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<H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</H1>
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<LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
<LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</LI>
<LI><em>From</em>: "Dr. Cat" <<A HREF="mailto:cat#oldzoom,bga.com">cat#oldzoom,bga.com</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Date</em>: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 04:11:16 -0600 (CST)</LI>
<LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
<LI><em>Sender</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev-admin#kanga,nu">mud-dev-admin#kanga,nu</A></LI>
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<PRE>
Raph Koster wrote:
> So my question is something that sort of overlaps material that is in the
> FAQ, but not really. What do you think are the most important and/or
> influential muds, and why? What contributions did they make to the state of
> the art, or what significant muds owe a lot to them?
Well, where serious MUD players and developers might look at a lot of
details as being significant and influential, I think the rest of the
world would look and just say "Well, which was the first MUD, the first
MUD with graphics, the first MUD with voice-chat?" Noticing the BIG
technological changes, not smaller changes like skill trees and such.
Personally, I think the biggest piece of history that most people
overlook (and probably always will, when I've mentioned it before on this
list nobody even responded to it, so I doubt many people care) is what
were the first multi-user dungeon games. I believe that these were
probably games like Moria and Oubliette on the Plato computer network in
the mid 1970s. They certainly qualify as the first graphic muds, having
simple line-drawings of the dungeon corridors displayed on 512*512 plasma
screen terminals, with their distinctive orange pixels.
I think Habitat certainly belongs on anybody's list of important MUDs.
It also is more qualified as "influential" - at least in the form of
Morningstar and Farmer's essays, which have been read by many MUD
developers, even though most of them probably never got to play it
themselves. (For the curious, I see there's a free trial of the latest
incarnation at <A HREF="http://www.worldsaway.com">http://www.worldsaway.com</A>)
I think the first MUD with voice-chat was the demo world put up by
OnLive Chat, in an unsuccessful attempt to get people to license
their spiffy technology. But their company doesn't seem to have
been very successful, either financially or in getting a lot of
attention. So for a "most influential" list maybe they will be
like Moria and Oubliette - historically significant, but didn't
influence a lot of people because they just faded into obscurity.
(One of the later Plato dungeon games, Avatar, did serve as the
model that Wizardry was based on, although without the multiplayer
aspect.)
Amongst the text-only muds that only us MUD developers would notice the
innovations in, like I said before, I would list two. LambdaMOO, for
getting far more mainstream press coverage than any other MUD. And also
for getting far more non-programmers to make programs than ever before,
back when Object Oriented was such a hyped thing that anything containing
it was automatically good. And you could tell a non-programmer "It's
easy now, all you have to do is inherit everything from some other object
and change one thing, and voila, you made something new!" Which led to
their other innovation, whereby novice builders didn't realize they were
taking something that inherited 37 levels deep already, adding three
feeps, and passing it along to the next guy who wouldn't realize it was
inheriting stuff 38 levels deep... Leading to the innovation of "more
lag than you could shake a stick at".
Well I kid them, but the media coverage and the big well-known corporate
sponsor and having a lot of people from outside the normal mudding and
gaming communities made it significant and influential.
The other text mud I'd list is TinyMUD. Which seems to be the main
brancing point at which MUDs sorta forked from being "just combat muds"
to "combat muds and social muds". Most of the social ones trace their
ancestry back to TinyMUD. We've since sorta branched into three main
families, combat, social, and roleplaying. The roleplaying category
consisting mainly of MUSHes. But the roleplaying category is sort of a
"subcategory" of social, and definitely forked off from that side and the
whole TinyMUD family.
Ultima Online will probably turn out to be very influential, but better
to let the years go by and let history be the judge. :X)
*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------*
Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions || Free alpha test:
*-------------------------------------------** <A HREF="http://www.bga.com/furcadia">http://www.bga.com/furcadia</A>
Furcadia - a new graphic mud for PCs! || Let your imagination soar!
*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------*
_______________________________________________
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</PRE>
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<li><strong><A NAME="00492" HREF="msg00492.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>
<ul compact><li><em>From:</em> Mik Clarke <mikclrk#ibm,net></li></ul>
<li><strong><A NAME="00491" HREF="msg00491.html">RE: [MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>
<ul compact><li><em>From:</em> "Jay Carlson" <nop#mitre,org></li></ul>
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<ul><li>Thread context:
<BLOCKQUOTE><UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00426" HREF="msg00426.html">[MUD-Dev] State of the art?</A></strong>,
Andy Cink <a href="mailto:ranthor#earthlink,net">ranthor#earthlink,net</a>, Tue 16 Feb 1999, 02:41 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00428" HREF="msg00428.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: State of the art?</A></strong>,
diablo <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Tue 16 Feb 1999, 08:00 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00464" HREF="msg00464.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] State of the art?</A></strong>,
J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#kanga,nu">claw#kanga,nu</a>, Fri 19 Feb 1999, 04:41 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00424" HREF="msg00424.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>,
Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Tue 16 Feb 1999, 00:17 GMT
<UL>
<li><Possible follow-up(s)><br>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00490" HREF="msg00490.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>,
Dr. Cat <a href="mailto:cat#oldzoom,bga.com">cat#oldzoom,bga.com</a>, Fri 26 Feb 1999, 10:12 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00491" HREF="msg00491.html">RE: [MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>,
Jay Carlson <a href="mailto:nop#mitre,org">nop#mitre,org</a>, Fri 26 Feb 1999, 16:43 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00492" HREF="msg00492.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>,
Mik Clarke <a href="mailto:mikclrk#ibm,net">mikclrk#ibm,net</a>, Fri 26 Feb 1999, 20:08 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00494" HREF="msg00494.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>,
Richard Woolcock <a href="mailto:KaVir#dial,pipex.com">KaVir#dial,pipex.com</a>, Sat 27 Feb 1999, 01:24 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00493" HREF="msg00493.html">RE: [MUD-Dev] Re: Influential muds</A></strong>,
Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Fri 26 Feb 1999, 21:29 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL></BLOCKQUOTE>
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