Anime Just wrote 8,000 words on the history of MUD, MMORPGs and virtual worlds

[felipepepe]

You can read it here: https://medium.com/@felipepepe/robl...ry-of-virtual-worlds-muds-mmorpgs-12e41c4cb9b

In short, I've always wanted to have a brief section about the history of MUDs & MMORPGs in the CRPG Book. Of course, that's a huge undertaking that demands a lot of research, so I began to study and take notes. Those notes became the article you see above.

It's not an in-depth examination of the games per se, that would require an entire book, it's more about the origins, evolution and branches, with plenty of links and hooks for more information.

Hope you guys enjoy it, if you have any feedback please tell me

 

[Bester]

Reach the maximum level and you become a wizard — immortal and able to cast spells that affect yourself, other players or even the entire game server — effectively becoming the equivalent to a GM (Game Master) in a modern MMO.

People usually quickly got bored with that and left. Wasn't a fun idea.

While the text commands were primitive, it was enough to have conversations with other players, and it even offered emotes like smiling or hugging.

They were called "soc" (social verbs). Muds usually had around 250+ of them. Some were humorous, others existed to actually transmit emotions. So let's say a mob drops some unexpected loot, you would have a choice between "surprise", "shock", "amazement", each displaying different lines, but also different depending on the target of your soc. This allowed for a complete emotional expression. Today if something happens, you have to type it out like "wow shit". Back then, you typed "amaz" and it would display "Bester looks around in amazement, searching for his jaw". Modern graphics just don't offer that. Some day they will, but not yet. In many regards, MUDs are still outclassing modern games to this day.

Anyway, as far as retrospectives go, I think yours is a sterile one and doesn't talk about the experience MUDs offered, only listing dates and names.

I would heartily recommend watching these instead:

 

[felipepepe]

Anyway, as far as retrospectives go, I think yours is a sterile one and doesn't talk about the experience MUDs offered, only listing dates and names.

That was never my goal. I also don't talk much about individual MMORPG or Virtual World experience, the point was the overall history and evolution. That's why I linked to a lot of more detailed articles about the individual games experiences.

 

[Bester]

TinyMUD was created to be a more social MUD, with a smaller world to explore but more social interactions, like the ability to privately talk to another character (before, anyone else in the same room could hear you).

But its key feature is one we see to this day: players could edit the game world, making their own rooms and objects for others to see and interact.

Early version of Minecraft. Wasn't very popular at the time, though.

Yes, there were furry MUDs. And erotic MUDs. And anime MUDs. And PvP-only MUDs. MUDs for Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, DUNE, etc…

An important point here is that MUDs didn't care about copyright infringements and were based on any settings they wanted. Imagine a world where there's a ton of MMOs, all made by super dedicated fans, and based on any cool thing you can think of. If you like Dragonlance, it's there. Underdark? Or just good old LOTR? They'd make something cool out of it, and you could just dive in.

Not possible in today's world, not anymore. You can thank intellectual property laws for that.

 

[felipepepe]

An important point here is that MUDs didn't care about copyright infringements and were based on any settings they wanted. Imagine a world where there's a ton of MMOs, all made by super dedicated fans, and based on any cool thing you can think of. If you like Dragonlance, it's there. Underdark? Or just good old LOTR? They'd make something cool out of it, and you could just dive in.

Not possible in today's world, not anymore. You can thank intellectual property laws for that.

Roblox has exactly that, you can go there and play Dragon Ball Z, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc...

 

[thesheeep]

An important point here is that MUDs didn't care about copyright infringements and were based on any settings they wanted. Imagine a world where there's a ton of MMOs, all made by super dedicated fans, and based on any cool thing you can think of. If you like Dragonlance, it's there. Underdark? Or just good old LOTR? They'd make something cool out of it, and you could just dive in.

Not possible in today's world, not anymore. You can thank intellectual property laws for that.

Roblox has exactly that, you can go there and play Dragon Ball Z, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc...

But is that actually legal?
Or just something that copyright holders did not prevent yet?

 

[felipepepe]

But is that actually legal?
Or just something that copyright holders did not prevent yet?

It's probably a lawsuit waiting to happen... but the platform and games are free, and they are all made by players, so they might just go "this is just mods!". They would have to force Roblox to track copyright, like YouTube does with music.

In the end, I guess it's all a matter of the lawyers getting sufficiently interested. MUDs were relatively tiny, if a million people were playing "Avengers MUD" in 1991, you can bet Marvel would've sued them.

 

[The Red Knight]

Related,
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUD

SUD ( Single-User Dungeon ) - a type of interactive fiction, very similar to MUDs in terms of design and use. What distinguishes it from MUDs is that it is intended for one-player, offline mode.

And an interview with the dev of the oldest potato SUD (in potato):

 

[felipepepe]

Related,
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUD

Interesting, so it's basically like Quarterstaff: The Tomb of Setmoth, but done right.

That game was also a text-based RPG, enhanced with a map and a few artwork. Had some cool scripted event, like this battle with a torturer that always captures a party member then locks himself inside an iron cage with the key.

Sadly, those moments are somewhat rare, the rest of the game feels kinda flat and not really taking advantage of being text-based. It's also an entirely linear dungeon-crawl... are the SUDs open world?

EDIT: Forgot arguably the biggest "text-based RPG": Eamon.

 

[Gerrard]

Nerd.

 

[Delterius]

Nerd.

Gerrard.

 

[The Red Knight]

are the SUDs open world?

Open world with no automap. All text with a few cases of simple ASCII art (like main menu title, a sign frame, or a game over grave).

Sadly, I've discovered this stuff too late and it seems now only Otchłań/Abyss is still around (plus one of the earlier versions of Ancient Reality via archive.org, but all stuff relating to other/smaller projects seems to be gone from the internet).

Otchłań has two starting cities depending on race choice on character creation (which is gender + 4 races + 8 classes), and you can go wherever you want from the start (there is an optional guide NPC that can walk you around the starting location and explain mechanics). Reportedly there are about 9000 nodes/locations (though that includes "boring" stuff like roads). Not sure if there are any heavily-scripted encounters. This map is from one of the older versions and is incomplete (but not sure to what degree - at least, the hobbit/dwarf starting city is not there, and the golden-yellow icon like the one at the end of "5w" in the southwestern corner + the pyramid icon symbolize elevation change and there are areas behind them).

There's some managing of hunger/thirst/sleep, going around killing stuff for loot and xp, training and learning new skills, doing quests, finding secrets, buying houses in cities, training your spatial memory or drawing your own map getting lost (there are partial maps made by players, like the one linked above, if someone wants to deprive themselves of exploration fun + someone made an automapping tool for it), talking in form of both "ask + keyword" and the NPC offering you a few numbered answer options after initiating the conversation... During the day, different types of screen info are color-coded, and during the night everything is grey and you can't see stuff on the ground nor location exits.

Highlights from the interview and game's forum:
- written in turbo pascal and later switched to free pascal
- initially it was developed by two guys but the other one quit after a few years
- works well with reading software for blind people
- at the time of the interview (2015) only like 5 people paid the completely optional registration fee (so it's competing with winrar in that regard)
- the game is considered feature-complete since 2015 but the dev is still slowly working on adding content.



Just launched Ancient Reality to check what it's like, and I went into the starting town, joined warriors' guild, got a quest to kill someone in the graveyard, couldn't find the person so I instead attacked and killed some poor granny taking care of the graves. Then I got into some dark crypt, got beaten to near-death by a rat, and had another granny track me down there but I killed her too. So it seems fairly similar to Otchłań freedom-wise.

Fake edit: found the English Zelda SUD thingy, feels like a mix of a text game and a roguelike (maybe because of the ASCII minimap).
____

I guess you could consider it a genre that hardly got anywhere, or a synonym for a single-player, text-only RPG (or for a text adventure with levels and stats and other RPG stuff).

And there are probably some codexers who could offer more insight into it.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

I've become allergic to anyone who puts word-count in the title

 

[Volourn]

Why?

 

[Storyfag]

Oh the good old days of Cygnus MUD. All in Potato, sowwy heathens.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Diku-based RPI MUDs were the best thing to happen to the genre, not even included, 0/10.

Jk, good job and interesting read.

 

[Theodora]

I love your research/writing; it's super informative for someone who wasn't really around to witness much or any of it firsthand.

 

[Storyfag]

You can read it here: https://medium.com/@felipepepe/robl...ry-of-virtual-worlds-muds-mmorpgs-12e41c4cb9b

Fascinatingly, the Rift Glacier you mention seems to have been re-created in the MUD I played back in high school. Which would be 15 about years later than IoK originally came out.

Also,

The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology
You are 73% Explorer
What Bartle says:

♠ Explorers delight in having the game expose its internal machinations to them. They try progressively esoteric actions in wild, out-of-the-way places, looking for interesting features (ie. bugs) and figuring out how things work. Scoring points may be necessary to enter some next phase of exploration, but it's tedious, and anyone with half a brain can do it. Killing is quicker, and might be a constructive exercise in its own right, but it causes too much hassle in the long run if the deceased return to seek retribution. Socialising can be informative as a source of new ideas to try out, but most of what people say is irrelevant or old hat. The real fun comes only from discovery, and making the most complete set of maps in existence.
You are also:

53% Killer
47% Socialiser
27% Achiever
This result may be abbreviated as EKSA

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Terrific piece Felipe. I especially appreciated your meticulous attention to links and citations.
As someone who played a fair amount of RPGs in the 80s but didn’t have a modem until 1997(?) this was a very fun and informative read.

I also had never heard about the LambdaMOO controversy, and that Julian Dibbels piece you linked to was a fascinating and prescient Piece of history (I can’t help but draw comparisons between his diagnosis of Mr. Bungle and certain Codexers). It reads as almost unforgivably over-written (Fargo should have hired him for T:ToN), but I’ll be damned if I’m not still thinking about it hours after reading it.

Also it turns out he might live like three blocks from me so I am definitely going to do some low-key RL lurking to see if I can talk to him about his thoughts on that article now.

 

[CryptRat]

I hate MMOs but thought the article was fascinating.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Enjoyed the read, rather informative on a history I never appreciated, cheers! Sadly the section on looter shooters reminded me of Firefall and thats a wound I keep peeling off the scab every few months. Persistent world (albeit with instanced shards), random encounters, activities ranging from solo to small group to 'raid', open world type co-operation. Sad it died with no replacement that managed to quite hit that spot.