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Saving MUDs?
chewedtoothpick asks: "My absolute favorite game of all-time, Exile [Archive.org mirror], is a MUD that is about to be shut down, and I've noticed that MUDs have been diminishing in number, especially lately. Why are they all quitting, and what does it take to resurrect them? Is it a matter of buying the code off the creator? Is it a matter of making your own and hope it comes close to the one you want it to be like? Is there nothing we can do to save the classics that define multi-player games?"
O "Realms of Mit'uen", wherefore art thou?
A.
(who spent many long winter hours there)
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Who needs a mud when you have Slashdot, our beloved MTF (Multi-Troll Forum)?
"Argh! I just took 3 points of mental damage from a Jon Katz post!"
"Does the vorpal sword work against the ravening Goetse?"
"In Soviet Russia, orcs stab YOU!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Forgive me if I make any outrageous errors in my comment as I never took much interest in the MUD world BUT is a MUD any different at this point than, say, Everquest? As far as I know, the basic ideas are the same and your experience is still up to you - whether you want to use it just to chat with new people or actually go on adventures. MUDs are probably easier to modify and add items and such to for the end user, as Sony dictates most of the Everquest world but that seems like a small sacrifice to make in favor of a ton more eye candy.
DID YOUR MOM SERVE YOU AN EXTRA HELPING OF DUMB TONIGHT?
Isn't there a big difference of price; MUDs are free and Everquest is very expensive?
MUDs are essentially MMORPGs without graphics. MUDs allow for greater developer depth (the Avatar MUD has 23 races which can be mixed with around 10 classes, and a huge world to explore) and player depth (you can be a lot more creative in a game with text instead of graphics), but it's not easy to go up against the fancy graphics and content factories of big companies like Sony Online. It's not just fun to look at better graphics, but can be easier on the eyes, and a lot easier for people with mild dyslexia (a surprisingly common problem). I think a lot of MUDs are going to dissapear, but I also think that they'll be around for a lot longer, and maybe never fully dissapear.
Blatant self-promotion: Jerek.net
MUDs have been diminishing in number, especially lately. Why are they all quitting...?
Because with Yahoo chatrooms and IRC, you can get all the cyber-lovin' you want, without the pretense and baggage of "character classes", "gold pieces", and "elves."
Oh, ok, except that I expect there are a lot of disappointed elf fetishists sitting in their mothers' basements, fondling their, uh, "miniatures".
Yep, it lends a whole new meaning to "Dungeon Master".
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
They're bloody great wastes of time. If I could get ten bucks for every hour I've wasted on MUDs, I could buy myself a Jaguar.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Having had some experience on both sides of a MUD (both playing and running) I can say that no single factor kills a mud, or keeps it alive besides the actual people who are running it. Usually it is a small group of people who have been working together for years, and eventually decide that it is just enough. They grow up, have a family, have other interests, or just realize that they can not devote the amount of time necessary to run it to the level that they would like. Sure some admins are willing to let other people take over, but how many are capable and have the experience? Generally it's better to just take it down.
Because with Yahoo chatrooms and IRC, you can get all the cyber-lovin' you want, without the pretense and baggage of "character classes", "gold pieces", and "elves."
You must think I am some teen perv out for cybersex.
I like MUDS better then MMORPG's because, as an earlier post pointed out, the lower ammount of simultaneous users makes for a more personal environment with a more in-depth draw. I also don't like graphical MMORPGs because of the logics behind how you have to pay for then, and because having the environment descriped rather then painted gives it a more personal touch, allowing me to make the world however I want to imagine it. My problem with paying for a MMORPG (Everquest being my only example of this seeing as Ultima I just plain didn't like after getting the software and first month free) is that you have to pay for both the software AND the montly service. When sega tried their MMORPG, I liked it a lot and would have subscribed had it not been for the large ammount of people on at all times, and the ammount of those people that were jerks.
Erutangis ym si siht.
I'm still amazed that TinyCWRU is still online after 13 years with the same database. All this time, and I can still login with my old character, not that I remember any of the building commands or anything. Probably for the better, as I'm sure the MUSH led to me failing out of Case in the first place.
This sig intentionally left justified.
I work on a fairly old DIKU/VieMUD based mud called NCMUD (www.ncmud.org). The way we keep it running (11 years and counting now) is that when the current implementors get bored we just promote two more implementors from the immortal ranks to add new features and run the game. That's how we have kept going this long.
Some problems I have had with running a mud:
A) Hosting... I'm a broke college student and so are the other implementors of NC(at least the ones who currently run it). So we really can't pay much for hosting. When it comes to hosting a mud as large as NC, we transfer about 11 gig up and downstream a month, take up about 2 gigs of harddrive space, and chew up and spit out memory, it's hard to find anyone willing to host us. Right now we might be going off line for the first time in 11 years because we are about to lose our free hosting and can't find another.
B) Player Base... The player base is aging we aren't getting as many young players any more. Most of the people who start NCMUD are old verterns of muds or foreign teenagers. Seems like Everquest is kicking the mud communities ass in this area for sure. Eye candy seems to make up for a lot.
C) Implementors... Most MUDs are started by high school or college students who want to play around. This leads to an inflation of shitty muds. It's extremely hard to find a good mud, and even harder to find a great mud to play out there anymore. Everyone is using a codebase and adding patching, not a whole lot of people are doing their own thing.
That's a few thoughts from me.
- John
I'm not sure if MUDs are actually diminishing all that much. If you look at sites like mudconnector there are quite a few MUDs listed. The same goes with MPOGD. I, myself, am an active participant in a MUD that has been running over thirteen(13) years now. The player base has only increased, as has the complexity of the MUD itself. I know others that have followed somewhat of the same path as well. The only reason MUDs may be diminishing, is that the maintainers lose interest, or go on to do something else. However, it seems that if the MUD is programmed well, and has a strong playerbase, it isn't going anywhere. I know for a fact, that if the MUD I play opens donations, almost every player will donate at least $100 US Dollars without flinching.That clearly shows some dedication. (Note that one doesn't ever HAVE to donate money.)
If anyone is curious, or wants to play, the MUD I'm on is Bat. www.bat.org/
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
There is absolutely no reason why MUDs can't keep going. It just seems like they have been out innovated lately by the commercial world.
The simple truth is that open source MUDs need to start helping one another more and start pooling resources to come up with better 2D and/or 3D graphics. People understand that when you pay a monthly charge to a game like Everquest that you are going to get some really nice eye-candy. Still the lack of a monthly charge is a huge advantage towards free games. All MUDs have to do is offer decent 2D/3D graphics to go with the existing quality storylines. This can be done. Go look at a game called Wyvern to see an example (in 2D).
The obvious thing to do is to develop a large base of graphics tiles and skins and that can be shared across different MUDs that use common APIs.
Honestly, I don't see any way to "save" MUD's when they don't have a wide enough player base to support them.
If we go off the base assumption that people are lazy, then the biggest problem with getting people to play MUD's instead of MMORPG's is that an MMORPG is more intuitive for new users, because of their graphical interface. If you're a younger player who just wants to jump into a game, are you going to learn a new style of language just to be able to move around, or are you going to go for the game that actually has graphics and a control scheme that anyone who's played an FPS can figure out?
And honestly, if MUD's are doing so poorly, than how are they going to get the support to add even rudimentary 2D graphics? You also lose the ability to easily drop new stuff into the game when you add graphics.
IMHO, it's best to just let MUD's continue as they are. Sure, some will be lost, but since when has the MUD world ever been particularly static? They'll still be around.
It's not really as bad as it might seem in the first moment when one learns that one's favourite MU* is going to shut down. There are bazillions of them out there, and though I'll grant that most aren't that great (most seem to be ego-trips of their respective creators), there is still a great deal of stuff happenin' out there in the MU* world.
The "threat problem" that MMOGs pose to the MU* community is not so bad once you realize the limits of the graphical medium: you are, in all instances I have so far tested, limited in the choice of avatars to what the design team made available to you. Also, the expression of emotions and even just facial expression themselves are limited to a couple of macros, which are the same for all people playing the game.
All these leave the bitter taste of limitations that I don't want or need on my tongue. Though "MUD" is still associated with the hack'n'slash variety -- and no mistake, a lot of them are --, there are as many out there, especially when you get into the MUSH, MUSE, and MUCK codebases, where roleplay is stressed, not "rollplay".
While the fact that these games are text-only can be seen as a disadvantage, it's to be kept in mind that so are books -- and no one has yet proclaimed the absolute end of the written word as a medium of its own. For people with a leaning towards these things, text can be an expressive medium that can rival any other -- and more than that, because of its very nature, it leaves the entire world open to your interaction and modification, without the need for a feature-laden editor or other modding tool.
It begins with the fact that your characters are at your proverbial fingertip: from their background stories to their appearance, their mannerisms and speech patterns, it's entirely up to you and your imagination. The only limits you operate under are the limits set by the MU* canon -- but even those are open to change for those who have the creative energy to put into the history, physiology, philosophy, and whatever else there is to know about any given city, nation, world or race in the game you frequent.
There are enough people who love these games, and enough to keep themalive. These people frequent The MUD Connector or Top MUD Sites, which serve as a place from which to plunge into the MU* of your choice.
Granted, it takes a while to find a place that suits your taste, your imagination or style; but the rewards can be well worth it.
I myself (not being above a shameless plug besides the two resource sites given above) am a player and staffer on the games found at JoinTheSaga.com, which include OtherSpace, an originally themed SciFi MUSH that's been going since 1998, Reach of the Empire, a Star Wars-themed game where Luke and Leia have died way before the start of the original trilogy (and where the prequels are disregarded), and Chiaroscuro, a newly opened work-in-progress centered around an original Fantasy theme. The former two are completely free to play (though donations are welcome, and merchandise is available), while the latter follows a monthly pay-to-play approach like most MMOGs do, but with a guaranteed close connection to the staff -- and also offers the option to play a lowly peasant for free (only the higher social classes require you to pay to be set up).
The games run 24/7 on reliable servers, and staff is available for your questions if you drop by as a guest and want to have a look around.
As a final note: the entrance bar for these games tends to be high (you have to submit a biography and skill list of your character for approval, which you can all set up in-game), and the expectation is that In-Character Actions have In-Character Consequences. This is to keep grievers, "theme idiots", and similar people from ruining the fun of our other players. Elitist? Yes, but for a good cause.
~Khamura
Graduate of the LeRoy Funkified Badass School of Soul.
The best mud I've ever played, Shattered World is still up and running no problem, after over ten years. And I'd surmise it really isn't breaking the bank of the guy who runs it either.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Have you had a look at RPG-Works.net? They're not free, but from ten bucks a month upwards you get very good MU* and related website hosting.
Graduate of the LeRoy Funkified Badass School of Soul.
During my time at the MUD large areas of rooms were removed in order to be able to update the MUD game engine. These areas were popular among players but the creators were not there anymore to keep them up to date. The community of developers were strictly hierchical and a lot of people travelled through the system while I was trying to contribute.
My conclusion now is that the game engines and the tools used for developing the MUD is hard to maintain for legacy reasons and graphical interfaces attract more than prosaic details, at least for many of the younger (p/s)layers. Maintaining 20-30.000 rooms by writing code for each of it, no matter the object oriented paradigm used, is simply too time consuming. Still very adictive, like writing a 3D book without graphics. It was a relly nice experience that I do not regret.
Generally, as head-wiz for a muck, and major staffer and player on a few others, MU* in general are alive and well, but are making a slow decline.
One day, there'll be MMORPG's that will facilitate enough creativity to allow for truly interesting character interaction.
Ultimately at present, what we're seeing is a great deal of people finally moving on, and going on with their lives. Player-bases get older, and your primary source of players (students and 20-somethings) grow up and move on to dealing with things in real life.
MU* will never die out, however. Ultimately it comes back to the fact that text has always allowed the greatest communication medium, and will continue to for the forseeable future.
Most of all, there will always be storytellers, and as long there are, there will always be RP.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
MUDS used to attract techies but not casual users, I think, because they were 'difficult' to use. Well, okay, 'difficult' meant 'point telnet to a specific site _and_ port' and 'use a console'. Not big barriers for slashdotters, but kinda big for, say, my mom.
Companies like Skotos (skotos.net) and... hmm... okay, maybe just them, do web-based MUDs. They (plug plug) bought a friend of mine's larp (the Galactic Emperor is Dead) as a recurring/resettable one, and they do some long-term open ones.
The downside, I think, is a lot of MUD fans prefer to be able to create stuff (aka MOOs), not just play, so there may not be a big crossover from old MUD fan to new WebMUD user.
Meanwhile, MUDders I know just moved to IRC and freeform it when no one else is in a given channel. IRC is so flexible, this is kinda a cool evolution, much like the evolution of tabletop RPGing into rules light styles.
A.
... they just fail to respawn.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
You must think I am some teen perv out for cybersex.
/. then?!?
You aren't? What are you doing on
Relax, my post was (mostly) a joke.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Unless you are running a pay mud, you get nothing for it. Not even appreciation most of the time, as the players have no sense of how much effort it takes to run a mud well. Most of their interactions with you are to bitch about fellow players or even minor changes to the game that they feel are not in their favor.
While you might get away with running a small MUD on your home cable or DSL, you basically can't use it for anything else without offering massive lag to everyone playing. So unless you happen to own an ISP, the chances are that you'll end up paying at least $50-200/month to have it hosted somewhere. Which isn't a big deal when its all you do in your spare time, but after you get a life and don't have the time to put into it, that could start looking like an unnecessary expenditure.
But then the vast majority of the people running them opened a cookie-cutter MUD by grabbing an existing codebase and world and adding some patches and a few hundred rooms to the world. When they get bored and fold, they won't be missed; they had nothing unique to offer anyway.
To top it off, MUDs have lost their "cool" factor. For someone used to first person shooters and MMORPGs, an online text adventure looks more than a little dated at first glance. So you end up with a mixed player base of people who have been playing longer than Quake has existed, and those who are too young or too cheap to afford an MMORPG. Not exactly a booming populace.
Not that I'm jaded or anything. (I've been running Ishar for 9 years and actually do still enjoy the small amount of time I put into it.)
Aaron
I have run a mud for about 9 years. In that time I have seen many other muds begin and end. Lots of these muds have very innovative code in them. I think it is sad to lose everything that these muds have worked on. Does anyone know of a repository for "unwanted" or "unused" muds? (If none exsists, maybe a smart slashdotter could start one :) ) I know personally that when my mud closes, I want to post the code for anyone that wants it.
I can't comment on the relative number of total MUDs out there, as I have never kept track. I can say that as a former player and now Implementor of a long lived MUD, that the number of players that we attract hasn't changed much over the years. For the last couple of years we have had fewer *characters* online than in the past, but we switched to a non-multiplaying policy and the number of actual players online has remained fairly constant over the years. It has its cycles, some we understand, others we don't, but the only major change that I am certain of is the average age of the players. We've changed from mostly college aged players to mostly teenagers, which probably reflects the same changes in the Internet population.
The reason for stating that the current trend is a good thing, is that in many of the discussions I've followed, many have lamented the number of "StockMUDs" that have come into being. There are several code bases than can literally be downloaded and brought online in a matter of minutes, with enough content to start playing even though that content might be the same as thousands of other MUDs out there. Hopefully, these are the MUDs that are fading out, in favor of the graphical counterpart of StockMUD. Then, the ones that remain will be the ones worth trying. I don't envy anyone looking for a new MUD to play, with only Mudconnector as a starting point. You really need some recommendations from friends to get you started, or the search may wear you out before you find what you want.
I question the premise, actually. www.mudconnector.com has 1,927 MUDs listed. Nearly daily in the MUD Promotions forum someone announces they're beginning a new MUD. Certain types of MUDs do seem to be in decline but as a whole we're still thriving and we're getting a lot of new player interested in the highschool grades.
I have been MUDding since '94 and have mainly played and immed on DIKU-based MUDs. I started out on Sojourn way back then. I was fully hooked on Sojourn, and accumulated nearly massive amounts of playing time, and the game eventually helped lead to the demise of my college career. I followed Sojourn through it's split into Toril and Duris, following the Toril path due to my disdain for true pkill MUDs. When Toril shut down due to imm issues and conflicts with a few players and all sorts of other things, I was at a loss as to what to do with my free time. Myself and a few friends from my guild on Toril (where I had ammased 1.5 years of playing time in the span of 4.5 years) decided to create our own MUD. This was known as ExileMUD (Not Exile, ExileMUD). I was in charge of areas creation, and one of the original forgers of this game. We gained ourselves a small playerbase over the years of turmoil and eventually due to conflicts that arose between most of us and one other imm. Myself and one of the main coders from ExileMUD split off and formed our own MUD called Homeland MUD, and I have been working on this ever since. We are set to open at the end of this month and have already attracted a decent following. I've heard that since myself and Vhaerun left ExileMUD to form Homeland that ExileMUD has been on a serious decline and that it will be shut down soon due to a total lack of players or development.
Sojourn/Toril has opened (Sojourn II) and closed (More admin conflict) and opened again (Sojourn III), but is on a downward decline as far as I and many others who have and do play there can tell. They recently lost their hosting (another bane of all MUD admins) and are running off a cable modem. Also the main owner of Sojourn is leaving behind his legacy and passing the game down to the younger forgers. The decline of Sojourn III is only helping to bolster the ranks of players that are coming over to Homeland as word of mouth spreads between all of the players that consider each other to be a loose family of sorts. When one player from S3 comes over to Homeland, checks it out, and realizes that it's just what they've been looking for, they often bring along a handful of friends, who in turn bring their friends as well.
As a player I am sure I handed out my share of grief to the admins of the MUDs I played on, and as I grew older, and I hope wiser I turned towards admining myself as I had conquered the vast majority of challenges thrown at me as a player. Now I see grief from time to time as an admin, but I think that the vast majority of grief from players towards admins is brought on by the manner in which the admins govern themselves and the attitude that is given towards the players.I do think that text-based MUDs have been in a slight decline, but new ones are popping up every day. The problem is that many of the new ones popping up daily have little or nothing original or innovative to add to the collective MUD world. Many of these are Stock MUDs with Stock areas, and never get to the point where they are modified enough to be useful.
Also I think as current MUD players get older, have families and generally give up the habit, there becomes a strong lack of players to take their place. Young kids these days are not interested in playing text games any more than they are in reading books it would seem. And as someone already likened text MUDs to books and MMORPGs to movies, so do I. I would rather read the book and become immersed in the story through my own imagination any day rather than having the director's vision of the story being spoon-fed to me.
If you are looking for a solid MUD that's been in development for 5 years and that is on the grow, that has a friendly staff, a solid fantasy theme (Forgotten Realms) then check out Homeland at mud.homelandmud.org port 6666
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
...about MUDs.
First off, the basic premise of this post is wrong. MUDs were always a niche type of thing. There were a few 10 years ago when the Internet was small. There are a lot now that the Internet is big. It's hard to say which has grown faster.
Of course, there are many more long-running MUDs today than there were 10 years ago. When a favorite goes dark, it doesn't mean they are fading away (although it may SEEM like it at the time). When Cats closed, it didn't mean Broadway theater was dead.
More relevant question: Why haven't MUDs broken out of their niche?
Answer #1: They did. EverQuest was an LPC MUD with a graphical front end pasted on it. Some MUDders see EQ as a diabolical competitor leeching away the potential users of "true" MUDs; others see it as the logical next step.
Answer #2: The amount of creativity to keep a MUD lively doesn't scale well. The number of people people creating new content for MUDs eventually defines the size of the niche which will be supported by their creativity. The FaerieMUD Consortium has an interesting solution to this: using the creativity of players themselves to generate new content for their MUD. This is an extension of the long tradition of wizards, immortals and promotion to coders in the MUD community. We have been working on this for a long time, but it is not quite there yet.
Another interesting question: Are there common problems faced by all MUD-coders for which pooled solutions are possible in Open Source?
Two obvious places for this are: A general-purpose backend server for hosting MUDs (the ability to scale might be nice, too); and a graphical front end.
The MUES Project on Source Forge has recently posted Alpha code for the first of these. Several projects have code up on SourgeForge for the second. It's my personal opinion that MUDs will never break out of the niche until these types of problems are well-solved by Open Source software. It's also going to be important to do it right. I can say from personal experience that getting all the things people are looking for in the next-generation MUD is no simple task. The discussion in this paper on CME (Coolest MUD Ever) is very informative.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Being one of the four people who founded Exile, I can tell you exactly why it shutdown.
The first and foremost reason is drive. Exile was founded by four people, all of whom loved MUDs. We all mudded for years, and then decided to create our own. Eight long years later, three of the four happily moved on to other pursuits leaving only myself.
I was happy to apply my broken knowledge of C and Perl to building the MUD (I'm a sysadmin by trade, if that gives you any clue as to my programming skill, or lack thereof). But then we lost our "free" hosting. Now I'm presented with a hard choice -- dish out money that I don't have for NEW hosting, and continue on, or quietly let the MUD pass and direct my players to other promising MUDs.
To be honest, if I had the spare cash at the moment to pay for hosting, I don't think I would. Running a MUD isn't easy. There's all the hassles for any medium sized coding project, but there's also creative worries, and game-play worries, and the worst of all PLAYER WORRIES.
All the issues above pale in comparison to having to deal with a player-base. To be blunt, players are a complete pain in the ass. They're always wanting more, and always unhappy with the current state of things, and very vocal about it. I can understand those types. But then there are the cheaters, and the misanthropes... Believe me when I tell you, even though I'm sad to see my MUD go, there are a million things I'll never miss. Maybe I'll even stop turning gray... maybe.
By the way, if any of my non-pain-in-the-ass players are reading this, THANKS for a FUN time, and a ton of great memories. I'll miss you people!
-- Hextall, founder of Exile from 6/1/1996 to 6/1/2003
I used to play some MUD's online, but i got bored with all of them after 2-3 weeks of playing. Only bash-for-the-exp games i have ever liked is Nethack and Adom.
..giant human-dragons who are drunk on the streets.. lightsabers.. anything! We were all Neo's on this game =)
Except for our very own MUD, it was run from my computer on school network. There rule of the game was: Do not kill the MUD. =)
Every single player had ability to do anything in the MUD, that means everyone could code whatever they wanted. It was really hilarious. People greated short text-adventure houses for others to play. We had Chess etc. in it for small gaming. And the hilarious part: Custom made animals and weapons.
Not really traditional MUD, and propably would not work on a public server. But when everyone knew each other we could amuse ourselves for a very long time. Too bad i don't have any of that stuff on my HD anymore..
Anyone else had something like this?
Perhaps you should check out these two nice resources:
zMud home page: http://www.zuggsoft.com/ -- great MUD client
Mud Connector: http://www.mudconnect.com/ -- list of bunches of MUDs
Because with Yahoo chatrooms and IRC, you can get all the cyber-lovin' you want, without the pretense and baggage of "character classes", "gold pieces", and "elves."
;) Ye olde 'Dungeon Master' has had sexual connotations almost since the invention of dungeons.
the RFC for Internet Relay Chat goes back to around the time that MUDs were coming around too. They've always been competing for the online lovin, and it's clear now who the winner is. IRC, where you're not restricted to 16k of aliases for 'automated lovin.'
Oh, ok, except that I expect there are a lot of disappointed elf fetishists sitting in their mothers' basements, fondling their, uh, "miniatures".
Elven fetishists are sure to find a home on some IRC networks (not naming names here) But I do know a few...
Yep, it lends a whole new meaning to "Dungeon Master".
Face it, you're not even a "Dungeon Hack" here
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html