Micromanagement in Clan Lord
A couple of years ago, I was accused of being too
involved in Clan Lord, getting in the way of those good GMs who were really
making things happen. (For example, I squashed the original Peaceton,
because I didn't think it was up to snuff, and I would personally make massive
changes to areas because I felt they were too easy or too hard. There are
hundreds of other examples of my small-minded micromanagement -- though, of
course, _I_ always thought I was
reasonable.)
This annoyed GMs and
players alike, so I stepped back and let AnnGM run the show. Complaints
dropped.
Then I took a year off to
teach in Hong Kong. When I returned, I found that the population had
declined dramatically. While I'd like to say it's because folks missed me,
I'm pretty sure I'm not all that
important.
I did leap back into the
fray, designing a couple of small areas, kicking the GMs, and reinstating all
expired players for a couple of months. We saw a burst of population
growth that was encouraging, but after about six weeks, the novelty wore off,
and our population dropped back
down.
Things changed -- but with those
changes came complaints from the players and GMs. Quickly it became
apparent from the comments that the consensus was that while Clan Lord was once
the best game of all time, our efforts have only made it worse with each passing
year. This criticism is discouraging to the
GMs.
Clan Lord has been more long-lived
than we ever imagined. Our mission was to bring MUDs into the
eighties. (No more text, but relatively unsophisticated graphics.)
We did that. Now it's almost ten years later.
Filed Fri - June 9, 2006, 08:46 PM in
Return to: |