Is Aardwolf Dying?

Quite often I read notes and see comments about “the dwindling player base”. We’ve been hearing that for years, so long that it is just accepted. I decided it was time to find out if this is actually true.

As some of you know, the ‘online 2’ command will show the average players online for each 24 hour period, going back just over a year. I went through old backups and managed to piece together a full set of data since September 2001 and put it into a quick Excel chart. Click the image below for a larger and easier to read version.

So what does this show? There’s many ways you can read a chart, but trying to be objective:

• Without a doubt, the peak years were 2004-2006. I have seen this time period referred to as the “golden age” for MUDs by other MUD owners. The internet was mainstream but MMOs weren’t mainstream yet. They were out there, but not mainstream.
• 2008 through 2011 have been very seasonal, but remarkably similar. The MUD isn’t really growing, but this chart doesn’t spell “dying” to me either.
• I really wish we had the data prior to 2001. 1997 to 2001 was a very fun time, hitting our first 50 onilne, then our first 100. Almost every week the MUD grew. We had less people online then than we do now, but the trend was definitely up. Interesting with hindsight that the direction is more motivating than the absolute number.
• This chart says nothing about player ‘engagement level’. My perception is that people multitask more now and do other things while they play Aardwolf. Purely anecdotal, no evidence to back it up.
• That big white line in the middle of 2004 is the 2 week period we were down after 3 back to back hurricanes back when the MUD was hosted on a T1 in Orlando.

So anyway, my conclusion is we’re not dying. I’m not painting a rosy picture here either. It’s frustrating to have put so much work into playability and other areas over the last 3-4 years just to effectively stand still. We’ve had multiple iterations of the client, the mapper was added, the world was redesigned, the academy, level limits on saving were removed, in-game features such as spellup, runto and eqsearch. These are just the main items aimed at making it easier for new players to get started, not even remotely a full list.

Admittedly, we have effectively stood still while a number of other MUDs have seen numbers decrease significantly but that’s not really any comfort either, I’d prefer to see all muds thriving and growing as a genre.

The other thing I don’t know is how this graph would compare to the same graph for other MUDs. We’ve had our share of mistakes, we’ve made unpopular decisions, could we have done more things to keep some people around for longer relative to other MUDs? Probably, but I’d imagine this applies to most MUDs too … we all have our list of “could have, should have” …

What I do know is we still have a large and active community that is very passionate about their game and we’re not planning to go anywhere anytime soon.