alt Hacker NewsI remember from the MUD era there was a paper (possibly by Richard Bartle) on the "MUD lifecycle", and how they tended to last on average two years before the operators got bored / burned out / the community left / there was an Incident.
I remember from the MUD era there was a paper (possibly by Richard Bartle) on the "MUD lifecycle", and how they tended to last on average two years before the operators got bored / burned out / the community left / there was an Incident.
Someone showed me something about Old-School Runescape recently and it struck me how quickly the game evolved. I played it in high school for two years at most. If you rewind or fast-forward in two year increments at a time, a lot about the game is barely recognizable each time. I think if you rewound two years from my play time, there was unlimited free trade, no grand exchange, and two or three fewer skills, and if you fast-forwarded two years, you got unlimited free trade again and the Evolution of Combat. It really puts in perspective how the people who make games are not planning the perfect game and then spending 10 years building it (except for Jon Blow) - they're flying by the seat of their pants. Apparently in 2001, the game's creators expected that nobody would ever reach the maximum level in any skill.