What will the death of Arm look like?

Log in now, you will see

Armageddon probably has plenty of time left, but the question is what condition it'll be in during that time. The numbers have gone down over the years but have done so very slowly. The biggest change has been the near-total stagnation of staff storylines. Unique logins have only declined from an average of like 250 in 2010 to 200ish in 2018, so the numbers are relatively resilient. A much bigger problem is the way people play the game, because the lack of staff presence in-game has robbed people of their ambition and creativity. When you can have a character for many months and never see the signs of a meaningful metaplot or even localized story events that matter to you, it's easy to resign oneself to just playing with friends in some inaccessible place.

I don't think the game will shut down anytime soon. Numbers will continue to dwindle at a pace that matches the glacial movement of what passes for story in this game, and player habits will continue to become increasingly apathetic and reclusive. Like I mentioned recently in another thread, there was a time when people were out and about. The taverns were frequently packed, the streets were busy with passing players, and well-populated clans were common. That's because staff made sure there was something to see, so players put themselves in a position to see it. Take away the story and people will just sit behind doors or ride around the world killing things for the sake of it. Why be in a clan with restrictive schedules and rules if it doesn't get you involved in a story worth being involved in? Why go to the tavern if nothing worth talking about has happened in months?


While consolidation is certainly a possibility, I doubt any concentration of staff attention will happen. Look at Tuluk's closure: if anything, it led to a decline in staff efforts. Players rejoiced at the prospect of a lively and plot-filled Allanak, but as they realized that this wasn't happening, people resigned themselves to a game without story. I don't think there would be as much faith and resurgence a second time around. This crop of staff has already shown that they're just not interested in making the game's wheels turn.

Like, when was the last time something truly noteworthy happened in Zalanthas? If this game were to be written into a book, what event from the last five years could possibly serve as its focal point? I simply can't think of anything. Sure, there's gith running around attacking people now and then, but they play no real role. It's just some animations for Kurac, not something that affects the game in any meaningful way. Compare it to things like the rebellion and liberation of Tuluk, the dwarven uprising in Allanak, the Copper War or even the Dragonsthrall thing that was supposed to herald the shift to Arm2.0 but fizzled out. Nothing like this happens anymore.

In a game with like a dozen supposedly active staff members, the only thing they can manage to do that's even detectable by the broader playerbase is to load up some gith and attack some PCs once in a while. It's such a slow burn that people don't even care about it. Templars and GMH sponsored characters are fed some token clues about gith sorcerers so they can pretend to plan and strategize over that, but this is like eight characters in total. The rest of the game just doesn't have a reason to think about it, and they certainly don't put any roleplaying efforts toward it. It's just something vaguely happening off somewhere in a place where it doesn't affect most people.

Why not make it meaningful? I don't understand this half-assedness. Is it because staff is collectively so lazy that they design their plots to run on what looks like one or two hours of one storyteller's time per week? It's difficult to believe that so many staff members are all so averse to making an effort, yet that's exactly what it looks like. Why else would they choose to shrink the scale of their "big" events so much? Why not have the gith wage war on the world instead of many in-game years of small, pointless skirmishes? I'm not even sure when was the last HRPT that involved Allanak in any noteworthy way and actually changed anything.

The playerbase seems to have accepted this. If there has been no grand exodus of players in recent years, there probably won't be in the future, either. Armageddon is a very robust game and its decline is very slow. Those who play now are the ones who are willing to play under these conditions. When Morgenes gets tired of paying for the game, somebody else will just take over that duty. I expect Armageddon will still be around in ten years, though the peak numbers may have dwindled to 20-30ish by then. The game may eventually end up in such a sorry state that nobody cares to play it anymore, but MUDs are very resilient and I think it'll be kept running even if just as a relic.

In fact, if the game does die, I think it'll be when operating systems evolve to a point where something replaces the telnet protocol.

Do MUDs really die? Or do they just dwindle down to a few loyal idlers, with a couple more occasional forum posters, and a few more half engaged, skim over Discord'ers?

Point is, MUDS don't seem to die. They just go on life support. ------------^-----------^------------^------------^

No one cares enough to pull poor bastards plug, or invest in fixing his condition. They'd just rather wring their hands, fret, and do nothing but watch the lifeless form.

All it would take to turn the game around is the staff relaxing their grip on every little detail.

It's okay to say yes once in a while or to give players a chance to do something interesting and different. Other games do it all the time and they're flourishing, so why the need to control every minutiae of every player? At one time, the game could police itself by virtue of the natural in game order of things. If someone did something out of line, even if they got away with it for a while, people would deal with them eventually and in a way that didn't require OOC meddling. Now it's nothing but OOC meddling, from both staff and players.

Karma is a good example of the ever tightening grip. There was really no need to close karma requests, but they did it anyway. Now, it takes a new player all of a few minutes to realize they're at the end of the road before they've taken a stop, so they leave. Who would stick around to play a game that tells you from the start you have nothing to look forward to and are deadlocked into being disadvantaged compared to old players, who already have every leg up on you in terms of knowledge? It's ridiculous.

A system that decides in hard ranks terms what you can and cannot do in an RP environment should never, ever be completely closed off to anyone. Especially not to the new arrivals that you desperately need to stick around.

Of all the strange decisions they've made over the last several years, that probably stands out as the worst.

It’s been dead for some time. We need to better define what death is in a game like a Mud. It’s more in an undead state where it enjoys periods of activity. Then it dies off and goes back to a dead like state.

I’m surprised so many of you are trying to ignore it was enjoying 60-70 players during peak just a couple of months ago, or at least pretending to ignore a fact like that. That’s not a dead game.

The interesting thing is what follows the burst of activity. Somehow every time they get a resurgence in numbers like that they manage to squander it through poor choices. I’m not talking about something like closing Tuluk, getting rid of Drovians or whatever the hell people are crying about these days. No that’s not it, those are symptoms of the problems. They manage to piss the players off that just came back. And they leave again and you’re back to the core.

I’m convinced the core has something to do with it being stuck in an undead state. The core are the people that cry for the days of the rebellion, the copper war, etc. Is it really that hard to write a compelling story? No, but that’s what they want. The core are those players that decided, whatever you’re trying to do it’s their job to actively oppose it, because the world needs a good
Antagonist and they chant Murder, Corruption, Betrayal. Even when there is no non contrived reason for them to be doing so. But it gives them something to do...so shitting on your plot is ok. Except after a while....shitting on everybody’s plot makes people not want to do plots. Yeah...the core are their own worst enemy and they don’t even realize it. They keep the game afloat until the next burst.

The next burst will probably be when they implement the new classes. The code nerds will come back to poke around. Maybe they’ll bring some the wife or some friends and the numbers will go up. But what is rotten underneath always comes out and...the numbers drop off again.

Not dead or dying....undead.

There's no story because every measure of resource has been stripped from players.

The game has in many ways always been driven by sponsored roles and clan leaders, especially clan leaders that would rise from an entry level position. The nobles and Templars have nothing to work with anymore and clan leaders are stapled in place from a dwindling pool of staff pets, instead of being picked from the best of the worse that survived he last catastrophe. How many Byn Sergeants have come out of the ether, run the clan into the mud and died, only to be replaced by another? The AOD is even worse, and kept stagnant because the garbage, no effort players that inhabit it never die and the interesting ones willing to play cops and robbers end up never getting promoted, suicide or store.

Don't even get me started on little America aka the Garrison. Even Utterby would roll its eyes at what Luirs has turned into.

Players are permanently barred from every getting karma, the success rate of special applications has become abysmal and the shrinking remnants of players who had options from before are so bored they're down to relentless grinding on spiders. The game limps along, on a crutch of legacy and nothing else. How can a new player be expected to stick around? There isn't even much in the way of social play, as I learned when joining a row of aides/merchants/floozies in Reds. They're cut outs of actual characters, with three word emotes and endless nods and shakes.

There will never be interesting, dynamically evolving plots and stories when players are stifled in every possible way. I really believe that the old time staff have become so embittered with their players, they're actively sabotaging the game. There is too much evidence, too many complaints, too many diehard players hitting the bricks for them not to realize they're the problem. It isn't us exiles, it isn't the new players, it isn't the genre that's killing the game. It's them and their inability to adapt, or let go to make room for people who can.

It's no longer even possible to grab a group of friends and go shake things up, because staff won't tolerate player success. You can pick up a group of friends to go be raiders, run an indie crew or take over the Guild through assimilation, only to have it kicked apart by vindictive staff. You will never again see a long, grand plot run by players, like you did years ago. It won't be tolerated and that's pretty much a fact.

Disposable, forgettable, safe and unoffensive. That's your Armageddon experience in a nutshell.