From: lwl@pixmap.seas.upenn.edu (Lydia Leong)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: Transcript of the "God Conference on Players' Rights"
Date: 12 Jan 93 00:15:10 GMT
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow

In article <1ish71INNr0k@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> msjle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Joi L. Ellis) writes:
>Hell, Dragon's Dawn won't even fix drastic damage done to a player by
>a bug in new code.  And they don't have much in
>the way of rules and guidelines online ANYWHERE.  I asked for *that* and got
>flamed by a god and a wizard. 

Comment: "bug in new code" frequently means "irrecoverable database 
damage". Frequently it's just not POSSIBLE to recover items from a
backup, if they're destroyed due to a server bug. That's one of the
problems with MUD software - it's frequently not terribly reliable.
You get used to it, after a while, and hope you don't lose too much
in a db rollback. Wizards hate db problems even more than players do.

>The most frustrating thing I've seen about playing muds/mushes/whatever
>is the high-handed way wizards and gods treat their players.  If you'd
>COMMUNICATE with your players instead of flaming them, you'd all be
>better off.

Well, one of the most frustrating things about being a wizard is that
an awful lot of players seem to aggressively avoid acquiring clues. 
The worst are the ones who are _certain_ that every single little thing
that goes wrong on the game is aimed against THEM PERSONALLY, and will
whine until you page-lock yourself or otherwise find a way to stop
listening. A lot of things go wrong on MUDs. Sometimes, when they go
wrong, there's not a damn thing you can do about them. Sometimes, you
don't even know WHY things have gone wrong. Then, you have the players
who want every little itty bitty background technical detail, and expect
you to explain, whether or not such an explanation is necessary (which
it generally isn't -- do you _really_, as a player, need to know why
the game is using too much memory, as long as you're told how you
personally can reduce memory usage?), and whether or not they have the
basic technical know-how to understand such an explanation.

>If you deliberately boot your game so you can install something on it, and
>don't give your players enough (or any!) warning, you don't need to jump
>on their butts when they complain afterwards.

Most people shout warnings. How _many_ times these warnings get shouted
depends on the wizard involved, and the urgency of the reboot. I personally
don't think this is a big deal - a couple of minutes of downtime isn't
going to kill you. (And believe me, I've heard it ALL. I once got bawled
out by a player who arranged to meet his tinygirlfriend at X time.
I gave ten minutes' notice for a reboot to do a code upgrade, and he
bitched _forever_ because it might mean that he'd miss his appointment.)

>I detest asking some immortal a question, only to be told
>GO READ THE HELP.  It's not IN the damn help, or I wouldn't be asking!
>50% of the entries under DD's main help have NOTHING in them, and most
>of the rest are out of date.

As for help files: guess what. Lots of them are out of date. Most
TinyMU* varieties run generic help files, maintained by the server hack.
Know why these help files are frequently out of date? BECAUSE NOBODY
CAN BE BOTHERED TO FIX THEM. Half the time, these things go unnoticed
because not only does anybody not fix them, people who discover errors
don't report them! 

A lot of players don't read the help, actually. I find that about a
quarter of all questions I get asked can be answered with 
"read help <topic>".

Some wizards are more sympathetic to player complaints than others.
On TinyM*s, "news wizards" frequently contains a list of what jobs
each of the wizards are responsible for. Wizards with a job of
"player help" should be helpful. If they're not, then complain to
the God.

Basically, if you don't like the wizards, play elsewhere. If you
spot problems, put them in writing - send mail, either email or
MU* mail. Problems that are submitted in writing are much more 
likely to get fixed, because the admins then have a permanent
record of what's wrong.

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Lydia Leong, '94   | "For I am what I say, and what you do is who you are,
lwl@seas.upenn.edu |  And the words are all we cling to in the end.
lwl@csa.bu.edu     |  For I don't have to see you to touch your heart...
lwl@imsa.edu       |  And maybe this is fantasy, and maybe I am dreaming,
lwl@elof.iit.edu   |  But maybe this is real life after all." - Perpetua@Pern
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Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin