Probably should be Mentioned...

Widening Worlds is defunct due to a lack of general excitement for the project.
There was just a very core group of us on usually and that was a VERY core… Not even breaking 10 people as I recall.

Oh well!

Unfortunately, any game that depends on its multiplayer functionality to be a game is going to wind up falling apart unless a lot of people get excited about it simultaneously. Right off the bat, dividing the players into three different genres (high fantasy, sci-fi, and modern furry earth) was ambitious but split people up rather than corralling them together…

I suspect that a more traditional RPG MUD might persist better than a MUCK? Having something to do when no other players are on is a huge boon in a smallish community.

The lack of any “game” component completely turned me away… at first. When I did finally decide that it might be worth checking out, regardless of my earlier apprehension, I saw that not only did characters require admin approval, but that I would be required to more or less go through all the same work that I’ve already put into building an F-list profile, albeit for a much, much smaller userbase.

The feeling that I got from seeing this character creation and approval process wasn’t entirely unlike seeing an F-list user with ten or more custom kinks in their “No” section dictating a virtual minefield that you need to traverse in order to even communicate with them. So, you know, why bother?

Not trying to lob criticism, but I figured that some post-mortem feedback might be appreciated, especially in light of the MUCK’s homepage now featuring a pointed message about “enforced minimum quality,” and people’s unwillingness to even tackle the approval process.

Unfortunately, any game that depends on its multiplayer functionality to be a game is going to wind up falling apart unless a lot of people get excited about it simultaneously. Right off the bat, dividing the players into three different genres (high fantasy, sci-fi, and modern furry earth) was ambitious but split people up rather than corralling them together...

That’s a valid complaint. I figured by having a wide open list of places people could play in would attract more people, but instead it just segregated people into sections. If someone was attached to a sci-fi or fantasy character, that would block them from playing in other zones. We definitely should have narrowed the focus.

Hell, it happened to me. I mostly played Katlyn, who was more or less “tied” to the sci-fi zone. Someone with a fantasy character log in and want to do a scene? Oops, I can’t play with them. It was a dumb idea in hindsight. But 20/20, etc.

I suspect that a more traditional RPG MUD might persist better than a MUCK?

It’s possible. I don’t really know. The issue with things like MUD style games is that it’s where roleplay goes to die. When you have actual game mechanics behind things, it heavily restricts roleplay. Especially in a situation like this, with a fetish like this.

If you have a game mechanic that handles your character’s weight and it’s fairly realistic, that means a long game, but agonizingly slow roleplay. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many people who would be willing to roleplay gaining a pound or two every other real-world-time day.

On the other hand, if you have a game mechanic that is much looser and allows the character much more freedom with their weight, you have a boring game. What’s the point of game mechanics if your character just hits the “end-game” weight in a week or so anyway?

And then what about people who like only chubby sizes? They’d play for a few days, then have nothing else to do.

It’s a nice idea in theory, but I don’t know how to balance that. It is something I would like to look into sometime; I think a weight gain MUD, even if lax on roleplay, could be a fun idea, but it isn’t as simple as “just throw in mechanics” like a lot of people have said. Not you, but some.

That was always the intention. The approval process was designed to filter out the average F-List player, because the average F-List player is terrible. The wiki’s FAQ even stated this openly. I use F-List as a kink list and avoid the chat at all times, because almost every experience I had in my time trying to do roleplay there was absolutely miserable, and the majority of people I know felt the same way.

Unfortunately for me, those same people also didn’t want to put in the effort to make a place that was better, so we stagnated. Of the initial rush within the first three days, one in ten made it through approval, which was almost spot on what I had intended. The issue was after that initial rush, nobody else showed up.

The feeling that I got from seeing this character creation and approval process wasn't entirely unlike seeing an F-list user with ten or more custom kinks in their "No" section dictating a virtual minefield that you need to traverse in order to even communicate with them. So, you know, why bother?

Not sure what gave you that idea. In fact, the fetlist program we used intentionally omitted the “No” list in favor of just things that are liked specifically to avoid this exact issue.

Not trying to lob criticism, but I figured that some post-mortem feedback might be appreciated, especially in light of the MUCK's homepage now featuring a pointed message about "enforced minimum quality," and people's unwillingness to even tackle the approval process.

Well, yeah. That’s exactly what happened. Out of 201 accounts created, about 16 even bothered to try passing approval, and only one person was ever denied approval (who then immediately logged out and gave up the second they were told “no”). The huge, huge majority of people logged on without reading the wiki, saw that they had to actually make a character instead of instantly jumping into roleplay, and immediately logged out.

[quote=“BaronVonClop, post:4, topic:1111”]

I suspect that a more traditional RPG MUD might persist better than a MUCK?

It’s possible. I don’t really know. The issue with things like MUD style games is that it’s where roleplay goes to die. When you have actual game mechanics behind things, it heavily restricts roleplay. Especially in a situation like this, with a fetish like this.

If you have a game mechanic that handles your character’s weight and it’s fairly realistic, that means a long game, but agonizingly slow roleplay. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many people who would be willing to roleplay gaining a pound or two every other real-world-time day.

On the other hand, if you have a game mechanic that is much looser and allows the character much more freedom with their weight, you have a boring game. What’s the point of game mechanics if your character just hits the “end-game” weight in a week or so anyway?

And then what about people who like only chubby sizes? They’d play for a few days, then have nothing else to do.

It’s a nice idea in theory, but I don’t know how to balance that. It is something I would like to look into sometime; I think a weight gain MUD, even if lax on roleplay, could be a fun idea, but it isn’t as simple as “just throw in mechanics” like a lot of people have said. Not you, but some.[/quote]

Oh! By “more traditional RPG content” I mostly meant, “Things to go fight, items to collect, skills to develop,” which could tie into but not necessarily hinge on the fetish. Like, I don’t know if this is true of everyone (in fact I imagine I’m in the minority here) but I want to see these characters going about their business and forming friendships and having adventures, not just having sexy feeding encounters.

I’ve also played some MUDs that were great for roleplaying on. In some respects, it’s like freeform roleplay versus a tabletop game or, like, the way people roleplay over neopets or nationstates or whatever. Having some mechanical/gamified elements can be limiting, sure. But they also can provide a structure for roleplay.

I played on an old CircleMUD game, forget the name, where the mechanics were intrinsically RP-based. There wasn’t a lot you could do without other players around, which is probably why it stayed small and eventually died out, but progression was almost entirely based on other players awarding you XP for roleplaying well with them (and abusers of that system got the banhammer), with special rewards for doing things like keeping character journals and participating in story events.

That’s all beyond the scope of what you were prepared to provide, obviously, but I’m just giving some examples.