IRE - Iron Realms Entertainment or whatever.
RPI - Role-Play Intensive

I suppose this is directed a bit more towards the powers that be, but I'd also be interested in other player's thoughts and opinions.

Has IRE ever thought of making an RPI? A typical RPI is one that focuses on RP a LOT more than it does 'bashing'. Most killing of creatures is done for a strictly RP reason. You want to cook some rabbit to eat? Go kill a rabbit. You want to make some jewelry out of deer antlers? Go kill a dear. PK is nearly non-existant unless it's for a strictly RP reason. You can't just be standing in the street and have some random person walk by and kill you. Unless you murdered their daughter or something. Personally, I LOVE them. It's a lot better than what most games have nowadays. RP doesn't really exist on this level in ANY IRE game I've played, maybe I'm just missing something. -shrug-

The only reason I could see IRE being hesitant about a game like this is there's no room for credits. So unless they were able to find a producer willing to run it for free it'd be hard to do. It would also require a big rewrite of a lot of code. Still, it'd be something I'd love to see happen.

MUSHes don't interest me.

Matt has resolved not to make an RPI at this time, as it is a niche market within a niche market, and not commercially viable for IRE.

Some items we can create require a corpse, or a quest item for something Ive seen in jewelry. I think in bookbinding, at least in Seren, theres a book that needs stag corpses. Jewelry has a necklace that requires seashells from the bottem of the Inner Sea. I think in Forging there is a club that requires a cow corpse (Cow-slayer club I think its called). To get gems you have to kill rockeaters and turn in the corpses, denizens of mines mine the metals, farmers fruits and vegetables. Turn in dead chickens for poultry, I think you get where Im going with that. Pretty much, to get the commodities, you need to do something first to ensure that the village, city and commune comm shops have the commodities in them.

If you're feeling really ambitious, the_logos on the TMS forums (go vote on your way there!) is Sarapis/Matt/The Big Cheese. He has a post in a thread somewhere about commercially viable MUDs, and he has quite a bit of detail on why he thinks that MUSHes just won't fit that mold. I've never tried searching for anything on that forum, though. It might be nearly impossible to find it.

But yeah, something different enough that it didn't cannibalize the playerbase from his other games would probably be a smart move for his next project...which it looks like he's starting up again. Hmm! Any unemployed game artists in the San Fran area?

And, apologizing for citing other MU* here, I point you all to the Join The Saga games, which manage to pay for their own server costs. Quite a feat, since neither game really requires payments to play (IE it is easy and quite possible to go without buying any credits at all) and one is entirely free, being supported by the other one and a series of e-book novels based on the game setting. So, while viable, it requires a lot of talent, and is rather tight, not getting as much in the way of profit.

An RPI isn't nessecarily a MUSH. Not at all. Again, sorry for quoting other games, but Shadows of Isildur is FAR from a mush. It has just as unique and custom a code base as the IRE games do. -shrug-

And as far as being 'commercially viable', why does it have to make money? What happened to making a game for enjoyment? I'm sure you wouldn't be too hard pressed to find people willing to work for free. -shrug-

EDIT: Okay, I had a different idea about what a MUSH was apparently. I saw it based on what codebase it was running, I didn't know a game could also be categorized as a MUSh based on what type of game it ran.

Well, because IRE is a business. They make MUDs to make money. If something isn't commercially viable they're unlikely to do it.

It is commercially viable, just not as profitable as games like Achaea and Aetolia, and I'm not sure outfits like JTS scale very well - it's quite possible it wouldn't work out that well with the larger playerbases IRE has.