What do the terms “alpha testing”, “beta testing”, and “fully open” mean?
Generally, a mud goes through three basic stages. The first stage, “alpha testing”, is a developmental mode in which players are rarely allowed access to the mud. Things are in such a disarray or in a flurry of changes that playing a consistent game is impossible. In the “beta testing” stage, a mud is generally opened to players solely for the sake of testing that the mud works. Without actual play testing, it is impossible to determine if a mud can handle being fully open. muds in either of the above stages generally will not compensate players for mishaps due to bugs in the game, and they will often even purge players from the mud. The purging is done either because old player objects are no longer compatible with new ones or because the mud needs to be re-balanced to fit new code. In the final stage, “fully open”, a mud is just that, fully open. That means you can expect certain standards from the mud, including such things as not dying from bugs. Nothing is ever bug free, so genera
