Ya know, I have always wanted to know why I play MUDs. I honestly haven't the slightest idea why I play Lusternia. I guess I do play it because it is an escape from reality. But I ain't really escaping from anything bad
But I am glad we have a playerbase that knows each other soooo well. We all know our characters and even the players. If the world ever comes to an end and we all survive, we are totally getting together and forming a community. <3

Rag makes a good point where she says that sometimes, logging into Lusternia feels like a job, so it'd be nice to get some new blood to take over position while old players go off somewhere to die, but I know for a fact some players stick around because there's no one else to replace them.

^This.


That's one of the problems, I think. We all know each other, we all know the characters that we see EVERY day. Do we really ever let anyone else in? I think of the La'Saets in Celest. Elitist. Maybe that's how Lusternia feels to newbies when they join. Maybe they think we're the elitists that won't let anyone else in their circle. I know I feel that way with some of my alts.

I'm over Lusternia, I'll probably quit playing soon unless something happens. Combat has dissolved into who has the meld and the most zergs, and just general boredom with nothing to do but spar.

What attracted me to Lusty, yes, I am a newb to this particular game, not to IRE's, is the fact that out of the other IRE's played, this has by far the friendliest people. The MUD'ding community is strange, yes, we all know that but where else can you log on in your jammies and try to kick the crap out of someone. I'm not an advocate of PvP, hate it actually but, well, I'm rambling. I guess to reiterate, what drew me to Lusty and kept me, was the people.

I'm a Lustynewb!

I got hooked on the game partially because I felt there was so much to do and so many ways that I, even as a small person, could make a difference. There were political opportunities, power quests let even the smallest person get involved in an org's strength, culture made for awesome options for involvement.

Since 1.5 years is relatively short compared to Lusternia's age, I'm a Lustynewb too.

I got hooked onto Lusternia because it was a new concept to me. I had never played a MUD before in my life, though I was not new to RP. Granted, I had an IRL friend tell me what to do and type, so I had a little push from an outside source, but I was caught by the concept of the world as well as the game... and hooked by the tremendous amount of possibilities for RP. I still am.

Achaea used to get around 350-400 at peak times (Which would be usually around dusk EST), now it usually maxes out at around 250. It's spread out more though, so you have more people at 2AM EST than you used to, but less at peak.

Regardless, the largest issue I'd have to say is the cost involved. It's not just monetary; it requires a large time commitment too. This is not a 'casual' game in any way, shape, or form. This isn't like Halo where you can pop on, do a match in 5 minutes, and then leave if you want. If you want to become a city or guild leader, you have to put in a lot of time showing the rest of your org that you're worthwhile. If you want to be a great PKer, you have to put in the time (firstly) bashing to a respectable level. And then you have to either buy credits with money, or make an even larger time commitment grinding credits in-game.

Now, granted, a lot of people play this game for a long time. So spending 400 dollars on a game you play consistently isn't that much. But you don't know, when you're dropping that 400 dollars, if you're only going to play for a week, or if you're going to play for 2 years. Much safer to just go out and spend 50 on an xbox game or something. Or drop 20 a month (or whatever it is) on a WoW subscription that you can cancel at any time.

It's been that way for a long, long time.

Remember Celenwilde? That was all about putting together a large fighting zerg, too.

Hm, you know what could be neat? The ability to buy a "subscription" to Lusternia. A 1-year or a 2-year or whatever plan, for $x per month. As time goes on, the ratio of credits you get gets better (for example, if you pay $10 a month, you get 15 credits the first month, 16 credits the second month, 30 credits the twelfth month... which is based on IRE's credit scale, even!)

12 months == $120.
$120 == credits at around 33 cents each.

$10 == credits at around 66 cents each.

15 + 16 + 17 + 18 + 19 + 20 + 21 + 22 + 24 + 26 + 28 + 30 == 256 credits for $120, split over 12 months. The "$120" package from Lusternia's site gives 400 credits for the same, but if you were to actually pay $10 a month you'd only get 180 credits.

This would let you buy a subscription at a better rate than individual payments, while still being worse than a one-time purchase, and would let you cancel whenever you want (like a WoW subscription). This would also give IRE an advantage of being able to have some "steady income" sources (until the thing is canceled you know you've got 10 people with the $10 subscription and 6 people with the $20 subscription and 1 insane person with the $30 subscription).

Of course, this won't actually help with the issues at all. It still would be a decent business decision, I think.

It's true. I'm closely watching some soon-to-be-released IRE MUDs at the moment.

I miss Lusternia before the admin decided to get all tricky with all the PK changes. Also, being a demigod for so long really killed the game for me. Whoo, I got 10 million essence. Now what? Do I am for 20 million and hope that there is a secret prize when I get there?

Also, like Furien (I think), starting a new alt would just be way too expensive. Once you have some of the skills you have after investing so much time into the game, it's hard to have to start again. And then there's real life.

There isn't! Trust me.

For me the attraction has always been the variety of stuff you could do. When it starts feeling like a job, I drop a few responsibilities or positions of authority. The reason I've been less interested lately (and stopped voting for it on TMS) is because there hasn't been a variety of things to do. Maybe if the Forever War starts to ease off, we'll slowly and gradually start to build up enough interest and momentum to start having other things happen again. But it's going to take a long time. That kind of thing depends on momentum (most people won't get involved unless a lot of other people are already involved) and we completely lost it, at least in my corner of the game.

It seems to me that the people who only had one thing they liked to do in Lusternia were also the ones most likely to storm off with a frustrated post on the forums and not be seen for six months at a time, then occasionally reappear for a few weeks and then vanish again. I assume they're just hopping between one character/MUD/game and another to find the one where that one thing they like is most available at that moment.

Edit: speaking of momentum...

*sigh*

For me, this is true. Sorry, Lend. I've just got nothing to do

What was combat about before? With things like melds even existing the game is aimed at group combat no matter how much people want to plug their ears and scream LA LA LA. Only interesting combat was really knight vs knight, and I didn't see you practicing that much.

I got bored and went bard, my last ditch effort to make the game interesting for myself playing the only class I haven't been yet.

As for why this game doesn't retain new people, the gap is too wide. It's not just artifacts or demigod, but a repository of knowledge that no new player can possibly achieve in any reasonable amount of time and the requirement of a system that, barring extreme programming knowledge, even if they get it to work is far too complex for them to ever understand. A couple of the newer muds, not even necessarily IRE muds, are operating under the premise that simpler is better. Less curatives, less balances, and less micro-management. Still lots of abilities, still lots of variety, but it doesn't take a year of accumulated knowledge and a bachelor's in computer science to play.

Bard isn't terribly exciting.

Eh, creating the whole offensive system and learning a new class satisfies my curiosity for a time, that's all I want.

The biggest issues I had coming into Mag as a novice that almost kept me from sticking around was that there are a lot of outdated scrolls and that it's nearly impossible to find a forger to make good weapons (not to mention I didn't know that I needed a forger for weapons, thought I'd have to save up for the ones in the shops). Also, there are some scrolls and information that is lacking that makes it hard to do stuff... I was about circle 40 before I learned about enchanted jewelry and where/what the dang aethershops were and how they worked. Whenever I asked questions, I hardly ever got answers and so I felt extremely ignored. Luckily, I knew Shaddus from elsewhere and he helped me with getting good armour and giving advice when he was around, otherwise I would've given up quickly, even though I love MUDs. It was extremely confusing and depressing at the beginning though, and so I can understand why the novices don't stick around. Now I just try my best to help novices learn this stuff as I can.

Anyway, the most attractive thing I can think of is to make sure you have updated scrolls in the cities and people in the cities (maybe have city-specific newbie guides?) actually responding to questions. Maybe making the intro tutorial thingie a little more all-inclusive to teach novices about the aethershops and enchantments. Make the novices a little more self-sufficient so they don't feel they're in over their heads and get discouraged... because that's the feeling I get from actual new novices and not alts... that they're confused and don't feel supported at all.

Just my two cents though, and maybe only applicable to Mag.

The Lusternia that sucked me in was PK-heavy and ruled by scarcity. PK was everywhere, and it was awesome. Now people cry because someone laid a finger on a friend of a friend. Avenger alone was good enough, once the bugs got ironed out. The scarcity, though, that was more awesomer. Wanna make something? We don't have comms. Go make some. Want to fight some more? We need the power for the guards. Go make some. Oh, wait, we have negative power? Everyone, go make power now.

Now we just have weird vestiges of that. Power is barely a commodity. For a couple years before VAs went in, it literally wasn't a commodity, and there was no reason for it to have a number at all. We still have power rations, though. No idea why. Commodities stockpiled too well, and now they're just there. The Avenger is still there, but that's not good enough, because people with no spine and a stockpile of excuses take everything as a great injustice that's out to kill the game. Griefing hasn't been a Lusternian reality in years. Grow a pair already, eesh.

What it leaves us with is a collection of tools through which we're supposed to be able to benefit our orgs, but they no longer need our help. They no longer require strong leadership from someone with a silver tongue and an eye for details. Boring.

The complexity thing mentioned above might be a real detractor for newbies, though. Many winters ago, Nirrti was complaining about the same thing, and all we had then were the planes, villages, commodity quests, Avenger, karma, four guilds, and aetherspace-as-obnoxious-transportation. Then we got insanity, esteem, demigods, wildnodes, constructs, domoths, VA's, aetherspace combat, new world-altering quests, the theaters, a fifth guild which required complete reprioritization of core healing mechanics, and I'm sure some more that I've forgotten about. I disagreed with her then, but it's a valid point now. The cost for entry to the "real" game is entirely ridiculous, in either time or credits, nevermind that you need both. The admin keep putting out new toys as retention tools, though. If people are leaving because they're bored, then they need to unbore us, no? Nasty cycle.

QFT