of the active playerbase of both the mainline (yellow line labeled EOC) and the OSRS, or
"Old School RuneScape" since OSRS's release in 2013.

http://www.misplaceditems.com/rs_tools/graph/?display=avg&interval=qtr_yr&total=1

I am not suggesting this exact plan would work for CF, but the genre CF occupies, if expanded even a tiny
bit beyond the MUD box is far from dying. A game from 2001 can enjoy 60,000 simultaneous users. From
my very brief investigation on this thing I literally stumbled upon, that number seems likely to grow due
to the recent release of Android and iOS clients.

If CF dies, it isn't because the player's weren't playing right. Blaming the playerbase make no sense,
as we are not a collective group acting collectively, and we do not have collective power. If CF dies it
is because the people running the game let it die. That doesn't make you bad people, but blame is much
more squarely placed here than blaming the "playerbase" for "getting" Hell closed, or any other number
of things you want to place blame upon a bunch of individuals acting individually for.

Finally, a video on different types of players I think is worth watching for anyone who runs a game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQsJSqn71Fw

A couple quotes I like, for the lazy.

"It's not a problem if someone doesn't play the way you wish they did... It's not a problem if no one
cared about that NPC you spent all that time on, for instance... If they're having fun... And if they're
not having fun... Sometimes there's nothing you can do. You have to give yourself permission to say:
Okay. Maybe it wasn't meant to be."

"Thomas Aquinas said that when you look at a painting, you don't see the painting, you see a version of
it that you built in your head. And that version in your head is missing deatils the artist painted.
And you may see things they didn't paint, make connections or see context they didn't intend. Aquinas
said that the viewers act of creation is just as valid as the one the painter experienced. It's not the
artist's job to say "No, you got it wrong". The work has to speak for itself."