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I miss kozmo.com ...

Dude, we need you over at Dartmud

It's a difficult game, with some awesome features. The complexity is amazing, it's lots of fun. All of the players are extremely nice -- many of their characters not so much. The Mud is reasonably RP intensive, but not fanatically so.

Enjoy it, and good luck!

Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of it, but I played a graphical Mud at one point, which I'm fairly sure was before Meridian 59 came out. It was free, though, and quite primitive graphically - I believe it was more of a graphical extension to a normal Mud of some sort than a completely new thing.

Meanwhile, text-based Muds haven't gone away. For example (plug time!) Dartmud has been around for over 10 years now, featuring fully skill-based system, many races, crafting, guilds, questing, magic, exploration, and the occasional comet wiping out vast tracts of land. (dartmud.com 2525, also see their website for more details.

David.

Why this has never made its way into the online realm (MUDs, MOOs, and MMORPG) hasn't found an answer yet.

It has. Dartmud has had this for a while now. Here are some more features.

DM is one of the more realistic MUDs I've played. It has a numberless system (no xp, no levels, etc.) and learning skills is very real (practice doing progressively more difficult things), plus they have great fighting and crafting systems to boot.

Why this has never made its way into the online realm (MUDs, MOOs, and MMORPG) hasn't found an answer yet.

It has. Dartmud has had this for a while now. Here are some more features.

DM is one of the more realistic MUDs I've played. It has a numberless system (no xp, no levels, etc.) and learning skills is very real (practice doing progressively more difficult things), plus they have great fighting and crafting systems to boot.

Assuming you don't mind text-based RPing, DartMud sound like what you're looking for. In particular, stats and skills are only described, not given numbers. The system is completely skill-based - no levels or experience points. There are no classes, you can learn whatever combination of skills you like (not neccessarily easily, but it is possible). Combat is limb-based, very flexible and detailed (you can wield as many weapons as you have arm-like limbs). There is an extensive range of non-combat skills, too - food & farming activities, crafting (wood-working, metal-working, sewing, leather-working, etc), and so on. The world is certainly not static - there have been one-off quests run in the past (and probably will be in the future). There are a number of races that characters can choose, each with their own strengths and disadvantages. The magic system is worth mentioning too - each spell is a skill, there are over 100 spells released, but many can only be obtained from other players, and you'll need astounding powers of persuasion to do so. Role-playing is, of course, strongly emphasized. The creators keep their distance - apart from enforcing the rules (no cheating, no unattended botting, etc), they don't get involve in mortal affairs.

As for the world of Ferdachi itself, it is a completely original creation, as far as I know. There are extensive areas to explore, including an Underdark area which automatically extends itself as players explore it. They have a homepage .

David.

Reactions from the mud players were somewhat opposed. Perhaps it's just denial, perhaps it's reality, but they didn't want to accept that MUDs are/were/will be dying.

Now, no one can say that text based MUDs are really the latest and greatest--they're not. But despite the technological handicap MUDs have, they still retain a good sized, dedicated following.

MUDs really are part of the Open Source revolution. Not that they're all open source, but they belong to the revolution because of the computing model involved. Have you ever tried to coordinate a cohesive world, coded entirely by volunteers, many of whom are self-taught, and none of whom are "normal" adults? Not to knock my coders, but everytime someone graduated, got married, had kids, and settled down, they'd retire from coding. The all-volunteer workforce was the greatest and oddest thing about running a mud.

What will be the next collaboratively coded gaming world? MUDs, in my prediction, won't die until there's a new way for people to create their own game worlds with little barrier to entry. As long as the coders are sustaining and improving muds, they will survive. Maybe "the next thing" will be XML-based. Maybe it'll be something that neither I nor any of the other old MUD warhorses would ever predict.

Why on earth SHOULDN'T people be able to trade items, under whatever terms they want? What's the big deal? WHO CARES!

I have never played this particular game, but if it's anything like a mud, then there's a darn good reason...

Presumably, the game masters see it as a roleplaying game. Players should interact with one another in character and within the game. Otherwise, the game's virtual reality is violated (e.g. why did someone suddenly walk up to a peasant and hand them a magic cloak for no reason?) and the game's virtual economy goes haywire too (e.g. how is a gold coin worth anything if people transact in a "higher plane of existance" in dollars?).

If you're going to do out-of-character stuff, there's no reason to play a RP game at all, especially if it's a multiuser game where your OOC activities can warp the virtual reality for other players who are trying to stay IC. When I used to play Dartmud, one of the biggest disappointments was that just a few bad apples, who couldn't seperate fantasy from reality, could totally fuck up the game for dozens of real roleplayers.

You can say, "It's just a game" but if it's just a game, then cheaters have no reason to be get angry when they get kicked off.