I’ve now been an active part of Wolfery’s community for four weeks. Allow me to update this thread with my more recent observations! This includes two amazing successes I’ve witnessed this system achieve, and one place where I see room for improvement.
Wolfery welcomes younger players.
I almost used a phrase like “age-diverse players” here—but the players I have in mind are specifically those younger than the GenXers who (like me) started playing MU*s in the 1980s or 1990s.
My impression is that other MU* systems never really caught an audience beyond this cohort, even as new generations have emerged into adulthood. This makes those places feel increasingly stagnant, as the years pass. Any creative community needs an influx of new energy and perspective to stay not just alive but relevant. Younger age cohorts aren’t the only source of this, but it’s absolutely the richest one. Wolfery’s demonstrated attraction to relatively young players bodes very well for both the quality and the long-term viability of its world and the technology that supports it.
During dips into OOC chat, I’ve met several players saying how they’re new to this style of immersive, free-form role playing, either because they’d only “RPed” a bit on a basic chat like Discord, or because this was their first text role-play experience anywhere. In every case, they had only good things to say about their time on Wolfery, their comfort with the system, and the welcome they felt from the community there.
I get an impression from various verbal and behavioral cues that Wolfery’s player base skews younger (or, at least, less experienced) than what one finds on a traditional MU* in 2022. Last night in particular, I had a great OOC discussion with thee other Sindar residents about the system itself, and its history; I learned that each was years away from even being born when I first logged into FurryMUCK in the 1990s. (And none of them knew what “MUCK” meant, for all of Wolfery’s introductory mentions of it, and none of them needed to.)
A direct quote from one participant in that conversation: “I love this place. It feels like a place, rather than a message board.”
I love to see it.
I feel comfortable inviting friends to Wolfery.
When I started this thread, this was still only an aspiration; I felt hopeful that Wolfery would prove worthy of my inviting friends on, but I hadn’t quite arrived there yet. I’m happy to say that in the intervening weeks, this has changed. I have invited several friends to come join me, and I even gave a personalized tutorial and tour around town to one, who has since become a regular visitor.
As I commented earlier in this thread, Wolfery’s embrace of contemporary web technology and design philosophy was only part of what sold me. Far more difficult and important is establishing a welcoming community with clearly stated norms and rules, and an active moderation team willing to enforce them. I needed to marinate in Wolfery for another week or two before I could feel convinced that it cared enough to support this. I’m convinced now.
I have several times witnessed people politely but firmly shooing away inappropriate behavior in public areas. And the other day, I myself received a whispered warning from one of Sindar’s moderators after I got a little too salty around some folks clearly taking their role-playing baby-steps in the park. This gentle but clear reprimand only deepened my sincere respect for, and trust in, the system and the team that runs it. I would feel comfortable invititing just about any furry-aligned friends onto Wolfery. I haven’t felt that way about any MU* in at least 20 years.
The web client needs a mobile-friendly view.
The Wolfery web client assumes ownership of a relatively high-resolution and wide display, displaying its content in several columns. This works very well—if you are a person owning such a display! My understanding is that—apart from full-time students, information professionals, and PC-game hobbyists—an ever-growing slice of adult internet users own only phones, and not laptop or desktop computers. Wolfery (and Mucklet, IIUC) could really expand its potential audience by adapting to this fact with its UI.
I know it’s easy for me to say, and I don’t wanna be the ”Why don’t you just…” guy here, but… this feels like an attainable ambition, to me? I envision an early stab at a mobile UI that uses the very same columns as the full web-browser view, but displays only one at a time, and keeps a set of unchanging tabs in view at all times that let you rapidly select which one is displayed. (I imagine that certain actions would also switch the tab currently “on top”; for example, tapping a character’s row in the “Room Info” pane would update the “Character Info” pane, and also bring it into view.)
I feel this need personally, because it interacts with both of my previous two observations! I have already had the experience of inviting a younger friend onto Wolfery, only to have them respond some minutes later with “Oh, huh. It isn’t really designed for mobile, is it.” I’ve told them I’d bring it up with management. This is me doing that!
And there’s my update. Wolfery has become very important to me, in a short span of time. I love the direction I see it growing in, and hope that I can help keep it growing.
