1 History

The first MUDs appeared in 1978, and their popularity escalated in the USA during the 1980s, when (relatively speaking) cheap, home personal computers with 300 to 2400 baud modems enabled role players to log into multi-line BBSes. Roguelike games were also becoming popular at that time. In Europe at around the same time, MUD development was centered around academic networks, particularly at the University of Essex where they were played by many people, both internal and external to the University. In this context, it has been said that MUD stands for "Multi-Undergrad Destroyer" due to their popularity among college students, and the amount of time devoted to the MUD by the student.

The very first MUD was attributed to have been created and written by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex University on a DEC PDP-10 in the UK [1]. They chose the acronym MUD to stand for Multi-User Dungeon, and was designed to be a multi-user version of another PDP-10 game called Dungeon (or DUNGEN due to the six character filename limit), which was later commercially released by Infocom under the original developement code name Zork. Zork in turn was inspired by an older text-adventure game known as Colossal Cave Adventure or ADVENT.

A version of MUD is still running at www.british-legends.com and a version of its descendant MUD2 runs at www.mud2.com or www.mudii.co.uk.

(The book "Dungeon Master" by William Dear, and some other sources suggest there were earlier MUD-type games that the Essex authors never knew about.)

These text-adventure games (both single and multi-player) drew inspiration from the paper-and-pencil based role-playing games (RPGs) such as Dungeons & Dragons which were approaching their peak popularity at this time, especially with the release of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) in 1977.

This strong bond between RPGs and MUDs continued through the years with the release of dozens of AD&D modules and series of related books and stories (i.e. Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance). Influences also came from the gamebooks such as Fighting Fantasy, Choose Your Own Adventure and Lone Wolf, and also other RPGs such as , and Middle-earth Role Playing (or MERP).

Other MUDs that appeared around 1985 included Mirrorworld, run by Pip Cordrey and developed and written by Tim Rogers, Lorenzo Wood and Nathaniel Billington, and SHADES, the world's first commercial MUD. This was accessible in the UK via the Prestel system. Mirrorworld was the first MUD to feature rolling resets.

Another popular MUD was AberMUD written in 1988 by Alan Cox, also known as Anarchy, named after the University of Wales Aberystwyth. Avalon, the Legend Lives, started in 1989, was the first MUD to combine a consistent fantasy story-line with a commercial venture.

In 1991, the release of DikuMUD (which was inspired by AberMUD) eventually lead to a virtual explosion of "hack-n-slash" MUDs based on this code and its derivatives.

Though seeing some decline in the past few years due to the advent of graphical MUDs, the MUD scene is still very much alive on the Internet, and can be accessed via standard telnet clients, or specialized MUD clients that give a more pleasant user experience.

2 MUD variants

Over time variants have diversified into other models while retaining the textual format, such as LPMuds, MUCKs, MUSHes, and MOOs.

A MUSH is often said to mean multi-user shared habitat (or, jocularly, hallucination). MUSHes descend from the program TinyMUD and date back to the early 1990s. They are more directly concerned with role-playing (acting) than MUDs, dispensing with the experience systems. Instead, players focus on creating their characters' lives as accurately as possible. Members of the MUSH family include PernMUSH, PennMUSH, TinyMUSH, TinyMUSE and TinyMUX.

A MUCK (multi-user chat kingdom) is similar to a MUSH in that the emphasis is on player interaction, rather than action and questing. MUCKs and MUSHes differ from IRC as a chat medium in that they provide a world, character descriptions etc in order to flesh out role-playing chat.

A MUVE is a fairly recent term which is the acronym of multi-user virtual environment. Its goal is to simply have a less narrow or ambiguous acronym for the genre.

Other variants emphasize building by providing players with a powerful programming language (as in MOOs) to make their own objects and rooms, or function as elaborate chat systems with no fantasy trappings.

When referring collectively to MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHes, and other similar models, the term MU* is often used.

2.1 Graphical MUDs

A graphical MUD is a MUD that uses computer graphics to represent parts of the virtual world and its visitors. The foremost of these is Habitat, written by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar for Lucasfilm in 1985. Graphical MUDs require players to download a special client and the game's artwork. They range from simply enhancing the user interface to simulating 3D worlds with visual spatial relationships and customized avatar appearances.

Once computer power increased and Internet connectivity became ubiquitous, the graphical MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) developed. Unlike earlier MUDs, most MMORPGs are commercial ventures. Examples of MMORPGs include EverQuest ( 1999), Lineage ( 1998), and Ultima Online ( 1997). (See list of MMORPGs for more examples and MMORPG for more on this type of game.)

2.2 Talkers and spods

A lesser known variant is the talker, typically based on ew-too , summink , sensi-summink , playground, and plenty of other code bases. The talker is essentially a MUD, with most of the complex bits of code stripped away, leaving just the communication level commands -- hence the name talker. People who use these tend to be called spods. The spod tends to be something of a long term fanatic. Where many mudders may move on after a year or two, people who use talkers typically have been doing so for a decade or more. Talkers are significantly easier to run than an average MUD, since they don't incorporate very much artificial intelligence, and they are usually much more user friendly, since there is not often much fighting as a focus. In other words, whole families of husbands, wives, children, and siblings have been known to spod in certain circles. They also use very little network traffic, and use simple protocols, making them ideal for setting up quietly at work. Talker applications predate MUDs by many years, although some of the early ones were used to play Dungeons & Dragons over computer networks.

The spod has earned a place in the Jargon File.

2.3 RPI MUDs

Another lesser known variant of a MUD are RPI MUDs, Role-Play Intensive Multi-User Dungeon. RPI MUDs center themselves around playing out specific roles as if the role were real. Realism is often blended in with fantasy in these types of MU*s. In general, the objective of the game is not to complete computer-generated quests or to hack-and-slash monsters in order to gain levels and equipment, but to collaborate with fellow players to create complex and multi-layered storylines in a cohesive gameworld. RPIs are very different from other MU* because of this.

The majority of RPI MUDs are levelless and classless, focusing instead on skills and crafts that players may pursue during the lifetime of their characters. RPIs also differ from MUSHes in that they retain the hard code of a MUD in deciding such variable outcomes as combat, magickal spells, and so on.

RPI MUDs could be considered giant plays where the setting or world is the theater, and the players are the actors as well as the viewers. RPIs are a newer branch of MUDs in general, but have still been around for a long period of time.

3 See also

• MU* servers
• MU* games
• online creation (OLC)
• For an academic look at MUDs, see Sherry Turkle's writings

4 External links

• Mud Lists: Large selection of available online RPGs
• Mud Connector.com: Extensive list of available MUDs
• Top Mud Sites: Ranking of the best MUDs
• Some history and reviews from Richard Bartle's "Interactive Multi-User Computer Games" report
• Confessions of an Arch-Wizard Mud History: Michael Lawrie's account of the early years of MUD and MIST
• Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO
• Intermud.org: Information about intermud communication protocols
• Mud Magic.com: MUD software downloads, discussion, game listings, and documentations.
• ftp.game.org: Heirarchal archive of MUD source code

Multiplayer online games Role-playing computer games

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