Shattered Kingdoms

There is a counter argument to the above opinions about voting.

If someone asks me to suggest a MUD, I always suggest SK. Only SK. People I know that may be mudding elsewhere and ask me about SK, I always say the best. But I always add the phrase "Just, if you try it, be ready to show some real patience. While the game is fantastic, the code brilliant, the atmosphere very immersive, there are some people in the community that have absolutely zero OOC courtesy on you being new or not. If you get on their bad side and they decide to grief you, they will do so. And they will do so through multiple characters if need be until you either grow a thick hide and no longer care or you give up and leave. If you can accept this fact and get past it, I doubt you'll find a BETTER mud than SK".

When it comes to Voting now, things get a little bit different. A Vote is seen as two distinct things. One is a means to advertise your game (our game) while the other is a vote of confidence to the admin team, to the code we receive, the features etc etc. and the community.

It is by no means an intent to punish Dulrik, or any of the admin staff, by not voting but our community lacks the level of maturity required for the game we are trying to advertise. I'm sorry if you see this like a virus, Revenger, but being a person that I used to vote from three different IPs every day, I can only say that I will Vote for SK as long as SK satisfies my personal standards as "best MUD there is". Because that's what a vote means - that I consider this game to be better than other games.

As long as I see [REDACTED] behavior on the forums, in the games and in the log site that promotes the opposite I feel no inclination to vote. Sure, I enjoy the game, I contribute with any idea I can come up with, I help people when they ask me but vote and claim our game and community are the best? Hardly. At least, not for the past few months.

1-4 I disagree with as it protects hoarders and this is a pk mud. Don't know you well enough to comment on five but I do like number 6 but it should stop working at a certain level.

I also think if you really want to help n00bs make the corpses of people levels 1-20 non-lootable/movable by anyone but the owner. Anyone who dies and autorez's also comes back with all their items (think call armor).

I used to think on the same lines approximately, but let me give you another viewpoint:

You vote, more people come. More people come, then those few that grief this community start to matter less. I can tell you, for sure, when I played back in 2000~, sure there were some that would fly into town with a bunch of undead and junkloot you at level 10, or those that would camp exile square with their warlock and cause 12 kinds of havoc because people didn't yet know how to counter a warlock (i'm looking at you, fin ) But it didn't matter, because there were so many others that would just be ready to help you. Its hard to say if the same would work now, as with the knowledge these few troublemakers have accumulated over the years, its quite possible they'd be able to singlehandedly devastate any number of newbies into deletion, but I have faith that they wouldn't go there. After all, there is no fun in being awesome in a game where you are alone.

Try typing "count." That will show you the true number of players online, regardless of the various forms of invisibility. The only people excluded from this count, I believe, are immortals under wizinvis.

Actually pretty sure count only shows you the count of those visible to your character, and tracks the peak number of the day.

Erevan are you in CO or WA and been smoking too much? Whether or not she deserved to be pked (from my opinion yes) a certain paladin was stun locked so they can fully deloot her, thereby getting around the code and that person is proud of it. Luckily her skin was thicker than his and she stuck around despite how that char and the others made by him treated her. That is only the most recent one.

That crew tries to pk anyone into deletion that does <insert anatomy part and action>. I will continue to vote for SK also and promote it as much as I can, but I to warn people there is a certain group of elitists (that are actually the best in the game) that will pk you, if you don't bow down to their awesomeness and do whatever they say.

Getting new players is one thing, you also have to keep them. Anyone have an idea what the retention rate is for new players (never played SK)? How about returning players?

I can attest that word of mouth is a powerful tool (I've done marketing for community based games before), however it can harm as much as it can help based on the experience each person has with the game and its associated community.

Well then every character I've ever played is bugged. I've had it happen countless times over a wide span of characters where the number on the who list and the count number (of those presently online) did not match, and on a few occasions I was able to find out that it was because so-and-so was invis or dead or under supersecretcabalspell. Clearly I cannot account for every discrepancy I've ever noticed, but now and then I'm able to figure out why it happens.