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MUDs peaked in 2003?April 18th, 2008 |
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MUDs peaked in 2003?April 18th, 2008 |
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The chart definitely is better than nothing, but the Mud Connector is somewhat notorious for ‘actively’ listing muds that are pretty much dead. In the last couple of years there have been a couple of batch deletes of these listings, and I don’t know if anyone has the data to prove when those muds went from active to inactive; I suspect that the graph really should be skewed into something of a plateau post-2001.
I am certainly willing to believe that it was a couple of years earlier. I think that the startling thing is that we would consider a date in this century.
I don’t know if anyone has the data to prove when those muds went from active to inactive
You’d need some kind of metric to determine what “active” and “inactive” means, too. I don’t think we can come up with an acceptable one anytime soon.
Off-topic,
Raph, I like the new layout, but could you kill the padding on the UL in your Categories sidebar? =P I’m using FF2.
I think it’s back to normal… I was fiddling with adding the teeny icons. New icons everywhere. 
Does it work for you now?
That seems pretty accurate, actually. I think the golden age was a bit earlier (1999ish?), and then interest grew – finally all the new MUDs began failing (for lack of marketing and innovation), and thus our peak during 2003.
We recently put up a new MUD, actually – you can find us at RolePlayGateway’s MUD – and feel free to give us a shout.
It’s working for me now, yes. Too bad Wordpress doesn’t have a debug mode.
There’s a strong interest in MUDs, MUCKs, and particularly MUSHes for people who think that graphical MMORPGs aren’t suitable locations for deep in-character roleplay. The RP MUSH community isn’t as large, to my observation, as the “roleplay by forum” community, (though I guess that might actually be a small community who are just very active in a large variety of simultaneous games). If the MUD-connect graph is tracking MUSHes and MUCKs then I’m actually not surprised by the trend. One of the advantages to opening such a game now is there is a relatively low barrier to entry.
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[...] Re: The "Health," of Muds Here is something relevant to the conversation. I am not sure how accurate it is. But it is interesting. MUD Listing Trend Graph | FindMUD I was originally directed there from Raph Koster’s site. Raph’s Website » MUDs peaked in 2003? [...]
[...] is an interesting chart I saw on Raph Koster’s blog [...]