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Actually.. I don't think the movies replacing books analogy is at all accurate. I don't consider MMORPGs to really 'be' muds, since they are no where near as flexible and get in the way of direct expression by players in many ways. Maybe they will get over that 'eventually'. No, I think the argument should be, "Why are we still using books with all words in them, when we could add pictures and if we can add pictures, why not ones that move?" Sure, some people hate books with pictures in them, but its not like everyone refuses to buy books with covers, but insists that all of them 'must' be blank with only the title on the cover and the binding. No, pictures can help convey what ten pages of words sometimes can't. Dynamic worlds demand dynamic pictures, that change as the circumstance requires. Yet, muds almost universally ignore this and the ones that do use it are almost non-existant.
MMORPGs are trying to be something that even the best do a less than steller job of, while requiring more computer resources than a sane person would want to buy to do so. Muds just shrug their collective shoulders and say, "Why would anyone need to add 'pictures' to the book?", so continue to fail in the one thing the MMORPGs don't. It would be kind of nice to see a serious attempt to create something in between the two.
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