Zugg Software :: View topic - Unfortunate things regarding Cmud and Zugg

Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:06 am

Again, I'm sorry you were upset by Chiara's post. She was probably upset at reading first post in this topic this morning and posted too quickly. But we all do that. That's what makes us human. She wasn't trying to make a personal attack on you. She was just pointing out the reality that there is no way we can just give away free copies of CMUD to all of our long time users.

Also, try to look at this from Chiara's point of view. First, she if my wife and is sensitive to people making negative personal posts about me. So, she wakes up this morning and during her morning support email answering she reads this thread. By that time it already has a page of posts. She knows how hard I've been working on CMUD for the past 6 months and how burned out I am and reacts emotionally to the negative post. She posts a quick reply. All she was trying to do is make sure everyone realized that there is no way we can give CMUD away for free.

Could her reply have been more diplomatic? Perhaps. But we all make posts like that and it certainly fit the tone of the original poster. I'm not going to second guess her reply...she felt strongly about it, just as you feel strongly about this. We don't filter all of our posts through some PR firm or some legal firm. We are just regular people like everyone else, and we get just as upset as you would if someone came over and trashed your work or made rude public postings about you.

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

You might advice against that.. Heres a statistic you should lookup sometime from small business administration and better business bureau. 1 lost customer ==> 10 lost customers. 1 happy customer ==> 10 customers. It the word of mouth statistic. No one here is one of the CHILDREN. END OF DISCUSSION doesnt go over well when its their pocket you want to tap or their heart you wish to please.

Perspective for you: Not really for here but life experience is what it is.

If something mattered to you and you went to your wife to talk to her about it and she gave the response {her opinion} END OF DISCUSSION. I am not thinking you would be very happy either. It automatically means im done listening to you its going to be the way it is. Works great in households badly in business.

Do we have a choice in what you decide to do. NO we offer our opinions you decide what you decide. Once again the business model takes effect. Your business depends on decisions you make. As a customer i dont care why you make them. I value that my opinion is heard and that you make the decision you feel is best (EVEN if its not what i think). Everyone in this forum i think is happy you take opinions and try to work it into your software. So the fact that anyone fails to understand that concept is beyond me.

If Rainchild posted some awesome suggestion and you replied im sorry i made you unhappy but we arent going to do it end discussion id be suprised if he didnt feel his input mattered and such would be upset as well. Although each persons personality is different i can only imagine it would be a matter of time before he stopped sending his opinions. Thats just my assumption though i dont know him.

Any further feelings i have on this topic i will email in myself as i feel it has no place on these forums and my intent is not to push anyone else away from your product. This should have been an email situation from the beginning. his initial post and all responses(including my own) should imo been done via email/private message anyways. although it doesnt change my opinion much this is the way i feel it should be done and thusly its what i will do.

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

Ricky Nelson held a concert at Madison Square Garden. He had written some new songs, worked really hard on this new album, and was thrilled at the opporunity to finally do those songs live in concert. He really enjoyed his new songs and figured his fans would too.

They didn't. If I remember the story correctly, he got booed for not doing any of his old songs.

After that experience, he was really down. Didn't know what to do. Finally, he wrote a song to express it. The chorus went like this:

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself
(the song was 'Garden Party')

Zugg's got to do what Zugg's got to do. He can choose to do a complete re-write of zMud and drop the backward compatability to create a new application that will help him, his business, and his family survive for years to come or he can drop Zuggsoft and go to work for a big corporation and not have time to work on zMud.

Is that selfish of him to want to provide for his family? God, I hope not.
Is that selfish of him to want to keep his business alive? Not in the slightest.

He's simply doing what he needs to do to keep his family and business afloat. Zuggsoft is his full-time business. It isn't a hobby like a lot of products on the web. It isn't some open source project that three-thousand people work on. It's just him. It is his livelihood. If he doesn't sell new software, he doesn't have any income.

Do I want to spend more money? Never. Am I going to support Zugg in this? Of course! (after all, I want that packages manager)

He's got to do what he's got to do. Anyone that has trouble with that hasn't tried to support a family nor tried to run a small business. Asking him not to support his family nor his business is really selfish of all of you.

You all can flame me and tell me that I'm dating myself by telling that story... you'd be wrong, but you could tell me that. I really don't care. I'm happy to see his business survive and even more thrilled to see this large batch of new features become available.

Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:51 am

Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2000 Posts: 389 Location: USA

edb6377

Zugg explained my post, but I wanted you to hear it from me. I apologize for distressing you. What you heard wasn't what I meant, but I should have been more careful with my phrasing.

Beginner Joined: 24 Nov 2002 Posts: 20 Location: Australia

CMUD is looking so good at the moment, that even though I won the lifetime free upgrades thing (and I still wear the Zuggsoft shirt - booyah!) I will probably end up buying a copy or two for some guys on the IRE games who do a HUGE amount of coding for their respective communities but can't really afford to buy it (they will have enough trouble buying a new computer for it).

I must admit that I did start out using zmud back in the 5.55 era with a pirated copy and used them for a while - even got other friends hooked on MUDs because of a pirate version which they later bought legally (as a side note here - elicense did a hell of a job eventually of stamping out the piracy - but damned it was an annoying pile of junk), but even back then it was well worth its money and ended up buying a copy (not under my name though - used a friends credit card so it was officially registered to him) and never looked back since.

This isn't even mentioning the fact that you will STILL be able to use zMUD well into the future - it just won't be "officially" supported, so its not like your code you bought 7 odd years ago went to waste. Honestly, your kind of attitude is what made the zMUD business model untenable in the first place.

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 698

Well, this is an interesting thread. How many more of these trolls are there? In the spirit of rewarding honest and full disclosure business people (like Zugg and Warren Buffet), and helping other buisness owners to see the light, I will be offering Lasivian and edb6377 a free copy of CMUD as soon as I am able to order it. These will be the fully paid version, not the basic upgrade version of which I am eligible to buy several. Whether they are given away, or just stored on my bookshelf remains to be seen. I make no guarantees for purchasing future upgrades to their products, but I've been a happy zMUD user for over ten years and I'll probably still around in another five (if Zuggsoft is still around). If.

Thank you Lasivian and edb6377 for helping Zugg get started. As a very satisfied, long-time user I want to express my gratitude for your part in making zMUD possible.

Wanderer Joined: 25 Jan 2002 Posts: 76 Location: USA

original post has been edited.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 873 Location: USA

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Beginner Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 18 Location: USA

So many people complaining about how they were the first ones to pay for zMud and how that entitles them to more than others... I think you all are just greedy

You forget about all of us who were using zMud before even you first payers... those of us who used it back when it was freeware... To get a product for such a low price, that has evolved so much over 10 years... you'd be hard pressed to find any better deal in software

Most freeware doesn't survive, doesn't get upgraded, doesn't get fixed. If you compare the current zMud with the early version you paid for, it's hardly the same program anymore.

CMUD is a completely new engine from everything I can tell reading on here, and it's shameful that you people are so greedy that you want it included under an 8yr old license that applies to a seperate program.

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

There is only one person with that complaint. That wouldnt be many. My post was an explination and opinion. Not a request demand or otherwise and is so noted in my post. Read first .... post later.

<removed by myself as there is no need to even attempt to explain the prior two posts as it will continue a fire>

So my statement stands. There were better ways all of this could have been worded. And your DIRECT assault in verbage is directly what leads to inflamitory posting in the first place and it will cost them customers i guarantee it. Its not about selfishness. Its not about greed. Its not even about the product. Its about the customer service aspect. Every word you type affects customers current or potential. You should have been attempting to understand and offer an reasonable explination. If he was unwilling to accept it. leave it to zugg and chiara since its their product to handle it via PM. Uninformed posts or posts directly attacking someone who wasnt even arguing against what you believe makes it even worst because then you directly attack your own supporters.

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

I intentionally left the front part out of this as it directly concerns the customer

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

MOST IMPORTANTLY I WANT YOU ALL TO REREAD THE INITIAL POST ON PAGE 1 BY Lasivian

You will find exactly what he was looking for and what i was trying to say all along .. TARN finally hit on it and lasivian expressed the feelings i was conveying. He wasnt looking for product, it wasnt money greed or anything else. It was a response from the general concensus (POSTERS) that fueled the fire. All he wanted was a you know what I understand how you feel and thank you for getting us started now heres the situation post from zugg himself. Might take that into consideration when you post in the future. Could have cost zugg a mass potential of current and future customers. I know i hold about 200-300 in my hands. I am not sure about lasivian but it exponentially expands.

I stated it on page 2

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

I have reread Lasivian's original post, including his recent edits and feel my response was appropiate. My initial reaction to this entire thread was, "Oh, look. I have moderating powers in this forum, and Zugg really doesn't need to be reading this right now." My other initial thought was stifling the community of speech here only leads to greater problems for Zugg. I waited and read many replies before finally stating my mind. I will state it again in the plainest speech I can possible muster.
I chose to purchase zMud.
I chose to further support the zMud community.
I chose to further support Zuggsoft.
I made my choices and respecting Zugg's choice is something that we must each choose to either do or not do. I also respect the choices of everyone that has posted to this thread, and I stand by my previous statement...

Newbie Joined: 15 Sep 2005 Posts: 3

As time moves on, it's becoming more apparent to me that people are dropping consciousness of the humans running a business. People no longer comprehend that "feelings are facts" too. This is a small business. It IS a business, but ultimately we are talking about two real human beings with regular lives. Large corporations or businesses hire masses of people in order to properly remove the effects of imperfect humans from your view. They prosper by feeding you a polished pseudo-reality business face. Workers are buried deep under rules, regulations, and policies aimed at suppressing as much human error and feelings as possible. Put on a smile for your customers because, oh no, it would be bad for business if they were inconvenienced in any way by reality.

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:31 am

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:03 am

Apprentice Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 195

this just sounds crazy to me...

Ive never had a thankyou from microsoft for my 'dedicated' support, nor do i expect to be on thier christmas card list.

All the thanks i need from zugg is continued development (which is storming ahead), and for him to be honest about which direction he is taking the business (which he has been in probably over 20 posts and his new years letter)

If you want a thankyou go work for a charity, dont buy computer software.

silly people.

EDIT - As for your problem with your biggest customer base being the ones that dont check the forum.. all you need is word of mouth zugg. on the release of Cmud I plan to tell everyone on my mud that its out and what I think of it. Im sure a lot of people will come back from the people that 'advertise' via word of mouth! viva la zugg!

Thanks zugg!

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

Newbie Joined: 15 Sep 2005 Posts: 3

I'm one of the users who never took part in forum discussion and I've been a zMud user for at least 8 or 9 years if I'm not mistaken. Periodically I will check the zuggsoft site throughout the years. The whole CMUD project motivated me to register. I'm very interested in CMUD and plan to purchase it even if I don't use it actively.

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 4:09 am

I just want to say, I've used zMud for a long time. Back in the day I was one of those "I'm never going to pay for it" people, and found any way to use it for free. After a while I did decide to pay for it, then lost the key and bought another copy not too long ago.

As I am now, like Zugg, running(well in my case starting) a commercial company in the mud community, I completely understand and agree with his choice. At first I wasn't planning on buying cMud, as zMud handles everything I need. Then I heard that cMud-Pro will have SSH abilities, as a developer that news got me really excited. I do all my coding on Windows(better editors), and have to use other programs to access my two servers. If cMud-Pro will allow me to combine my client and my ssh tool(currently Putty), I love it.

Zugg has done a great thing for the mud community over the last 10 years, his product is by far the best one out there. He needs to live and support his family with this business. He's taking A LOT of time to completely remake zMud, to be faster and more compatible with today's technologies, then he should be able to charge for it. This isn't just an upgrade, but a completely new product. Look at games, Diablo and Diablo II are fundamentally the same game, but are still completely different. Did you attack Blizzard for charging you for a new product?

Zugg, you're doing a great thing for all of us, and the idea of a common place for us to store scripts is great. My company plans to have a nice set of basic scripts and store it there, so all of our new players can easily download them and not have to spend time recreating the wheel.

On a side note, if you(Zugg) have some time, please send me an email. I'd like to talk with you briefly about a future business deal that could benefit both of us.

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 10:08 am

Sometimes people just need to vent, and the -need- to vent raises disproportionately when it is -percieved- that there is alot of toadying and buttkissing going on.

Hopefully the act of venting has helped and the things that needed to be said are appropriately resolved...time to move along people, nothing to see here, go back to your scheduled pvp events ;)

Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 3:32 am

Just to throw in my 2c, I've been using zMud since 2000, and its been my most used piece of software BY FAR since that time. The use I have found for the program in that time has been astounding, especially given the low price and that I get THREE licenses with my purchase.

Zugg, this is a change you should feel good about. There will always be idiots who criticise any change, especially when it comes to money. If this loses you a couple of customers and makes you financially viable, well, goodbye to bad rubbish.

To those miserly idiots who are getting aggro at Zugg for wanting to make a healthy living, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Either you can afford the modest charge rates for the new products, or you're on welfare and you should be using zMud. End of story.