Multi-User Dungeon Pioneer Interviewed

Thanks to Stratics for posting an interview with Richard Bartle, the co-creator of the original text-based multi-user dungeon (MUD) environment. This chat with Bartle, who is also renowned for writing Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs, an early exploration of the effects of PKing (player killing) on virtual worlds, discusses the current crop of MMORPGs and their likely longevity: "Sooner or later a major world WILL be closed down, but I think they are far more stable then many players realise." Bartle's website also contains a treasure trove of early writings on MUDs, both by Bartle himself and other pioneers, and it's interesting to contrast this new interview with a 1995-era interview with Bartle, in which he foreshadows this new era of graphical MMORPGs.

Comments

Confessions of an Arch-Wizard

[Hobart]

2 things:

1. If you haven't read it before, check out Confessions of an Arch-Wizard . Imagine "BOFH" meets online RPG's. It'll bring a smile to your face.

2. One of the more popular MUDs, AberMUD, was written by Linux's own Alan Cox!

   One player of the Essex MUD was Alan Cox, also known as Anarchy. He wrote (with a bit of help) AberMUD, named after the University of Aberystwyth, Wales, which he attended at the time. It was originally implemented on a Honeywell mainframe running GCOS but was soon ported to UNIX.