>But if you set up a system to run your mud, there is no need for the >mud to generate income. Your system alone can do that, simply by selling >accounts. That's kinda what Sojourn did. The needed a new, stable site >for their mud, poured much money into making one, and then one day said >'Hey, we've come this far, let's become an ISP'. They now have a >self-supporting system, and nothing has been asked from the players. This is obviously a very valid way to support your site... if you have the time to do so. Unfortunatly I have a fairly demanding job which I am at a minimum of 50 hours a week. And in my case, I actually can't become an ISP... I work for a rather large Online service in network operations and am under a non-competative/disclosure agreement which prohibits me from doing so. (And with my stock and salary, I'm afraid I'm not going to mess with it :) ) Again, I do not dispute the agreement - Charging people to play is ludicrous anyway... how many MUDs are there out on the Net? I don't think many people would pay considering they can play for free anywhere on the net. But that brings up an interesting point - How many CircleMUD sites are there out on the net? Just for this example let's say there are 50 CircleMUD sites running on which a person can choose to play. If that person decided to give a donation to a site to help offset the operational cost, why are they doing so? Is it because the site is running CircleMUD? Or is it because of the work the people running the site have put into the game - the world environment, the new features, the storyline - all those things that Imps do to make a MUD more than out of the box code. Obviously it's the latter. The counter-argument is of course that without CircleMUD, none of the latter would be possible. I chose CircleMUD because from a programmer's point of view it offered a lot of what I wanted - ANSI C code, a good framework to build on, etc. Could I accomplish the same results in terms of my world using another MUD code? I would think the answer would be yes but I don't know, I never tried it. Why did the original authors state that you could not accept donations? Who knows - I'm sure they had their reasons. That being the case, you have to abide by those rules. Can you get around it? Sure. Print a manual for your world with world history, illustrations, maps, background info. Sell it. Provide other services for your gaming environment which you have created - mailing lists, an FTP site, a BBS maybe. Accept donations for using those services. All I'm saying is that it would be nice if you could accept honest donations only for the purpose of offsetting operational costs. Unfortuantly this not being a perfect world, people would abuse that option and try and profit from it. - Brian
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