[Murdoc]

I'm pretty shocked that people only recently seem to be thinking of Nodeka as a "second window" game. It's been that way to me for a long time, and it's the reason why I quit way back when.

So, because of that, I don't think that changing this prevention to that or giving that class this skill or some remort branch some ability is going to help Nodeka in the long run. That's not the big problem. I stopped seriously playing around the same time quests were put in, so forgive me if I'm just naive here, but this sort of debate makes me think that people just can't see the forest for the trees.

Yes, the gap between "big" and "small" was a lot shorter back when I was active (I think the biggest character when I quit was...35k or so?), but scripting was still pretty much required if you wanted to keep up with the Jonses. Like Iblis said, it was/is possible to catch up, but scripting was/is required. Also, OCD, and perhaps some programming knowledge. Also also, a good enough reason to spend the months/years building a character, which 99% of the newbies who don't check out a MUD for a few seconds and log off to play WoW aren't going to have. Having thousands of dollars lying around, ready to be poured into Nijlo's coffers? Yeah, that helps too.

Nodeka as it is, and as it was back then to a smaller extent, caters to a niche of a niche of a niche.

In my opinion, Nodeka was doomed to this fate from the very beginning. There's a reason why running scripts that automatically clear areas is considered botting in most muds, even when you're sitting there watching that script run. I know that manually running areas gets repetitive, but repetition helps to keep inflation in check. It also encourages players to go off and do other things more often, which further keeps things in check.

In the long term, I think there's only one thing that can be done to save the game: a pwipe. Nijlo's been against that from the very, very beginning, so how about keeping the player files on one server, but creating another where the slate is wiped clean, and scripting is outlawed, with violators zapped on the spot. Taking out the ability to change classes/races would probably help too.

I don't know what kind of an investment Nijlo would have to make that happen, but in the long term, I don't see Nodeka being viable otherwise. And it would definitely make things interesting.