[Enzo]

I'm asking this poll because I find it surprizing how many young mudders there are. I was 12 when I started mudding. Now I'm 13, so not much difference. I thought it was only me when I started Mudding. I wouldn't tell anybody how old I was. Then I became an immortal, told everyone, and now all those people at that MUD now have a new respect for younger Mudders. Don't know if it was good or bad, but oh well. I just want to see how old people are out here!

[cainers]

I am twenty-four now, i was eighteen when i started mudding.

The youngest player i've had my mud was ten, and that was only because his mother played.

[Kyandra]

Grin to all you youngun's out there.

I'm 46. didn't start mudding till I was past 40. (played dice and paper games though)

Bright Blessings all

[Zhymm]

Hehe, 51 here. Playing MUDs for just the last 2+ years (Nov. '99). I blame some of my students for getting me started. Did D&D back in the late 70's, so that's where my interest/curiosity arose. The *oldest* RL player on the MUD I frequent most often by far (next is a 36yo). And when I'm in a 4-man group, it's a safe bet that I'm older than the other three put together. Just my experience, but most of the MUDders I've encountered are in high school or college. Hence, the average age should be 'low' ... <grin>.

[Orion Elder]

Well, I suppose I've been lucky. I started playing with computers when I was about seven years old, and I'm twenty now. But, as far as MUDs... I started when I was about the same age (I started on a 2400 baud modem, the fastest thing around ). But, as far as the oldest MUDder I know, they would be about... hmm... fifty-eight now. At the time I last saw them they were fifty-five and had a birthday in about a week.

*shrug*

Fun all around, eh?

[Seth]

Bah, back in the good old days, before the war, we'd show you youngin's how to MUD! No stinky new-fashioned TCP/IP! We only had one big 2mhz IBM mainframe and we entered our commands on PUNCH CARDS!!!

Spoiled whippersnappers... Bah!

[Enzo]

If we only knew what that all meant...

[Kyandra]

WOW

I am really surprised to see the number over 40. While I am not the oldest player on AVATAR, I'm up there. Grin.

(for a couple days a few of us oldersters were going around saying xxxx over 40 unite! just to be silly.

Bright blessings to young and old.

And oooo punch cards. I remember punch cards. I also remember gaming where every command had to print out as there was no CRT (monitor to you young whippersnappers, hehe). When the college I was at got a CRT the next year, we were in 7th heaven.

[Seth]

We had hard drives as big as most CRTs these days. And they'd only store a couple of kilobyte. A megabyte seemed like a physical limit to data storage capacity! They didn't even DARE to think about gigabytes back then and now we're already up in TERABYTES!

My laptop is 150 times as powerfull as the gool old mainframe and it's 150th the size! Also 150th the stability, but I don't care!

[sabia]

In my travels in MUDland, I've encountered a full spectrum of age ranges, from 10 to 52, and during those travels, it angers me to hear some young punk say something like "MUDding is all young people..old farts can't play MUDs.." or sometimes even worse, is the griping about those same young punks and their taking over Eddy's favorite leveling grounds. The point to my tirade is that MUDding is for everyone, no matter what your age.

[funkalicious]

I once encountered a student (very young) who found a box of old printing paper, and he exclaimed "This is a bunch of cr**. Theres a bunch of holes in it!"

I wouldnt trust the poll, though. According to it, most mudders are 20-something. I highly doubt that...I would think it would be a bit lower, more like 15-something. Like Enzo said, most young kids exaggerate their age online.

[weiss]

22 here, most people on austin are around my age, max normally about 30 ish. Oldest I know of is probably late 40's early 50's, couple of others in the 40's. Usual amount of _real_ young ones

Weiss

[Galdor]

It's possible that the overall mudding age is younger than the age of those who come to this forum. That might account for the heavy weighting of the "20-something" groups.

[Lily]

I first found MU*s when I was 26. I'm now 32 and have met a handful of people older than me. I was shocked when I met someone in his early 60's. I have found, tho, that most players seem to be between the ages of 18 and 22, with a small grouping of 15-16 year olds.

[Mia]

22 here...and I generally refuse to ask/tell my age anymore after the first dozen or so people half my age *sob*

[makila]

About 5 years ago internet in Belgium costed 200$ a month.
And I am sure in a lot of countries(USA is an exception! internet used to be expensive, and in some countries internet is still very expensive.
At univercities and colleges internet is usually completely free however.
So This must also be on of the reasons the average age of mudders is between 20 and 25.
It makes sense.

Makila.

[Seth]

I'm 18, but because I'm past my MUDding days, now only serving as a forum adornment and the occasional punching bag for Orion. But I MUDded back at my 16th and 17th...

[Checkered]

Well I'm 28 and I have just been playing for almost a year now. It is great fun and it is better than watching T.V. because T.V. sucks most of the time. It is great and my girlfriend actually go me into it.

[Xanferious]

im 23, beeen paying 11 years now in all sorts of muds,

[Grammarnazi]

Xanferious is easily the worst liar ever!

[Seth]

Originally Posted by (Grammarnazi @ April 29 2002,08:57 am) Xanferious is easily the worst liar ever!

Grammarnazi is easily the most unfunny person ever!

[Damudbug]

While I didn't ever use punchcards to play, I do remember gathering at the only friends house with the internet, pooling our money to pay for the time we were on ($2.95/hour or close to it), then fighting over who got the keyboard that night.  
  I still enjoy playing and am pushing 50. I don't think its the physical age that makes mudders, its a mental attitude.


[i]I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys-R-Us kid.............

[Brianna]

I am 39 and have been mudding for about 7 years. A friend of mine got me hooked. I was a Sysop of a BBS at the time and the more I got hooked the less time my bbs stayed up so I eventually took it down. As a single parent, mudding is a wonderful way to relieve stress and just have good time without spending the extra money to get out of the house. I have been teaching my son (age 12) to mud as well and he seems to like it.

I have played a wide range of games and am currently headbuilder and an imp on DemonMud. I am the oldest staff member on the game but I like to think of myself as 21 with 18 yrs exp at it. Besides the rest of the imps are male, someone has to keep them in line.

[StarrAustralis]

I am Starr Australis, and this is officially my first post. I am 25 years old, and have been mudding since I was 19. My college boyfriend got me into it, and we broke up once my character got better than his and he couldn't handle it.

Well...not much else to say, just wanted to comment on my age bracket.

[Iluvatar]

I'm a few days past 49 and I have a mortal on my world that's 52 so Zhymm isn't alone. I do agree this forum attracts an older crowd since it seems to be so well managed. Grats to Synozeer and his hoarde of moderators.

Iluvatar

[Eadulf NightHunter]

I started when I was 13, i'm fourteen now, and I love muds. Although every does seem to be older then me....

[Artovil]

I am 26, and I have been playing MUDs since back in 1996 some time. Well, even though I have two kids of my own, I am barely more than a youngen myself, but I do remember playing a whole lot of Red Dragon on them BBS's back in the 80's. Those were the days. The absolute highlight of a day spent leveling was when you actually met another player online. Wow.

The way I remember it from when I started playing, is that not many "kids" played muds, not to this extent at least. Maybe it all came with the introduction of Internet in almost every school in the western hemisphere. It's a lot easier to hide a telnet window from your computer science teacher than it is to actually fool him into believing that the boss screen in King's Quest is a spreadsheet you were working on, eh?

[Dre]

Heya all,

I'm 22 years old been playing since 1998 so like 4 years ago. I've always been intrigued by adventure and rpg games so it was an easy step to take.

Reasons why I started playing so late:
-Didn't have internet access before going to university
-I needed to know some decent english to make myself clear.
-Noone ever told me before

And I think those are the main reasons why people will go play. A friend tells them about it on university or college and they play together and grow into addicts

For the non english speaking people the main reason to get involved so late is costs and language, a Dutch mud isn't the same as an American or English mud.

Also a reason that more young people are introduced is that cause they have time and internet (good combo), and they are looking to be active in a virtual community. If you go chatting someone might notice with the flashy screens while when playing on a mu* you can chat and play a game at the same time.

Oh btw I've actually had teachers ask me if I was working on my webpage when I had a normal telnet client open *grin* Of course I would say yes to get rid of them

Greetings Dre

[visko]

18 here, 19 in August. Been mudding for....what, 6 years now? I dunno, some time in 6th or 7th grade. College now but still living at home. Much better to have 4 people on a DSL connection than 30k on an OC12, imho

Played for 3-5 years, still play GZ quite a bit, but mainly I code (badly) and complain about AOLer computer-illiterates on forums like this one.

And btw, for everyone confused as to why someone would refer to a monitor as a CRT, it's an acronym: Cathode Ray Tube. It's also pretty out of date, considering the new TFT stuff, and the fact that computers don't use TVs as their video output anymore

-Visko

[DariusCardren]

I'm 22 here, I started mudding in the summer of 99'