MUDs

[Jayce]

Do any of you play text muds often?

I started (as many of us did) playing a text MUD, then known as FredMUD but previously (I have found) known as JudyMUD. Unfortunately that was one of the earliest Dikus in existence, so I suspect that I have an odd view of the features and innovation that MUDs have and had, both pre-MMOG and concurrently since 1997.

I'm curious about the scene now.  What variants are big?  Circle, Merc, or other codebases I haven't heard of?  What kind of innovation is going on out there that's not seen in the graphical/pay world?  Is the trend toward game or virtual world?  Are they taking any cues from features that successful MMOGs have implemented (or vice versa), like WoW's constant questing model?  How many are PvP by percent?  Geographically divided into non-PvP and PvP areas?  Pay or free? Etc.

[Yoru]

I'm an admin on DartMUD, but I haven't seriously played a MUD in two years, just a bit of dabbling about to see what's out there.

Consistent with the last five years, the largest number by volume are DikuMUD-derivatives, particularly easy-to-set-up variants like Circle and some of the more advanced, flexible variants like Smaug and ROM. Merc has largely been superseded by the aforementioned two. LPMuds are still alive and kicking (DartMUD is an LP), particularly the Discworld MUD. By volume, hard to say unless you use a ranking site (e.g. Top Mud Sites), where the "pay" muds from Iron Realms tend to dominate.

There's also some upstart codebases, like Cold (with its own interpreted language; sort of a spiritual successor to LP). I've not tried them out, since they tend to mostly be in heavy development mode. There's also the Aber-derivatives (iDirt, Music) if you like puzzle-based gameplay. I used to write puzzles for a British iDirt-deriv (now under the Music codebase), Cryosphere.

From what I've seen, the Diku crowd has tended towards going gamier; adding more and more levels (e.g. AvatarMUD, 50 mortal levels, 999 Hero levels, 999 Lord levels,I think) and more complex remorting systems. The best remort I've seen has you 'fuse' your body with another person, creating a slightly better hybrid for both parties involved to play in their next run up the ladder.

In the pay-for and LP crowd have, from my perspective, gone worldier. On Dartmud, we've been working on systematizing our mechanics so that things work together properly and adding new crafts and worldy bits (e.g. a constellation system). The Iron Realms games also seem fairly worldy, but I've not been inclined to set foot in them.

I haven't seen much of a direct push towards WoW's model of gameplay; on one hand, you've got your Dikus with their endless level grind and on the other you've got Aber/Dirts based entirely around puzzles/quests. However, I haven't seen, personally, a major mud that adopts WoW's constant-questing model.

PvP is mostly the same as it ever was in MUDs, with most Dikus either having free-for-all "war" periods and specified "arena" zones with draconian penalties for attacking other players outside of those specific circumstances. There are a small handful of pure PK muds, but I'm not seriously familiar with their gameplay or communities. On Dart, we have (and will always have) permadeath and unrestricted PVP (codewise, there's serious social constraints and some actively-enforced rules to prevent abuse), but it's not a popular feature in the MUD community at large.

[Viin]

I haven't played a MUD for awhile, but I still dabble with my own MUD on occasion.

Just wanted to note: Cold is actually very stable right now, though not being actively developed. The problem with Cold is that there isn't a mud-lib (for lack of a better term) to start your game from.. so it makes for a larger development effort (that hobbyists probably aren't willing to put forth). Both Grendal's Revenge and The Eternal City run on Cold and are for-pay MUDs.

There are a lot of PvP MUDs out there (GodWars, etc) that are pretty popular, but over-all I think PvE MUDs are more popular. PvP games can be open PvP like GodWars, or match based (such as Tron or Genocide) that tend to play more like rounds of Quake or what-have-you.

For the variants, it will always be the easiest ones to get up and running. Cold is awesome because of it's flexibility and online OO programming (sorta like LP) but since you don't have a Merc/DIKU game to start with you have a long ways to go before it's even resembles a game.

As far as innovation goes, I think a lot of the gameplay is just more mature. Instead of worrying about shiney graphics admins can focus on balance and gameplay.

Take this one PvP game I played before (can't remember the name for some reason), where there are 'rounds' with teams, Red vs Blue. The only stats tracked are kills (no RPG elements). When the round starts you enter the battleground which is basically a randomly generated maze with bases on opposite ends. In the maze are hostile Green NPC soldier who you can kill to take their weapons and armor (they don't respawn). So you start off going around picking up armor, killing NPCs for weapons and such, attacking the other team whenever you come in contact. You have to find some high ranking Green officer to find the key to a hidden door (that you also have to find) to go down to the next level. I think there are 3 levels total, with the bottom level containing a button. Whoever pushes the button and defends it for 60 seconds (other team can get in a push button if you let them, so the count would start for them). At the end of 60 seconds the nuke goes off and kills everyone. End of round. Your team wins, everyone gets extra kill points which increases their ranks on the boards (the only thing you get out of all this).

Innovation for games like that come from being able to peek around corners and throw grenades over walls and drive a tank with two people in it (one shooting one driving) and being able to lob rounds many rooms away. And being able to take C4, sneak up behind the tank and blow it to bits. Bases are donation rooms (you can 'donate' any item and it'll appear in the base room) so when you die you and your teammates can grab some equipment from the base without having go hunt naked with a 9mm. Stuff like getting a radio to call in firebombs using map coordinates, and all of the multiroom gun fights are a blast.

This is innovative for the Text medium, only because giving the user a sense of space (spatially) is hard to do. While none of this is amazing, the gameplay this generates is huge. Would an exact translation to a Unreal/Quake engine work as well? No, probably not.

I'm not sure everyone thinks there is *no* innovation in graphical MMOs, but I think all of us feel that much more time and effort is spent on the graphics part than on the gameplay. Maybe once graphical technologies stop improving by leaps and bounds developers will be able to focus on gameplay and interface design .. I think they are very much pressured into looking either better or as-good-as the latest MMO out, so a lot of resources go into that when it could go into content and gameplay.

[Strazos]

I played Gemstone III/IV on and off for years since I was about 10 or 12.