Yup. Pretty sure I'm done
Everything I wrote previously about the MUSH I have been on for a year and a half, is still true. More people than me feel 'shut out' of RP; 'blacklisted' and 'not safe talking on channels'. I can think of at least 4, possibly at many as 8, who linger at the edges. One by one, they're dropping off.
I've been trying to keep finding play at the fringes, but it's less and less fun. I'm tired of having to beg permission to play anything that isn't 'drink coffee or mead'; tired of being afraid anything I do may get me a slapdown OOC or - just as crippling, frankly - IC; tired of packets, originally springboards for play and seed ideas for scenes, now being treated as detailed instructions for how one MUST play a scene: fail to dot this i or cross that t, and somebody's going to make sure you know you were playing wrong. There is no room for creativity or even contribution anymore. I'm back to feeling like I have to flatter staff before I beg permission to do something. That, as I remember, was one of the things that was very specifically NOT going to happen on this game when it opened. But it is happening. I'm also back to feeling like I have to wait for staff to provide a planned plot or scene, because if *I* do one, somebody with "more authority than me" (and I don't even mean staff necessarily) will come along and inform me that X or Y could not possibly happen, and I had no business playing that. It's not quite a retcon. But I can't think of a faster way to kill inspiration.
And....that's fine. Not every MUSH is for every person and this seems to be working for a select group even now. If enough of the disaffected leave, well, there won't BE a MUSH. Try to make RP for long with 8 or 10 people, I challenge you. I feel there has been a progression along the way, a microculture of management that has developed, which might (I suppose) even now be halted if people were aware, and cared. I suspect though that this will be shrugged off as 'the natural lifespan of a MUSH'. I don't think it is. I think the MUSH slid from its foundations. That doesn't mean the foundation isn't still there, and it was a good foundation. Maybe it's time for some slabjacking or something.
Anyway, I've been introduced to a new MUSH - ironically, set in New Orleans, so that both my 'other' MUSHes are set in New Orleans, a place I have never actually been - and it's looking promising.