Active universe?

Rich

I couldn’t find this information anywhere. How active is the universe? I see games like TextSpaced and Starfall tout thousands of active players at any one time, how active is Starmourn, is the universe busy? Also, is the universe infinite like most of these games are? How likely are you to meet another player and how big is the Starmourn universe currently?

Cubey

The game has about 20-40 players around on average, less during extreme off hours and more during uptime. I didn't see a 100 players logged in at the same time in a long time though.

The numbers may seem unimpressive but Starmourn isn't the kind of game you compared it to, a text-based browser 4X/space sim type of experience, rather it's an oldschool MUD, albeit a sci-fi one with space elements, and it's best to treat it as one.

Because of that the possibility of meeting another player is not only likely but more or less inevitable. The game is finite in size (see: MUD), but the space area is pretty big. The on-foot areas are moderately sized, I'd say.

Rich

What do you mean by an oldschool MUD, both of the games a mentioned can be played with a client, I thought Starmourn was browser based as well, I am confused now What defines a MUD or are you saying this is a MUD and the others are MOOs?

Cubey

By an oldschool MUD I mean a game similar to "classic" MMORPGs like WoW or Everquest, but in text. The game world is not dynamically generated (except for some instanced areas), and you control a single character: moving, fighting, and performing all other actions in person. In Starmourn it's just also a character that can control a spaceship, and there is a range of spaceship-related activities.

I say that in contrast to browser-based MMOs which can be... practically anything, really. From a dystopian cyberpunk survival simulator to something like Urbandead, or a 4x pvp-centric game in an infinite world. But these games tend to be, in my experience at least, more gameplay- or objective-driven, while MUDs are more of a "living world" experience, something for your character to exist in.

Ikchor

The labels of MUD, MOO, MUSH, MUX, SMUSH, and so on is ... fuzzy in my opinion.

Starmourn is browser based, but not like Textspaced, as its an in-house client not based off Facebook Messenger. You don't even need to use that browser client, as there's a lot of third party clients available to connect, with Mudlet being the gold standard for many players. Old school MUD is more to to do with IRE's other titles (i think), which are all decades (two and change, actually!) old medieval fantasy games and Starmourn has some faint whiffs of that in it.

Starmourn's a MUD, but the community plays more like an MMO's RP server.

Rich

I see, the definition is very fuzzy as the description given could apply to all the games we are talking about lol

and for what it’s worth I’m using a mud client to play TextSpaced and Starfall rather than Facebook as part of their test programme.