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A New Generation Of MOOs
eric.costello writes "MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions) are to Ultima and Everquest as MOOs (Mud, Object Orientated) are to... The Game Neverending? There's a great interview up at Mindjack with the makers of the upcoming web-based MMOG." The article states that "EverQuest puts you in someone else's world, but in a MOO, the world was yours to help create," and this seems to be a big part of what The Game Neverending is trying to promote.
I run a MOO, called 'The Keep'. It's something I'm constantly tinkering with, and always adding new areas and sections. My friends, both online and off, also work to build new things. I don't expect this to ever finish. The building is what the point is. It is almost an art from, allowing me to express myself, as well as provide a wonderful dream world to escape to.
It reminds me of a quote from Walt, about Disneyland:
Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
In other words, the point of a MOO isn't to finish it, but to create it, and to continue having that outlet.
`Lex - Find Me Here: Text Appeal
I have to disagree. Today, we have a vast, rich, and varied array of MUDs and MOOS. Every player can find the MUD/MOO that fits exactly what they like. If we take the approach that you're promoting, instead of thousands of MUDs with a good match for each player, we would have had a single (potentially very good) game, something more like Ultima Online. Sure, might have been fun, but people can MUD for years and always have a huge library of free and high-quality content still available to wander through. Granted, there's some shoddy stuff mixed in...but the sheer amount of *stuff* is wonderful.
Finally, it may well be that the developers are not good at world design...but I'd say that it's better that they recognize that and let someone else do the world design than try to do it themselves. Quite a few commercial game developers that can code but not design good games have taken this route. It produces bad games...that cannot be fixed.
May we never see th
The Disneyland quote strikes me, if only because I've always been fascinated with theme parks as well as MOOs, and they've always felt, to me at least, similar in some weird sense. My own early experiments with MOO-building felt a bit Disneylandish. (Incidentally I conducted the interview linked to in this story. I might have thought to bring this topic up, if I'd had access to the GNE alpha. Probably not, though; good eye.)
But I think the similarity is really just in the fact that, given the heterogenaity of MOO authorship, you're going to see at least as many "themes" in a MOO as "lands" in a contemporary amusement park, if not more. The other thing theme parks and MOOs have in common, of never being complete or static, is also there, but for different reasons. MOOs change as new users discover and add to them; theme parks increasingly change due to commercial imperatives only. There's nothing collaborative about Six Flags Over Texas, you know?
At the risk of setting off everyone's Jon Katz alarm, I'll say this: there seem to be a lot of geeks into theme parks. Why do you think that is?
If you don't pretend to be anyone, are you?
I'm still waiting on that elusive graphical MUSH. MUD's have their modern counterparts in hack n' slash MMORPG's like EQ (and every other MMORPG out today). Now MOO's are getting theirs. When will we get an environment to sit back and really role-play a story instead of being suckered down the path of stat maxing on the leveling treadmill?