Before I get off on my little rank here, I'm going to give a huge thank you to the CF staff for what they do. You guys have taken massive amounts of time out of your lives to provide a game for us players to play, and I want you to know that it is appreciated.

The fact that a for-profit company runs the top 3 MUDs of mudconnector is, in my mind, a mildly unfair advantage over the CF Staff. However, the volunteer staff here has made a far better game. The point of this post is simple- What attracts so many players to these MUDs?

Hastur made the point that players, in general, want more bang for their buck. Honestly, I have to agree with him here.

As it stands, CarrionFields is the most professional looking, most enjoyable MUD on the mudconnector top 20. Yet it is, as I write this post, #20. When I first started playing CF, I believe it was #6 or #7. What has caused this drop on people wishing to vote and visit the carrionfields website/MUD? The amount of time REQUIRED to be able to play and be even moderately successful.

Now, I have played a vast number of different MUDs. From Play.Net's Dragon Realms (Which I originally started playing on AOL, then payed for when they moved off), to CF Clones. Lastly, I've played every mud on the Mudconnector Top20 in short tests.

What draws players to MUDs like Aardwolf? Playability. Aardwolf is like text based quake. You have a small selection of classes, and slightly larger array of races. The learning curve (for someone who's played MUDs since he was 10) on not just Aardwolf, but the other Top5 is so quick. You start up, read the helpfile presented, and the gaps are filled in by the newbie guide staff.

Conclusion? Theres no confusion over how to play the game, almost nothing is hidden from general knowledge. Someone new the the game can become a successful PK in a matter of days.

Fin.

The reason I play CF is because it is NOT like any of those MUDs. It is far superior (thank god). However, there are crucial differences which deterr new players from playing CF even if they are looking for a MUD like CF.

Now, I'm going to make a few suggestions.

I think the biggest deterrant inherent in CF is the lack of newbie attention. Yes, there is a newbie channel. Yes, there is a newbie setting in character generation. Yes, there is a massive array of well written helpfiles. The problem? A lot of newbies don't know what questions to ask on the newbie channel, what helpfiles to read, and I still, to this day, do not know what difference answering YES to that question makes.

Solution to this problem? Dedicate staff to making sure newbies are comfortable and are learning what they need to learn to play CarrionFields*. The current 'hands off' policy of the ImmStaff is hurts new players more than it helps them.

With my next suggestion, you're going to notice a trend. In general, I'm for assigning staff to specific tasks. This is far more efficient than having various IMMs doing various tasks that happen to need doing. So, I'm going to break this down into subsections now.

Team Plot: Dedicate a few staff members to writing an on going plot for CarrionFields. From what I can tell, you come up with various G-Echos simply to explain/announce a new area or a change in the cabal structure. Very few characters get the opportunity to take part in these minor plots, and generally they only do get to take part because the plot is affecting their cabal.

Bug Team: Dedicate staff members to checking and fixing bugs/typos.

Code Team: Dedicate those of the staff to the code. New skills, spells, races, etc, etc, etc.. Have them rotate through being on the Bug Team, that way no one just plain gets stuck fixing bugs.

Area Team: Those Imms that like to write areas can call themselves the Area Team. Part of the Area Teams duty (in my mind) would be to train the new hero-imms in their area writing, seeing as it seems that all hero imms must write an area.

Alright, so you've probably already got your staff assigned to different tasks, a most likely have some form of rotation. However, as far as I know, no such thing as a Plot Team exists. Invent it, utilize it, and make CF breathe with a player driven life of its own rather than simply making CF exist for heavily-RP enforced PK/Deathmatch. The other major point was the Newbie Team; when new players get attention without having to beg and search for it and learn the game just that much easier, then the player base will shift from being 7+ year vets as a majority, to being 1 year or less as a majority. Something any game requires and should desire.

* - I'm not saying dedicate busy imms to hand holding newbies. Find volunteers separate from the ImmStaff to do this specific task. In fact, I volunteer for it right now.