Interview a MUD expert!
 

Hello! Its been a long time since I used the forums here, but TMS in general has always been a resourse for me. Let me re-introduce myself first:

Im Jim, and discovered my first (kinda) text game through a RP forum while a junior in high school, and it was Legend of the Green Dragon to be exact (a LORD web based clone). Later that year I discovered my first real MUD, which was Evarayn. I was overwhelmed and impressed at how it had real time battle without graphics (since LotGD was turn based)! I soon fell in love, and played regularly (to almost an addictive state) for 2 years, until it was shut down. It always had a small player base (I think in its prime it would get about 70 people during peak hours), but by the time I joined, 15 people was the most you could expect a given day.

It saddened me a great deal, since it was my first, and because of that all MUDs there after were compared to Evarayn by that light. I still have not truly found a home, yet I did begin to see that there are a lot of MUDs with spectacular developers and players out there. To name a few of the awesome MUDs I tried out over the years, there are: New Worlds, Achaea, Threshold, Discworld, and Armageddon, and more.

Im now in my college years, yet still remember fondly my mudding days. I have, therefore chosen Multi User Dungeons as the topic for my english composition research project, and knew this was the one place to ask professionals about MUDs.


~~~Here are my interview questions~~~:

-How long have you been playing MUDs for?

-What was your first MUD?

-What is your favorite MUD (if your a developer, then feel free to name your own mud, but also a mud you were only a player of)?

-(For Developers) What programming language is the most popular for MUDs? Do you use a different language from that?

-Why do you play MUDs instead of graphical games?

((Please leave your name, or nickname, and I'll just use the MUD your from as your last name (i.e: John from/of Evarayn))

---------------------------------------------------------

((Wall of text hit you for 10,000 damage!))

Heh, sorry for that giant chunk of reading! I would really appreciate a response from both players of MUDs and creators! I wanted to choose a topic I was passionate about, and one that was totally original (seeing as how no one else in my class-heck probably my whole school-knows what a MUD even is.

~On a side note, Im still looking for that perfect MUD to fill the void of Evarayn! I might try out the ones I listed above again, and then some new ones. My quest isnt over!~

Re: Interview a MUD expert!
 

12 Years
Basternae
As a developer, naming anything other then my own "Ebendale Online" would just be an insult to myself, however a lot of the feel of my design stems from Basternae and Duris: Land of Bloodlust.
Although I have no credible source for this, I do believe "C" is still the most popular language used in MUD design. That being said I do know CoffeeMUD is programmed in Java, and there are select codebases that utilize other languages.
Although I do play both, when it comes to "MMO"s, at there heart they are all "Text Based". I have at one time or another held an account with Everquest, City of Heroes and EVE Online. Each game displays a text window upon the screen which informs you of who says what, what is attacking you, where you are, how much experience you have etc... 99% of my game time was fixed on that one single box anyway.

As a player of MUDs, the other big draw to me is the ability for MUD developers to think outside the box when it comes to design of their game worlds and game mechanics. A company like Blizzard is investing millions upon millions of dollars in their product, and as such needs to, above all else, make sure their game design will return a profit on their investment. Where as a single developer like myself is only investing my personal time and $7-10 a month on hosting fees, I have the ability to experiment with ideas that large companies never could because the only return I'm looking for on my investment, is the enjoyment of my players and myself. Many of the successful MUDs on the "market" have used unique and/or untested ideas and succeeded.

From a solely developmental perspective, the ability to quickly and efficiently install new features and modify existing ones without have to co-ordinate with a sound guy, graphics artist, and the other specialized skills required in the larger MMO's makes the reward of design come much sooner. Also, being that creating a MUD, for most people, is a hobby and done out of enjoyment, I have the benefit of implementing features that I would enjoy, not necessarily the public at large.

At the end of the day, with the capability of newer MUD clients, Many MUDs are now blurring the line between graphical game and "text" game anyway. So even though the high budget online RPGs are coming out with amazing graphics and sound quality, once the glamour of those perks fade away, all you are left is with game quality. And with that in mind, I've never played any MMORPG that was better then a half-decent MUD.

Well, that's my two cents.

Vatiken

aka

Joseph@Ebendale Online

Re: Interview a MUD expert!
 

Thank you very much for the response! I enjoyed your answers. :)

((btw Ive actually considered making a hobby mud, or at least a Zork like text game for a while, and might end up doing it seeing as how i'll be taking programming next semester. For my degree, we mainly focus on Java, but I think we still learn the basics with C first anyways.))

Re: Interview a MUD expert!
 

18 years, reading "developing" for "playing" as necessary.

The actual first one I ever logged onto, I believe was something called Apocalypse II, a horrid stock Diku. The first one that I didn't quit in disgust after a short visit was Holy Mission.

Lost Souls, my MUD. My favorite MUD that I never developed for was Cyberworld.

Technically, since stock Dikus dominate the field numerically, the most popular language is C. All LPMuds, by definition, use LPC, though, and since I run an LPMud that's what I use.

I don't play MUDs any more, I code them. :) Why I code MUDs rather than graphical games... I suppose it's largely because I want to spend my time on building a world model rather than on trying to figure out how to blit a bitmap onto a display surface twelve picoseconds faster.

As my account here indicates, I would be Chaos of Lost Souls.

Re: Interview a MUD expert!
 

Thanks for the reponse Chaos!

Re: Interview a MUD expert!
 

I started playing MUDs in 1995, but I have taken many hiatus's through the years because of RL issues.
I hate to say it but my first MUD ever was Medievia, which I played for some time until I found the truth out how it came about. You can find more information about that .
Shadows of Isildur
I don't program muds, but I am developer. The most common language is C. But MUDs are programmed in many languages. For instance we have Java, Lisp, perl, C++ to name a few that I know of.
I play them because they are like a book. When you read a book you can imagine the world your reading because of how it is written. A good book will really immerse you. The same for a MUD.
Graphical Games you don't have to imagine a thing. They show you what your world is like.