Member Discussions

Hi! A friend of mine has been having serious trouble getting in touch with Wolfpaw about starting a new account. I know it's not normal to send them an e-mail and not get a response in a couple of weeks. Does anyone know if there's some sort of a problem. Dale on vacation or something? Or has anyone GOTTEN communications from them recently, which would indicate that the problem is somehow on my friend's side of things.

I'm sure everything is fine with Wolfpaw, has your friend tried resending the email? As you said they are typically very quick to respond, so the e-mail was probably misplaced or never arrived. Tried calling?

Not sure how true this is or what, but i heard a rumour wolfpaw had stopped allowing new accounts.

Like i said i dunno if its true, just a rumour i heard

Quote Macedemus:
Not sure how true this is or what, but i heard a rumour wolfpaw had stopped allowing new accounts.

I am not sure where you heard this, but I'm almost sure he is still taking new accounts. Though however, I believe he did say he would no longer involve himself with the Mudconnector forums anymore.


And like Matiel said, you should probably have your friend resend the email and if that doesn't work, don't hesitate to give him a few phone calls. I mean, if he is seriously interested in getting hosting with Wolfpaw, he should send emails and phone calls and not stop until he gets an answer.

Good luck with getting a host and your mud as well.

I'm not really in a position to provide details,
but the information I have is that he is hard to contact
lately because of a very time-consuming RL situation.

It is, however, one of those "good thing" RL situations,
so I don't think there's a need to worry. I'm pretty
sure he'll be back to his old responsive self sometime soon.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/forum/

I hope the rl consuming situation is female.. :)

If you go to their website and click on 'Game Hosting' you'll see that they're no longer accepting accounts without either a reference from a current customer of theirs or an application that looks designed to weed out the kids whose MUDs will be gone a couple months after starting up.

--matt

Having used wolfpaw on numerous occasions, i wonder what the reasoning for this is?

Perhaps as Serapis said its to weed out the people who dunno what they are doing, and use really bugged code which cause usage problems.

I hope it has nothing to do with the thread where Dale said that he wasnt going to participate in any mud discussions anymore.

In being a current wolfpaw user the reasons are to stop these MU*s that could cause problems. here is his explination.

However, that being said – at this time, we are not prepared to accept any new mud hosting accounts. The

Mud community contains many excellent people, but as of late it seems most the ones we hear from are

the trolls. If this is where it is headed, I want no part of where it is going.

That email was sent back in Aug.

I'm not sure what the problem is that you're having, though I can tell you that I am a former wolfpaw customer and had the same problem that you are having.

Basically I was trying to set up a forums system, but my account didn't have the permissions to set up the mysql database that I needed, and at the time, wolfpaw didn't have a mysql database system pre-installed for accounts.

I was sending him emails every day for about a week to ten days, and he (Dale) was very pleasant the whole time, but the problem was still not getting resolved.

After that I hadn't received an email in 2-3 weeks, so I sent him one telling him to cancel my account as I wasn't receiving the level of service I felt I deserved.

He sent me a rather rude email in response telling me he was busy with his more profitable enterprises, and didn't have time to help newbie mud hosters.

I've been running MUDs for almost 10 years now, and I have a BSc in computer science and a diploma in Network Infrastructure and Administration. The problem was on his end.

If you want my advice, leave wolfpaw. Go over to www.mudmagic.com and do your hosting there. I never had any problems whatsoever there, and from what I can tell, mudconnect.com has about a 9:1 ratio of game owners and developers to actual players who visit the site either sporadically or regularly.

That's my advice, but who knows maybe Dale just had a bad day and vented on me by mistake. I can tell you that he was always very pleasant and professional before this. All the same, my advice, based on my own experience, is to go over to mudmagic.com.

Gicker

Ha...I left Mudmagic for Wolfpaw because of some "problems" we had. Don't worry...Calvin will end up "venting" one day and you will end up leaving too.

Mud Magic has the best customer support I have ever seen, I would host my mud there if they didn't use celeron processors.
In my opinion, anyone running a server with a celeron processor should be (figuratively speaking) shot.
Also, Mud Magic is known for its bad business practices involving disputes between customers, such as when someone says there code was stolen.
Wolfpaw has the best connection to the internet backbone, and the best server setup with fast cpus and a lot of ram and programs compile faster there using gcc or g++ than on any other host I have compiled code on.
The problem I see with Wolfpaw is that Dale seems to handle all support requests from mud hosting customers.
This made me hesetant to get support when I needed it, like when my domain transfer wasn't going through and I needed him to work with tmc so that my mud listing could be updated.
I called the support number for wolfpaw and or emailed there support address once every 1-3 days, usually every other day for a couple weeks.
Wolfpaw appears large enough for Dale to let his staff handle most support requests.
I don't have a problem with Dale - I would like to think that I like and respect him.
I am afraid I pissed him off in the thread about mud magic being blocked from the wolfpaw network by indicating that I thought he doesn't care about the mud hosting side of his business enough.
This still appears to be the case as demonstrated by his bringing up the possibility of mud magic being banned from his network, and removal of the old signup forum.
I would host my mud there if I could update my tmc listing to show the new address,, and would keep it there as long as TMC shows muds hosted at wolfpaw above the rest of the category listings.
Without that feature, I can not justify spending $30 per month for so little in the way of resources in comparison to what other mud hosts provide.
I want my mud to receive maximum exposure, so I would be happy to pay that provided that the above mentioned issues were worked out ahead of time.

I lost the password for the tmc account my mud listing was associated with, I still do not have the listing transfered to this user account after sending in no less than three requests for it over a period of three months or so.
I never changed the randomly generated password and just looked it up in my archived mail.
Eventually I am going to have to pay $50 for a year of service with the old email provider just so I can get a password reminder sent to it so I can get the listing transfered over.
To put it simply, I can't recommend one host over the other, however I would recommend my current mud host which is Rpg-Works.
There servers are hosted in a data center, they have two packages, most muds would do very well on the $10 package.
I feel free to talk to the owner on AIM whenever I have a question - I usually talk to him once per month.
Anyway, anyone in need of a host or looking to switch hosts should check them out at http://www.rpg-works.net


(Comment added by stan1985 on Fri Nov 17 16:11:23 2006)

Now that I think of it, I can't say I would host my mud on Mud Magic if they stopped using celerons, because I hate there website - it doesn't get read correctly using a screen reader.

Ok So.. I guess I should probably reply to this, just so everyone is clear. In advance, I'm not trying to be rude, (at least to anyone that doesn't fall into the categories I intentionally attack) I'm just being very blunt. I have little love left for muds, barring perhaps mine.. and even that I don't touch much. That being said - met lots of fun people, and its nothing personal.. call it "mud host admin burnout" maybe.

A) (Various) Wolfpaw isn't responding, support is slow, etc

I am too busy for muds with aformentioned more profitable enterprises. If you can't understand that one, well hey .. sorry man. I gotta eat too, and to be quite blunt, if I can do things for $1000+/mo per customer, why on earth would I spend more time on someone paying $10? I've been very very busy with larger clients in the last few months. When I have time, mud hosting customers will get what they are asking for, unless its something critical, then we will handle it ASAP.

If your interest is to have, as others have mentioned - a very well connected network to host your mud on, with fast stable servers - but do most things yourself - come on by. If you want me to hold your hand and run your mud for you, please use MudMagic - appearently they do that. I'm far too burned out to teach people to use Linux, to code, to read a man page, or show Bsc's how to install MySQL .. at least for $10/mo anyway.

B) (Quoting glicker42) - "Basically I was trying to set up a forums system" .. "I've been running MUDs for almost 10 years now, and I have a BSc in computer science and a diploma in Network Infrastructure and Administration. The problem was on his end."

Did you actually read what you posted? You have a Bsc in Comp. Sci., and you can't setup MySQL? Funny thing.. no one else had so much difficulty typing: mysql_install .. and using the script I already wrote to do this. I don't have a B. Sc. in anything, and i have no problem with it ..

C) Darkozx: hehe .. don't bother trying to tell them, I tried that, and gave up (see point A). Have fun with your own stuff, and forget about it =) They'll learn one of these days. Thanks for stepping up for me though (same to the others that did)

D) stan1985: You left because I refused to force TMC to update your listing. I said it then, I'll say it now, I have _NO_ control whatsoever over TMC's policies, and I can not, nor will I attempt to force Andrew to do anything whatsoever. That was never part of our agreement. Beyond that, I consider the guy a friend, and I respect his decisions regarding things, especially TMC. It's his site, not my site.

Like I told someone the other day, all I need to do every day to remind myself why I hate the mud community enough to turn my back on it is visit these forums, they never fail to remind me =)

I realized from that last MudMagic thread .. that I really don't care to somehow become the moral compass for this "community", that I don't care what most of you think of me, my network policies, my service, my dog, my wife, my kids, my education, or the flavor of ice-cream I eat.

If you are 'old school' enough to know mudding is, and always was about self learning, having fun using your skills, and the new ones you will learn doing it - I'm behind you 100%, *CENSORED* I might even host you for free. If your all about me being your personal techslave for 10 bucks, remove your head from between your knees. Its not going to happen. I will help you out as I can, if you at least try to help yourself. But understand, I am completely upfront about the fact it is _NOT_ what I am selling you.. I am selling you a pipe, server space.

Signing off - flame away - but know, I'm probably not listening.
-D.

I know how you feel Dale, i hosted people on a free server for 3 months, and in those 3 months i wondered why i even bothered. I never got any thanks for what i was doing, all i got was "this doesnt work" "that doesnt work" "your server is too laggy" etc etc, i didnt ask for any payment from the people i hosted, yet they never said thank you for anything i did.

The server closed down in July, due to technical difficulties and the fact i thought **** it why should i put my self out for people who never say thanks.

I would still have my account on wolfpaw, but due to me being unemployed, for the past 4 months i dont think i could stretch to pay each month for something that i get nothing back from.

Wolfpaw IS the best MUDhost that i have ever used, i never had any problems with Dale, he always responded to my emails.

Good luck with your other enterprises Dale :) Just dont do a betterbox.net on us and totally quit hosting muds :)

Tijer

Good luck with your other enterprises Dale :) Just dont do a betterbox.net on us and totally quit hosting muds :)

Not going to happen. I just refuse to accept any that don't meet my requirements =)

D.

stan1985 said:

I would host my mud there if I could update my tmc listing to show the new address,, and would keep it there as long as TMC shows muds hosted at wolfpaw above the rest of the category listings.
Without that feature, I can not justify spending $30 per month for so little in the way of resources in comparison to what other mud hosts provide.

Surely you realize one does not control the other? Instead of pestering Dale to death over this, maybe you should have used some common sense and logic and deduced that Andrew runs TMC and that you can click that button at the bottom of the display that says "contact" and describe your situation? I know I've never had an issue with it.....

stan, we host on wolfpaw, and are one of the most popular free muds still around. We didn't even know that the mudconnector listings gave that perk. Not for like, two years minimum. Anyway I contacted the tmc admin and told him about it. Let me give you what he gave me.


> We had abandonedrealms.net in our DB which tells the search engine which
> muds are wolfpaw-hosted, did this at some pouint change to .com ?

So just ask the admin (admin@mudconnect.com) to update his DB.

I don't know why other people are saying they have problems with wolfpaw support. I'm not even a customer and had a question about a certain user and he responded to me in a resonable amount of time. I replied and he answered that again in a resonable amount of time.

-vrakk

Dale and I have a tendency to talk for an hour to three if we both have time, he's a real person, someone I consider a friend in this world of packets and bytes.

I've been with Wolfpaw since we moved from Mudservices in 2000. I host business and personal websites, project muds, and my main MUD (Ansalon) there.

Every once in a while there's a glitch, but I've found Wolfpaw to be quite reliable, very efficient, fast... I'm not saying no one else has had a problem, I'm saying that 99% of the time PEBKAC and RTFM.

ansalon@wolfpaw man RTFM
No manual entry for RTFM

Heh, man that's an easter egg they need to put in the next distro ;)

vrakk said:
"I don't know why other people are saying they have problems with wolfpaw support."

Well, my last email to him was posted 10 days ago and I've heard nothing since.


Sandi