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LambdaMOO, MUDs, and 'When the Internet Was Young' (undark.org)
Slashdot reader travers_r shares "a peek into the early days of internet culture and multiplayer gaming." (Apparently this MOO has been running continuously for 28 years.) "From the looks of it, squatters run it now..."
LambdaMOO was different from the earliest MUDs, which were Tolkienesque fantasies -- hack-and-slash games for Dungeons & Dragons types with computer access, mostly college students. LambdaMOO was one of the first social MUDs, where people convened largely to play-act society, and what might have been "one of the first MUDs to be run by an adult," [co-creator Pavel] Curtis believes... Everybody comes through the Coat Closet the first time they visit LambdaMOO, entering the Living Room through a curtain of clothes, like children into Narnia. In between the textual rooms and objects they explore, there's a faster-moving flow of words, the coursing real-time chatter of LambdaMOO's other users. This is a Multi-User Domain: a chatroom and a world at once, a place where telling takes the place of being...
[I]t's nearly impossible to describe to a modern computer user what that means, because although MUDs once made up 10 percent of internet traffic, their dominance was obliterated by the arrival of the visual, hyperlinked, page-based Web. To anyone weaned on images and clicked connections, every explanation sounds batty: A MUD is a text-based virtual reality. A MUD is a chatroom built by talking. A MUD is Dungeons & Dragons all around the world. A MUD is a map made of words. The science fiction writer Philip K. Dick once defined reality as "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away," and in that sense a MUD is a real place. But a MUD is also nothing more than a window of text, scrolling along as users describe and inhabit a place from words.
Undark titled their piece "a mansion filled with hidden worlds: when the internet was young," describing the mansion's halls as "really just a string of code, where people once lived, and still do, in some way or another, as someone must, until the server winks out." I logged in a few times in 1997, so I'm probably in there too...
The article describes reading a Usenet newsgroup about MUDs back in 1990. "Approximately half of the contributors thought it was a game; the other half vehemently and heatedly disagreed."
Does all this bring back memories for any Slashdot readers?
[I]t's nearly impossible to describe to a modern computer user what that means, because although MUDs once made up 10 percent of internet traffic, their dominance was obliterated by the arrival of the visual, hyperlinked, page-based Web. To anyone weaned on images and clicked connections, every explanation sounds batty: A MUD is a text-based virtual reality. A MUD is a chatroom built by talking. A MUD is Dungeons & Dragons all around the world. A MUD is a map made of words. The science fiction writer Philip K. Dick once defined reality as "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away," and in that sense a MUD is a real place. But a MUD is also nothing more than a window of text, scrolling along as users describe and inhabit a place from words.
Undark titled their piece "a mansion filled with hidden worlds: when the internet was young," describing the mansion's halls as "really just a string of code, where people once lived, and still do, in some way or another, as someone must, until the server winks out." I logged in a few times in 1997, so I'm probably in there too...
The article describes reading a Usenet newsgroup about MUDs back in 1990. "Approximately half of the contributors thought it was a game; the other half vehemently and heatedly disagreed."
Does all this bring back memories for any Slashdot readers?
My neckbeard just grew out from reading the summary.
Beware of the Leopard.
I am one of the few (and I am not proud of it, quite the contrary) who aren't affected by rosy retrospection.
When the Internet was young, it was difficult to access, difficult to use and didn't have much value outside of niche use(r)s.
MUDs were "multiplayer notepad" of sorts, and they were awesome because they were "the new thing". After a while, they stopped being that. It is debatable whether their replacement was an "improvement" or not. The best of them were very difficult to improve, even through adding multimedia files (images, audio, video,later 3D etc) - but this is valid for anything: it's difficult to improve something that is very good.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The article says "Multi User Domain." MUD actually was multi-user dungeon, as in online dungeons and dragons.
E
I know Batmud got into Steam greenlight before Valve discontinued submissions. As far as I know they're fairly close to completing the process.
As for graphical games and Wow, I don't recall them hurting the userbase much. The userbase on Bat was growing even after Wow had been out for a while. What precipitated a decline was a) there being tens of thousands of games that work on any hardware now, and b) logging in and being killed three rooms from the entrance by an event monster is a proud legacy of Muds, but also not a great way to attract new players.
It sure does bring back memories. I was on LambdaMOO for a while, also worked with Pavel Curtis much later at a different job. Did my years on MUCKs and MUSHes, too. It's amazing how much this stuff is both ancient history and recent history all at the same time.
Back when I was young (and there was still snow THIS high, i.e. before global warming, and before the invention of boots) internet access in my country was pretty much something that you either had when you were rich or when you went to a technically inclined university. Now, transporting graphics on an internet link was pretty much unheard of or at the very least frowned upon (the university had a lightning fast 2mbit connection... still pretty impressive when you were used to 9.6kbit), so text it was.
This was also the time when I started playing a new kind of RPG, unfortunately one nobody else wanted to play, so when I found a MU* that did, my life was complete.
And my university progress took a sharp decline...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
After the sad demise of Cheeseplant's house, I went looking for a new home.. And came across Igormud.. It's still going (igormud.org 1701).
I met a load of people on there that I became friendly with, and that got me to start travelling the world. Been round Europe and the States visiting people I'd met there. A good many of them have stayed friends with me, nigh on 30 years later!
Star Trek MUSHes were my thing. Lord I loved those. Built in starship combat systems in them that, while text based, hands down beat for authenticity any ST game ever made. Multiple people at multiple "consoles", handling navigation, helm, weapons, engineering, shield control. What course do I need to go to put three different ships on three different shields? Any smart game company would have taken those systems, wrapped a GUI around it, and kept that game play. It's what STO should have been.