The game has a cash shop but also offers a monthly gold membership as well as a lifetime subscription.

Gold members pay $12.99 a month and get an extra character slot, additional inventory, bank and bridge officer slots and a shared account bank. They also receive free skill re-spec tokens on their characters as they level up and $5 worth of virtual currency per month.

The good thing is that you keep the tokens and all the extra slots even after your gold membership ends so it’s worth subscribing for a month just to get them added to your account.

An original retail box will also upgrade your account to gold for a month and since the game became free the stock has been sold at a heavy discount with prices as low as a couple of dollars. This is much cheaper than subscribing for a month and gives the same benefits.

Is this an original image?

It’s been suggested that New Worlds Ateraan is using uncredited artwork on its website. I spent a couple of minutes on google image search and it looks like pretty much all the art on the New Worlds website has been taken from other sources.

Perhaps New Worlds have permission from the artists to use their work in which case that’s great and there’s nothing to see here, but given that there doesn’t appear to be any attribution it seems unlikely that’s the case. In fact the only credit I can see on the website is a copyright to New Worlds Ateraan and there’s nothing to suggest that the artwork isn’t theirs too.

New Worlds is a large game with hundreds of players and operates as a business using a pay for perks model. It’s one thing to grab the odd image from a google search for a personal website but quite another to use commercial artwork without the artist’s permission on a business website.

Unfortunately we can’t expect people in the wider gaming community to take MUDs seriously when one of the largest commercial games is involved in this kind of copyright infringement.

These figures are for the first year of opening from June 2009 to June 2010.

Revenue

ARPU is the Average Revenue Per User and I’ve calculated it by dividing the total revenue by the number of unique users and then dividing by 12 to give a monthly average.

ARPPU is Average Revenue Per Paying User and is the same except that I’ve divided by the number of unique paying users.

All revenue figures are in British Pounds.

Played time

I’m not sure how accurate these figures are as I can’t remember if I tracked played time when we first opened. I have a feeling I added it a little later so that could skew the data a little, although anyone who logged in after I implemented the tracking would have had their played time updated.

Do have a design written out. It doesn’t have to be a formal design document, but you need a clear written plan of the features you want to have.

Do be willing to compromise. Anyone coding will want to work with you to make a game, not simply implement everything exactly your way.

Do create as much content as you can. Even if you’re waiting for a coder before choosing a codebase you can still write out descriptions, help files, ability and spell messages etc.

Don’t use words like “hire” and “work” in your advert unless you are actually hiring someone for a job of work and offering to pay the market rate.

Don’t be secretive or talk about people stealing your ideas. This is a big red flag that you don’t know what you’re doing.

The single biggest factor for me in deciding if I want to get involved in a project is whether I think the other person is capable of delivering their end. If you’ve got a solid design and plenty of content already put together then that shows me that you’re serious and that we have a good chance of launching a game.

Too often you see people hawking their ideas around MUD forums months or even years apart and still they have nothing to show for it. You don’t need to wait until you have a coder to plan out your design and build your content, and if you do that you will greatly increase your chances of finding someone to work with.

@bcdevmatt I have sorta fallen off reading it after mudreading.com went dark I like having a single aggregated place for my mud news

— Ben Beige (@dariuscardren) April 23, 2013

I would just use a feed reader myself, but for those who like their MUD news on a single page, here you go.

I also recommend Planet Mud-Dev for feeds focused on MUD development.

Looking at it now I still think it’s really well written (not by me I hasten to add) and it definitely makes me want to log in and play.

Fallen London is what a 21st century text game looks like.

There was a recent thread at TMS asking if MUDs need to be brought into the 21st century.

A few years ago my answer would have been a resounding “Yes!” and I’d have gone on about accessibility and web clients and user interfaces and blah blah blah.

Nowadays I tend to think that there’s not much point talking about modernising MUDs because they have become a retro experience almost by definition.

That said, if you did want to make MUDs more appealing to modern gamers I believe there are three main areas you’d have to work on; presentation, interaction and gameplay.

Presentation

This is probably the simplest to change and yet very few MUDs manage to look like anything other than a terminal window from the 1980s. Unfortunately when you talk about presentation most people immediately leap into a “text vs graphics” debate  but presentation is about much more than just graphics. By presentation I mean fonts, colours, layout and all the same things that designers consider when making a website (even one that’s mainly text).

You’ll often hear complaints from MUD owners that modern players don’t like reading or they only want to play graphical games but of course people read all the time on their computers or tablets, whether that’s websites, articles, forums, ebooks, facebook threads etc. What they don’t do is read fixed width fonts in white text on a black background in an 80 character wide terminal window.

Fonts and colours (and to a lesser extent layout) can be handled by the client of course, but MUD servers are usually designed with output to a standard terminal window in mind. Switching to a non fixed width font for example can cause problems if your game uses ASCII graphics or table type formatting.

Interaction

Traditional MUDs use a command line interface which is powerful and flexible but can be difficult to learn. This is especially true in the world of Windows where the vast majority of people just aren’t used to typing commands at their computer. If you want to attract mobile gamers then it’s even more of a barrier if they have to type everything.

You’ll always need to type when chatting of course, but there’s no reason why a modern interface couldn’t offer mouse or gesture control for the majority of commands and standard interactions. This traditional text adventure for example is entirely mouse driven and the principles could certainly be applied to a MUD.

Most modern browser games are turn based, and while I would guess that in many cases this was a technical rather than a design decision, it does give them a very different feel to MUDs where the action takes place in real time. The relentlessly scrolling wall of text from a MUD can be a lot more intimidating than static blocks of text the player can read and react to at their own pace in a turn based RPG.

Gameplay

This one is trickier to pin down and the most subjective. Many MUDs have their design rooted firmly in the 1990s or earlier (even if they aren’t actually that old) and often have systems which are more suited to “hardcore” players who are willing to spend a lot of time and effort to achieve relatively modest goals within the game.

These systems can include rent, offline equipment decay, death traps, corpse runs or large experience penalties for character death. These are all features that have gradually been dropped from mainstream MMOs as players have become less tolerant of them. Many MUDs also lack some of the conveniences that modern RPGs take for granted like real time maps and quest tracking.

There are also games which require complex client side scripting in order to play effectively, and while community created scripts exist for some of the more popular games in many cases the player is expected to do it all themselves.

Conclusion

This shouldn’t be taken as a criticism of MUDs, and certainly there will be plenty of people who enjoy the very features that I’ve said make MUDs unappealing to many modern gamers. That’s absolutely fine and I can understand why many existing players and administrators wouldn’t want to change the MUDs they enjoy.

You could make improvements to presentation and interaction without alienating existing players by offering an optional alternative client, but I still don’t think it’s going to make your average MUD anywhere near as popular as a 21st century text game like Fallen London.

I was reminded of this recently when reading about a MUD in development called Casadona.

There’s a thread on their forums discussing what to call their implementation of an inventory space specifically for storing groupable items. Anyone who has ever played an Iron Realms Entertainment MUD in the last few years will probably recognise this as a storage rift.

If you’re an old Achaea player you might remember a time before storage rifts when items such as herbs were kept in pocketbelts, which were themselves a copy of Avalon‘s pouches system. Pouches or pocketbelts probably make more sense thematically, but according to this staff member the storage rift system was introduced for technical reasons to limit the database size and improve server performance.

It may be that Casadona’s designers decided that a storage rift was the best way to handle groupable inventory items on their server, but I expect they just copied it from IRE without understanding why it was implemented in the first place.

[Update 16.04.13] It looks like Casadona have blocked the link to their forums.

MUDs are more like stone tablets.

The folks over at TMS love their books vs movies analogy when it comes to MUDs and graphical MMOs, but I’m not so sure that it’s very accurate.

If World of Warcraft is a movie then your average text MUD is not a book.

Fallen London is a book. Mafia Wars is a book (albeit a children’s book with simple words).

MUDs are more like stone tablets, or in the case of those horrible stock Diku clones a few letters on a cave wall scrawled in excrement.

No helpful customer service representative for this player.

Here’s a funny/sad/shocking (delete as appropriate) MUD log that came my way recently.

The MUD in question has a two tiered subscription model where new subscribers pay at a lower rate than old players. The administration of the game track this across characters so if you’ve ever been on the higher rate with one character you still have to pay that even if you start a new character. In the log it looks like the player has been charged the higher rate but is disputing that they have played before.

I’ve edited out prompts and command echo and other spam so it’s just the conversation. Enjoy.

You tell Genesis, “Hey, I’m still having problems with my account.”

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Hi there. Have you e-mailed accounts@avalonpublications.net?”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “(cc to me also)”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “I can light a fire to make sure whatever the issue, it’s handled today”.

You tell Genesis, “Yes, and they told me the charges would be refunded. Then several days went by and they were not refunded. And now today there is yet another charge. I need the money to be refunded ASAP and this problem to be permanently fixed.”

You tell Genesis, “I’m geting close to having to unsubscribe and close my bank account.”

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “How odd.”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Oh yes, the Iolina mix up.”.

You tell Genesis, “I know. My mom is getting very unhappy with this.”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “And she is DEFINITELY not Iolina?”.

You tell Genesis, “What? My mom?”

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “It’s so odd. The system insists you guys are the same! But like I say, if you pen the mischarges today I will make sure the credit not is sent your way TODAY also.”.

You tell Genesis, “I am 100% not Iolina. I verified my information with Aster.”.

You tell Genesis, “Can I email it to you directly – a list of all the mischarges and dates?”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Email accounts@avalonpublications but also email genesis@avalonpublications.com and I will make sure it is dealt with today for 100%.”.

You tell Genesis, “Okay, I will be watching my bank account. Also, I need you to guarantee this won’t continue.”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Well, I would suggest you unsubscribe after the credit notes appear and then each time you run out of credits, just subscribe, get the credit, then unsubscribe … So you don’t remain on system. If you’re worried.”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “I have flagged you as absolutely a new / non-2nd / truesubscriber.”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “The truesubscriber flag hadn’t been set so that may be why it was pegging you to Iolina each time.”.

You tell Genesis, “Why are there so many charges – far more than 1 per month?”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Debt leftover.”.

You tell Genesis, “What debt? Iolina had debt?”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Yes.”.

You tell Genesis, “So that is being charged to “her” at certain intervals?”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “I presume so, if there’s a debt. Though it may have given up by now.”.

You tell Genesis, “So, what will happen if there are more charges to my account?”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Won’t happen.”.

You tell Genesis, “Are you sure?”.

You tell Genesis, “What did you change so it won’t happen anymore? The truesubsriber flag?”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Yes. And account note. But accounts@ will have to do the rest - credit notes etc”.

You tell Genesis, “Ok, but I’ll be looking for that money back in my account today as you said it will b. E”.

You are divinely moved, by the fathomless will of Genesis.

A glowing rune staff is the last thing to catch your attention.

Halls of Divine Judgement.

Here among the airy, vaulted halls of Mount Olympus is a secluded chamber where mortal feet are suffered to tread among the meeting place of the divine ones. No seats or tables adorn the marble floored chamber, but about you, caught in grand, lifelike poses, are statues of the great deities of Avalon – even frozen in cold stone, the piercing eyes and eternal effortless youth of the Gods is a daunting and amazing sight. Mortals are brought to this hallowed place to bear witness before the Gods and Goddesses of Avalon, to speak their mind, or to answer the immortal ones. The still air about you is fresh and exhilarating, conducive to fine oration and the gentle scent of nectar frees you, at least for a time, from the cloying cares of mortal life. There is a distinct feeling of privacy here. Genesis, the god of time is here, resplendent in his divine alkar. His corona is blinding, impossible to countenance, yet his face can be glimpsed – if only for stolen moments – and an expression of barely-concealed merriment wears plain on his features. There is something profoundly beyond your reckoning about the Creator and though his grandeur of stature is a match for any of the divinities it is a sense beyond the visual that resonates a glimpse of something greater, something frighteningly ambiguous; a notion, could it be, of the world, of time and life and all eternity… In the hands of an unsafe omnipotence. You turn away hurriedly and cast aside the disquieting thoughts.

You cannot spot any exits!

You tell Genesis, “I sent the email, and copied you in.”.

Genesis, the god of time says, “I tell you what Xion.”.

Genesis, the god of time says, “I shall ensure you’re entirely funded for every penny you spent on Avalon.”.

Genesis, the god of time says, “And you can inform me the moment it all hits your account.”.

Genesis, the god of time says, “At which point, I will wipe your ass off this game and ban your cheating site permanently.”.

Genesis, the god of time says, “Cuz it’s obvious you or your skank mother are Iolina.”.

You say, “No, I’m not.”.

Genesis, the god of time says, “Meantime, enjoy being a stone statue and don’t waste my time with any more tells.”.

You feel a strange hardening of the limbs and watch in helpless horror as your body becomes stiff and turns to stone…

Genesis, the god of time spits a tight ball of phlegm at you.

A clock chimes in the distance and Genesis, the god of time is gone.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “I’ve wiped your card record too so you won’t ever be billed again, except as Iolina.”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Please email accounts / genesis and soon as you get the credit for all Xion’s payments, you can let me know and I’ll wipe your character and nullify your inventory. Then site ban you so you never have to worry about Avalon again.”.

Genesis, the god of time tells you, “Ain’t we kind?”.

You have been cursed with a disfavour by Genesis for three Avalon days.

You feel somewhat uneasy about being here.

I’m not sure that was the best way to handle a customer who was clearly agitated about unexpected charges to their credit card, but he did at least say he’d refund them in full.

Personally I think a two tier billing structure is just asking for trouble. If you’re going to cut your rates for new players you should do the same for all players so you don’t run into problems like this.