I often see arguments/questions about people leaving the game. They seem to discount the release of other products which would draw from our player base. Muds are a privimite form of MMORPGs. The proliferation of MMORPGs over the years have been the main factor which keeps the growth of Carrion Fields (and most Muds) in check. This is not to argue that any given commercial MMORPG is better/worse than non-graphical Muds - they each have their strong and weak points. I'm just saying that the same 500,000 or so players who have access to Everquest (and pay for access each month) would be able to play Carrion Fields (which has,probably .02% of that playerbase - 1K players) and/or other Muds - but the lure of graphical enhancements, socialization and a much more fully realized staff (again - this is in no way a knock on the great job the IMM staff here does with the game - it's just a fact that a huge corporation paying dozens of programmers to work full time will have more resources/staff for improving their game than a dozen person staff volunteering their free time to do the same).

With that said, Everquest 2 has been released this week (and I would expect that it would appeal to some of our playerbase, resulting in an attendance downturn) and Worlds of Warcraft is due out by the end of the month (which I would expect to result in another downturn in attendance). Beyond the exodus of a couple of staff members, I'd posit that the release of both of these MMORPGS (the two biggest MMORPG releases in a year since City of Heroes, which did not have necessariy the same genre/target audience as WOW/EQ2/CF) has hit the player base at CF the hardest.

- Mijzu