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An Interview with Estarra on MassivelyOP
Hey all,
I hope you don't mind a little bit of cross-promotion here.
Estarra very generously agreed to take part in a short Q&A with me, for the purposes of a kickstarter donor article on the MassivelyOP website.
The full article is available via the link below if anyone is interested - feel free to comment here or on the site itself. Hopefully this gets a little bit of extra exposure for the game in MMO circles!
Guest Interview: Lusternia, MUDs and the Evolution of MMOs
As always, a huge thank you to Estarra for being awesome!!
I hope you don't mind a little bit of cross-promotion here.
Estarra very generously agreed to take part in a short Q&A with me, for the purposes of a kickstarter donor article on the MassivelyOP website.
The full article is available via the link below if anyone is interested - feel free to comment here or on the site itself. Hopefully this gets a little bit of extra exposure for the game in MMO circles!
Guest Interview: Lusternia, MUDs and the Evolution of MMOs
As always, a huge thank you to Estarra for being awesome!!
20
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
It is interesting that @Estarra mentioned Spelljammer. I played that in the early 80's with a small group of people in a new city I was living, but when I returned home a couple years later my DnD group wasn't interested in it. When I said how about we take small elements of Spelljammer and try and fit them into our DnD world that got their attention and so we ended up with a few ships powered by DnD spells running around the landscape.
It was a real laugh when our one group called their wizard's clan the 'Wizards of the Sea" and a few years later TSR was bought out and renamed "Wizards of the Coast"
As for the interviewer side, maybe there aren't 18 million people on one game, but I don't think MUDs can really be classed as "a last bastion" because there are literally millions of MUDs out there nowadays with possibly hundreds of players, so I don't believe MUD players are that rare as one could be lead to believe. I've only been in the MUD scene for about 12 years but in that time I've met hundreds of players on quite a few games, some I've followed.
On the fact that a lot of companies are switching to a "pay for perks" system, I think it all comes down to the changing economy in the world and the fact that people are becoming poorer as a whole, and you're more likely to make money as a company if you drop the subscription and let people play your game, get invested and then they want to spend money for whatever reason benefits them personally to enhance their experience in the game. Let me lead into my next sentence by saying that I despise IRE as a whole, the company disgusts me with their model but I'll admit it works, it was really boiled down by @Estarra in the "time versus money" comment, and though I wish it weren't how it is, in the exact balance, or lack of, in time versus money, IRE does it well.
Overall I think we play these games because of the community that's built and you know with IRE games you're going to get a certain caliber of game because they're out to make money in the end, so there's going to be certain expectations automatically met. It was a great article and really put faith in the game for me, and has me wanting to continue to play.
I think Lusternia and IRE in general do a really good job of incentivising and rewarding patronage, and the fact that all for-money items are available through in-game industry as well has always struck me as exceedingly reasonable.
But yes, Estarra's answers were really good.