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?"

Comments

MMORPGs vs. MUDs

[JorenDahn]

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.

Downfall of muds....

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Everquest?

[Omestes]

MUCH! MUDs had the nice property that they were for the most part self-limiting, meaning that you didn't have the average EQ person playing on them. Also muds, do to lower player amounts, could evolve their own personality, either for good or ill.

Also on MUDs, the line between Admin, and "end-user" was much more blurred, since the Imp of the mud was usually a player, and hence accessable to comments and suggestions. If you schmoozed enough, you could become a builder, or and admin yourself. Not so in todays MMORPGS.

Also being that there was a body of MUDs (as opposed to a handful of MMORGS) you had CHOICE in what you wanted to play. Today I could be playing Alter Aeon, tomorrow Vurt, the next day a nice Shadowrun MUSH. I'm not stuck in the swords and socerty crap forever.

Oh... and they were (mostly) FREE. Yep, no $50 to buy the game, then $20/mounth to have the privalege to hang out with the average MMORPG folk. Back in the day I paid $10/m for MBBS access, this MBBS had Tintin,telnet, and dialup support. Plus random inane chat possibilities.

Also muds had a sence of family, and fond memories, they weren't just another profit driven game, they were labors of love, a union between players and admin. Ask any old school MUDer and they will recount their favorite MUDs, with a gleam of nostalgia in their eyes, and how many of us will be doing that for EQ. I dare say most of us will try to keep that little phase in the closet ten years from now, with damn good reason.

Also, MUDs invented clans. REAL clans, clans that mattered.

For the record, I used to play on Bad Trips, Alter Aeon... And of course my two favorites, Genocide, and the ripped port NeoGeno. Plus I built on verious muds (including NeoGeno), and MUSHes.