You can't justify every point with a decline in pbase

Yup. At the risk of repeating myself, MUDs in general have had a decline over the last couple years, largely due to new competition from commercial MUD-like games. Even a couple years ago, your options for RPG-type gaming online were very limited. Now, that's not the case. I still believe MUDs offer options that MMORPGs don't, notably depth, speed of change, personal impact on a world, content customized to an individual, and the greater storytelling freedom you have when you're not constrained by what graphics are available. We like to think we provide a gourmet meal, but a lot of people like eating at Wendy's (*).

To me, accounting for that marketplace shift is a lot more believable than blaming it on every game feature you want changed (even if that feature predates any decline, thus weakening the proposed causality even further), like the duration on Plague.

It's especially spurious logic to say "Carrion Fields has had a playerbase decline in recent times. You should steal more ideas from these two other MUDs that have had steeper declines."

* Quasi-related TMS quote of the day, regarding MUDs with pay-for-perks schemes: "Of course Viagra MUDs are popular, but not for their quality so much as their ability to allow even the most insecure and impotent to feel that they're something as long as they've got a valid credit card."

valguarnera@carrionfields.com