Comment by shevy-java
19 hours ago
It seems you only had exposure to a limited set of MUDs that died quickly.
I played some MUDs that were quite solid; PaderMUD/Xyllomer in the late 1990s (peak count connection at about 60 different people in late 1998). GEAS (similar code base) was also quite ok-ish up to 2013, though admin made too many mistakes (Asralites, aka the warclergy, were pimp-nerfed via divine codex to disallow them from starting wars, the old 'who' was stolen by PO Allalltar and PO Okkita and many more mistakes). But community wise both had many great roleplayers and your description appears to be hugely one-sided in that you never found competent roleplayers that would narrate a storyline (or usually several, if you had enough players) at the same time. Often "drama" is just roleplay and reaction by characters to in-game situations. I am aware that some players sabotage(d) MUDs and cliques rose past 1998 or so; and many older players gave up due to lack of time and what not. So the genre struggled already past 1998 and maintaining MUDs was much harder. But things such as "grind down everyone" can only happen if the rules are broken and the code is broken really. I also highly doubt that players were the primary "until the rest of the community stopped playing" as a problem - perhaps it applies to the MUDs you frequented, but very clearly this was not the case for all MUDs, so I suspect you had a very limited set of exposure to MUDs. I mentioned two; you did not mention any MUD specifically. Can you mention which MUDs you played extensively for a while?
As for pattern collapsing MUDs, I actually agree; in particular those who held the monopoly over the game code, can really quickly ruin a game. This does not even happen deliberately all of the time; old admin stopped playing their own MUDs and after +30 years they no longer understand why some code changes ruined the MUD. It's a tragedy without a good fix, because they are old and lack time to play, so they slowly stop understanding the game they still make code changes to.
> It seems you only had exposure to a limited set of MUDs that died quickly
Limited set, yes. I was never a hardcore player. I would drop in for some months, then disappear again for months as I had other things going on in my life.
Quickly, no. Some of the MUDs are still running today (as I mentioned) but my in and out nature made the dramatic changes more obvious. I would spend the summer away doing something, and come back to discover someone new had worked their way into the admin staff and was stirring the pot at every opportunity. One time I came back and the MUD was taken offline because the staff was infighting so much about it.
> But things such as "grind down everyone" can only happen if the rules are broken and the code is broken really. I also highly doubt that players were the primary "until the rest of the community stopped playing" as a problem
I'm not pretending my experience was common to all MUDs because I didn't play a large number. However the ones I did play eventually succumbed to admin and staff drama.
Your assumption is backwards: It wasn't the people breaking rules who were causing problems. It was the people who were making rules. Some of them came up with increasingly specific things that were decided to be against an ever longer list of rules, which became the weapon which they could wield against anyone they didn't like. Temporary bans and restrictions were handed out selectively to their political adversaries.
Yeah what you’ve described a basically how I saw many forums collapse over the years as well. While they all have the basic problems of bringing in and retaining users, many stacked on top of those issues an unremovable set of hostile admins/mods driving away people from the kingdom they usurped.
The people who have the most time and energy to give for moderation, are the same ones most in love with the control for it’s own sake.
It's a pattern I see in a lot of communities now. Some of the open source projects I follow have had their communities collapse the same way: Some group comes in with all smiles and energy to help out, then they brings their friends into the upper ranks because they say they need more help, then they start pushing agendas and adding rules to give themselves more power, then finally they just exhaust everyone else who isn't interested in fighting the battles every time they log on to do something.
The few remaining forums I frequent have survived because they have no tolerance for admins who push their own agendas. They've all erred on the side of minimal rules and bans only in extreme cases. Every forum I've been on that went all-in on rules and heavy moderation has collapsed, or at least driven away the core users and left roaming packs of ingroup people who care more about picking apart everyone else than being part of the community. It's weird how many different places I've watched this happen online.