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For instance, I used to play MUDs, like tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people. MUDs have been around since the mid-80s, all modern MMOs (which have "multiple third-party yadda yadda") are based off MUDs to some extent,

Yeah, a fact widely acknowledged by researchers and game historians of all kinds at this point.

and yet there's maybe... 2-3 books and a dozen articles on the entire thing.

Call me sceptical, but I'm pretty sure you aren't looking hard enough.

So I can't write a Wikipedia article on my MUD, which had hundreds or thousands of users and lasted > 10 years

Bah, you're just jealous that your MUD hasn't been covered in real publications you read, like the MUD I used to play at, which has been the subject of several mainstream media articles over the years. =)

because we never got an article in the Wall Street Journal? Fuck that.

If you're targeting WSJ, that indeed may be setting the bar too high, but how about impressing a local game magazine instead, as they generally tend to pay attention to more marginal topics than the big media? Surely there are sufficiently geeky game magazines out there who would love to cover the peculiarities your quaint game?

Many of you are claiming about time wasted on MUDs. I'm not certain about that. I've traveled to many different countries meeting people and seeing places I would've never seen without MUDs.

I learned Object Oriented coding by twiddling, and later administrating a MUD with a playerbase of tens of thousands of users. That skill has proven to be worthy later on in life through job opportunities, experience and ease of studies.
Mud development may also act as a way to channel your creativity. And in when it comes to content coding, the feedback is usually very punctual and straightforward.

Some muds still evolve, take for example BatMUD which has a graphical client which makes it easier to understand for the less telnet-literate.
(The game's still an authentic text-based MUD and just as playable by through telnet, tf and other clients. But the GUI of BatClient makes things easier to understand by customable triggers, macros, windows and maps.) Some new and old players have found a new spark for the game just because of that little extra.

There are some screenshots available at http://www.bat.org/client/ to further illustrate the client.

All in all, I have to say that MUDs have brought richness and networking possibilities to my life beyond that which many of my peers have enjoyed through their hobbies. May some view it just as a game, but in the end, the best things about MUDs come from the community. And that tight knit community is something most of our new games lack. And that, for me, is the thing which still keeps me logged. That, and keeping the mortals in order and trying to keep the new developers from breaking my dear game:)

-j

I'm aware of the evolution MUDs have taken over the years. Unfortunately the creative space seems to have been largely usurped since the release of Meridian 59, Ultima Online, and Everquest. No longer are there hordes of new and unsuspecting college kids eagerly waiting to play test your new idea. New (and old) MUDs and their ilk seem to only attract the detritus of the internet these days, (very) young kids, those too cheap to afford the pay for play content, and drifters just sampling the waters before moving on to move evolved game space.

So what's left are the few MUDs who have survived over the years, such as BatMUD which have become very cool, but also have a small and deeply entrenched player base. This makes breaking into such games rather difficult for new players. And this is possibly a fault with the game model itself. When you allow players to greatly control the game world, they seem to become very possessive of the game space they control which leads to a Darwinian battle where only the most die-hard and fanatical groups rise to the top.

I've seen a few game designs over the years which suggest newer and better things are on the horizon, but none of the ones I've been interested in have evolved into a playable state, or else have grown in directions other than I was looking for. So if anyone knows of games with dynamic/evolving content engines, I'd be greatly interested.

So true. My personal favorite over the years has been BatMUD. It was opened April 1990, and it's still being developed very actively (there's been hundreds of developers and thousands of players during these seventeen years). Warning: it might cause you an addiction. ;)

Can you imagine it? People are still playing a game that was released a whole six months ago? Unprecedented! Completely unheard of! Truly, a landmark in history of Internet gaming!

I don't have objections to Guild Wars or such, just happy that they're building a strong community. Yet, I find it a bit odd that in general, nowadays, some people might consider it weird to play a game that was released more than 2 months ago. Are we really heading to "throwaway entertainment" culture in video games too, or what?

Do call me back when Guild War reaches five-year limit though, like Neverwinter Nights will in next summer, still at the moment as lively as ever =)

Under rare circumstances, this has happened in the old days of MUDs. Of course, sometimes one person's justice is another person's grief:

http://www.bat.org/library/index.php?str=168

Well, I used to play BatMUD. Now I code for it. It's been around since 1990 or so, and is wonderful. It is based in Finland, and we (immortals/wizards/coders/whatever you call us) are making changes to help promote newbie friendliess. If you want something that's time tested and very in-depth once you get into it, I highly suggest you check out Bat. See you there, my name is Hackop ;).

MUDs, wherefrom the MMORPGs truly spring, have had addictive substances for quite a while now.

I think BatMUD has had tobacco addiction for as long as I can remember. Which would be something like since 1994-6 or something. Quite likely also earlier than that.

BatMUD

MUD's are SO far ahead graphical hack&slash "RPG"s it's not even funny.

How about a sliding scale for each creature and the gap between levels remain the same? Kill 50 kobolds for let's say 35XP each and the 51st only gets you 15XP.

BatMud, the one I used to play before doomed into a laggy ISP from hell, for example just recently implemented something very much like you're describing, though it's much more steep and not quite permanent, kill 50 goblins and you gain 0xp from them, but it'll slowly come back up again so after a few weeks they are worth something.

This would drive players around the maps better in search of new experiences/creatures.

Further, I would like to see more XP awarded for non-killing actions.

At the same time, they hit another nail to a head and combined the resulting exploration from aforementioned to no-combat XP, that is, you gain experience from exploring the game world. And quite a lot for it, especially for newbie players, you really don't need to kill any rats at all, you can probably get to mid levels of game by just walking around and finding new rooms.

They also have a concept of "level quests", so if the level xyz requires 1000000 xp, you can instead do a quest (which can be bashing, but can just as well be puzzles or "tricks and traps") and that experience requirement is instantly halved as a reward. And if it is bashing, it WILL be hard enough to require you to cooperate with another players.

Class and skill systems are also very sophisticated and not very strongly related to levels.

Of course it's also free, and players can become wizards, even without getting to umpteenth level, if you've got coding or storystelling skills and want to help create new content or otherwise make the game better, go for it.

And all of this is from relatively combat-oriented world... anyone liking what whas described and not having curse of "me want shiny 3d graphics" head to www.bat.org

You're right. I can't exactly say that I enjoy trying to catch up to people that have put in 20 times as many hours as I have. Especially when it comes to MMOG's that have been running for a long time. I would much rather support online games that either wipe characters periodically (no links) or have a hardcore (permanent death) option, like Diablo II or Hardcore BatMUD. I'd say that Hardcore really weeds out the whiners.

Actually, the correct site requires the www. like so many other dumb sites. Although in this case, it might actually be fair -- they could have their webserver running on a different computer than bat.org itself, which I assume the MUD runs on.

"MUDs are essentially MMORPGs without graphics."

Actually, MMORPGs are MUDs *with* graphics. That will become a more and more important distinction the more kids start playing online games without understanding the several-year history (very late 80s, not counting other local UNIX-based network games that came before *that*) that brought about their favorite games.

I'm pretty sad that MUDs are disappearing, too. I was brought up on BatMUD* from back in '94, though since then I've played EQ and DAoC. Old MUDs still have their charm, when you can find one with a lot (150-200) of people online at once, but they simply can't compete for the limited attention spans of today's youth.

Still, I am pretty stoked about some of the things on the horizon for the MMORPG market (SWG, most notably).

*Link was down when I tried - BatMUD might be dead now, too :(

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