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Role Playing (Games)

Return of Text-Based Games? 141

Posted by Cliff from the if-you-prefer-MUDs-to-MMORPGs dept.
twivel asks: "I've noticed a trend recently. I've had many friends return to text based MUDs even after a couple years of playing MMORPGs like Everquest and WoW. When I've asked them why they returned, they've said that the virtual community in MUDs really seems to set them apart from the newer MMORPGs. In MMORPGs, you just get lost in the numbers. In the forums on places like MUDConnect, a popular MUD listing site, you find people claiming that the MUD community is actually growing. For those of you who've experienced both forms of entertainment, would you agree? While the cost is much less (many great MUDs are 100% free), how would you rate your overall experience with MUDs compared to newer forms of online entertainment?" A bit of this discussion was touched on not too long ago, but it would be interesting to note if the MUD community is enjoying a resurgence in popularity, as the article implies.
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Return of Text-Based Games? More

Return of Text-Based Games?

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  • Size Counts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) * on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:06PM (#13136654) Journal
    OK, reading through the original post, I think I can see the problem that some people have with MMORPGs. Thing is, though, I don't agree that this is a problem inherant in the genre, it's more a matter of how players approach it.

    The key factor here is size. I've done one or two MUDs and most of these had player counts in the hundreds, or occasionally the low thousands. A large-scale commercial graphical MMORPG, on the other hand, isn't really commercially viable with less than about 50,000 players.

    There are some obvious implications here. Even if the MMORPG in question takes the common approach of parcelling players on different servers, with average populations of 10,000 or so (which is a pretty low estimate for a lot of the games out there), it's always going to be more people than you can get to know. Hell, my secondary school had 1,000 pupils and I doubt I knew more than 150 or so, even on a passing basis. And that was without the problems of location and language barriers that you have in a MMORPG.

    The result of this is that a player who doesn't have a good, consistent group of friends in a MMORPG, be they real-life friends or online acquiantances, is going to have a pretty lonely experience. In a MUD, on the other hand, with just a few hundred people, it's easier to become a known face much more quickly.

    Now personally, I *much* prefer playing a graphical MMORPG. These games are designed to be played for pretty serious amounts of time and if I'm going to look at anything for that long, I want my eye-candy, goddamit. Moreover, I'm always impressed when the developers of a MMORPG manage to come up with a new visual location design that really knocks me back. Both FFXI and WoW have managed this fairly regularly (although you have to get pretty deep into the Zilart and Promathia strands of FFXI to find the prettiest areas). The quality of service and regularity of updates that you get from a well-run commercial MMORPG is more than worth the monthly fee.

    I guess if there's a solution for people who are finding it hard to "click" with a MMORPG and missing the interractions of a MUD, it's to find a regular group. Either throw heavy things at real life friends until they sign up, or actively seek out a group of like-minded players in game. A good guild/linkshell of 50-100 people, with its own rivalries, goals and ethos, can completely transform your gaming experience.
    • I completly agree. I am all about community in gamves. I've tried several mmorpg's and none of them really held my attention all that long. WoW held it for a bit but that faded. I think a big part of the reason people play online games is community and I just wasn't finding it was as tight as on muds or games with smaller groups of players like a neverwinter nights dedicated shard.
    • But text based games also bring enjoyment if you get sick of graphics like I do. I'm working on a text-based adventure game as we speak for personal fun.

    • With a MUD... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GuitarNeophyte ( 636993 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:10PM (#13136707) Homepage Journal
      With a mud, at least the ones that I play, you may not have numbers anywhere as high as in a MMORPG, but it's generally alot easier to make an influence on the surrounding world. I'd say that there are alot more MUDs that, when big things happen, the world is actually changed.

      MMORPGs might be huge, but at least with MUDs, they generally at least have the RP that the so-called RPGs ascribe to.

      Luke
      ----
      Do you like ketchup? I just found the most hilarious stand-up monologue [webgentry.com] all about ketchup. Go read it!
      • I don't have the time to invest heavily in any long-term role-playing game, but it's definitely true that with MUDs, it's far easier to actually play a role in an evolving world. Part of that is the smaller community, but another major aspect is that the world is far easier to change. Recode a forest path to go somewhere else due to fallen timber, and you've potentially created ways to new areas, as well as potential bonuses in the old path that not everyone can access immediately (say, access is class-

      • Many other advantages (Score:2, Insightful)

        by linzeal ( 197905 )
        MUDS at least to me offer another set of advantages in that I can often play them on any connection, on any computer and with any amount of time. When I played WOW sometimes I was virtually coerced by people I guilded with to spend 3-4 hours clearing a dungeon. That is a stupid amount of time to play a game for me so I quit.
      • Again, not inherent in the medium. There are 3D games that actually encourage players to transform the world. A few years back, I played something called AlphaWorlds, which was basically a ginormous plane on which you can put 3D objects, referenced by URL. Stack them, connect them, add JavaScript events, but it's the players creating the world, not the developers.

        Of course, I really want to see something like WoW do more of that. Somewhere in between, really. I don't want people loading gigantic custo

    • Re:Size Counts (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Gravedigger3 ( 888675 )
      I agree to everything u just said and if i wasn't a n00b to /. and i knew how to do anything i would mod that up. ALthough there is something to be said for playing a game with a smaller population where u can get to know everyone its not for me. I want to be in a living world where 99% of the people around me are strangers going about their business. I am in a small guild where i have gotten to know everyone and i bump into familiar players now and then which is always fun. The world wouldn't feel as imm
    • Agreed, but I did find a lack of "community" that FFXI had. I played FFXI from the start of the NA beta until WoW came out - now I'm going back to FFXI.
      • Welcome back ;) I played until EQ2 came out... jumped to WoW, played GW... came back to FFXI, it's like coming home.


        There's plenty of community. Best mmorpg on the market right now. The quick fix gamers can have Wow, I want something with substance.

    • Yeah, but RPG stands for "role playing games." There's no role playing on MMORPGs, there's just getting a list of numbers to change into slightly higher numbers. That's boring as hell to me, and a lot of other people I know.

      A MUD like (ahem) Eternal Struggle (http://esmud.com/ [esmud.com]), on the other hand, has a close-knit community, detailed backstory (that players actually *read*), and tremendous character interactions.

      Here are some of the things that encourage RP that MMORPGs haven't done:

      1) RP Leveling. ES
    • I agree with most of your thoughts, and this gave me an idea:
      What about MORPGs that are designed for a small number of players and run off a clan server, in the way Half-Life mods like CS usually do? This would allow the developing company to do without a large server farm and thus cut down on operating expenses.

      Think of it as a cross between Morrowind and Counterstrike. For games with some FPS action built in, this might work even better than traditional MMORPGs. After all, Counterstrike and Call Of Duty

  • not again! (Score:2, Funny)

    by spoonyfork ( 23307 )
    It was bad enough we had to endure the onslaught of connections from *.aol.com in the mid '90s. Now we have to assuage [reference.com] hordes of disaffected EverCrack babies? Nooo!!1eleventyone
    • Actually, the AOL MUDs were my first ones. Gemstone, I think it was called, was the first time that I learned about Role Playing (even though I never got farther than delivering tons of packages to people), and I've been hooked ever since.

      Luke
      ----
      Do you like ketchup? I just found the most hilarious stand-up monologue [webgentry.com] all about ketchup. Go read it!
    • Give it up with the AOL bashing already. Stupid people are quite well distributed over pretty much every ISP these days. In fact, AOL tends to cater to adults these days, folks who may not be very discerning about their ISP software, but have more or less grown a few social skills with their years.

      • Stupid people are quite well distributed over pretty much every ISP these days.

        I don't disagree with that at all. But few will disagree with me that October 1995 was the start of the AOL Asshat Invasion onto our beloved Intarweb. Back then, not now, but back then the idiots came from aol.com. If I can't run a MUD and be hypercritical about the intelligence of players then would I be doing my job correctly? I think not, sir.

  • insert bass solo here (Score:3, Funny)

    by balance one ( 871091 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:10PM (#13136704) Homepage
    My name is MUD!
  • It's only been a few months since I last played TradeWars.

    I just, love the game.
    • That game is amazing. I still load it at times for fun or track down an old server. Used to love playing that on one of the local BBS's, and it was actually quite good on the net as well with more players. I was very disappointed when the MMORPG version was cancelled.

  • Love Them, Live Them (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NaNO2x ( 856759 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:16PM (#13136774)
    I have been a MUDer for over nine years now, I have tried MMORPGs like Shadowbane, Ultima, and WoW to name a few, but I always keep coming back to the MUD that I have been with for all this time. There are many reasons, one is the community, on a MUD like the one I play there are only about 40 of us and we know each other well. Another reason is that the MUD that I play at least is about Role Playing, which is not something that can be truely done on a MMORPG. A good balance of PK and RP is what is needed, and MUDs can provide that. Also on a MUD you have to actually use your mind, your imagination. Another great thing I have found after my years of MUDing is an improvement in certain skills, I read faster, type faster, and can make things up on the spot that sound more reasonable. Overall I think that MUDs are great things, but they arn't for everyone but those of you who take to them they are much much better than a graphical game ever could be.

    By the way, the MUD I play is called Dark Mists http://darkmists.org/ [darkmists.org] and my character is Nij so if any of you want to stop by I'd be happy to show you around.

    • I agree. Video games have always been distractions, and we regularly see people leave to play these mmorpgs, but in the end most come back with stories about how it suddenly wasn't fun anymore, and wasn't worth the money they spend.

      I've lost my ability to actually mud, so instead nowadays I just code areas and help maintain it. It is a very good creative outlet.
    • I've been playing http://barrenrealmsmud.com/ [barrenrealmsmud.com] (a Merc based MUD) since 1996. It is a very different experience from a MMORPG. There you visualize the places you are in instead of someone else defining them. Its the difference between reading a book and watching a movie. No matter how well acted, the movie is always lacking that little bit that your imagination gave the book.

      Also, since MUDs are a smaller community and you know everyone, you play for different reasons. I stopped actively trying to level a

    • Another great thing I have found after my years of MUDing is an improvement in certain skills, I read faster, type faster, and can make things up on the spot that sound more reasonable.

      All great skills for those who are thinking of entering the IT industry.

  • Is there a web-interface for MOOs/MUDs that still allows user-programmed experiences? I'd love to see this available on the same wide-open terms as (eg) pbWiki, so that any old web community could use it as a chatspace...
  • Zork [csd.uwo.ca]

    nuff said
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The difference (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SpicyLemon ( 803639 )
    The difference between MUDs and MMORPGs is the same as the difference between a book and a movie. Sometimes nothing can beat our own imaginations.
  • With the advent of "Web 2.0", AJAX, and the prevalence of various CSS and JavaScript tricks, might it be possible to bring a popular text game to the masses via the Web?

    MUDs have always seemed like the reserve of techies or people "in the know". With the aforementioned technologies, you could have MUD style games, even with graphics and avatars, on the Web and able to be played by anyone. Has anyone already started to make moves in that direction? Perhaps even Flash could used as the client technology. Any

    • Re:MUD to the masses (Score:3, Insightful)

      by orasio ( 188021 )
      Maybe part of the fun is that it's not for the masses.
    • With the aforementioned technologies, you could have MUD style games, even with graphics and avatars, on the Web and able to be played by anyone. Has anyone already started to make moves in that direction? Perhaps even Flash could used as the client technology.

      I've never used it, but what you're describing sounds a little like The Palace [thepalace.com]. It was a graphical chat room client that supported limited scripting like a MOO/MUD could have. That said, The Palace was a stand-alone client rather than web based. (Th

      • Disney of all people has something like this. I can't remember any of the details but I tried it out a couple months ago.

        Only problem was that they have to be kid friendly and blacklist what feels like half the words in the English language. It wouldn't let me say the word "afternoon".

        It was very frustrating, but it did allow graphical "spaces" you could walk around in with your customized avatar.

        Done right, I can see some potential here.

    • My ISP doesn't support a Telnet client. *sob*

      Help me, web-based app. You're my only hope.

    • Re:MUD to the masses (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tlanuwa ( 877564 )
      I am currently developing, with another close friend, exactly what you're talking about, or at least pretty damned close. The name of the game is Fallen, and it's going to be a role-playing intensive, many-featured, text-based webgame. Players can not only run, but purchase and build their own cities, or not, and then appoint city commanders to lead whole armies-at-a-time against other cities armies, or not -- players may simply exist. Combat is never going to be a necessity for character development -- th
  • Im glad you consider yourself the center of the universe and all, but have you thought that for this to be considered an actual "trend" you would have to have spoken with at least one hundred thousand people just to cover 10% of the worldwide MMORPG population? (which reaches more than one million users?)

    Also .. if anything the number of sales for WOW show say the "trend" is for casual gamers to get INTO mmorpgs not out.

    How can this become an article is slashdot?

  • Size *does* matter (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:30PM (#13136876) Homepage
    I co-founded and coded 100k lines of C for Avendar: The Crucible of Legends [avendar.com]. I think they've remained steady now for about 7 years of uptime as far as players. But it's true - the admins get to know you, the players really know each other, and you can actually engender a lot more character vs character conflict without anonymous asses ruining the process as would happen in an MMO.

    I also scripted and built for an NWN persistent world, City of Arabel [nwncityofarabel.com]. It was and remains one of the most popular PWs for NWN - pretty much pegged to capacity in prime time (and sometimes way beyond prime time) for the past 3 years. One of the reasons PWs get so popular and remain so is that the smaller playerbase allows you to develop intimate plots and interactions between characters. With just 50-55 players at peak, spread across a level range, Arabel resembles a tabletop D&D game as much as it resembles an MMO.

    Moreover, one thing MMOs have really lacked is personalization. You don't interact in a dynamic manner with NPCs of note, gods, and GMs do not set up and run quests. That's decidedly untrue in the smaller scale games. For Arabel, for example, and other NWN PWs, it's common to have DMs running quests. I used to start all sorts of things - evil mage kidnaps PC, and her friends assemble a group to rescue her; a city official from Arabel requests help to accomplish some task; an earthquake opens a gateway down to undiscovered caverns where riled-up elementals guard ancient catacombs; a mage in town loses control of a summoning circle and demons begin to pour through onto the Material Plane. What made these events special is that everyone participating in them was experiencing them for the first (and generally only) time. This isn't like an MMO where you can hit a database to figure out how to solve the quest that's bothering you or find where to get the phat loot.

    I think there's a big future for an MMO with a dual-subscription model, where there's a customized service that gives you unique opportunities to adventure and emulate the tabletop sort of experience. Or perhaps a game will come out like NWN, where there's a client, a toolset, a DM client, and an "official" persistent world that plays like an MMO, but also you can use the tools to create your own. Imagine if players could craft their own city areas and script their own quests in City of Heroes or World of Warcraft. Imagine having a small WoW server with a few GMs that were out to customize play like a traditional DM, and only 40 players on at a time.
    • That is exactly the kind of game I've been waiting for. You seem to have the coding ability (and from your past experieinces connections) and the idea, you should try to get a team together and see if you can take that idea somewhere. I know I'd be willing to play $20 a month (more if you can get enough unique content and make it fun) to be a "hero" who actually made a difference in the "world". I don't think I'm the only one - Warcraft is great and all, but I'm one of thousands that slayed the Onxyia,
      • Jumping into game design professionally is probably the only thing that could lure me away from my more mundane but lucrative work. But an MMO requires an absolutely insane amount of capital to build and market. In order to make the game at all, I'd need either some seriously loaded angel investors, or the backing of a huge publisher like SOE or NCSoft. I don't see them as all that crazy to stake millions on an unknown; maybe my hobbyist work creating games could get me in the door somewhere as an associate
    • "Moreover, one thing MMOs have really lacked is personalization. You don't interact in a dynamic manner with NPCs of note, gods, and GMs do not set up and run quests." Actually, while many MMORPGs don't, Everquest has a history of exactly that. One my fondest EQ memories was when Firona Vie showed up on Sullon Zek and asked a group of my neutral-team guildmates to escort her to evil-owned Freeport. When they eventually got there, more or less intact, she gave them a reward. But the reward wasn't as worth
  • What archaic technology will be employed next? Telegraph? Snail mail? Birthday bard? Just kidding, folks. We all know that nostalgia died in the 80s.

  • Never really left.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Durinthal ( 791855 )
    I've been playing MUDs for about 8 or 9 years now, and MMOs for maybe half that. I've found that the only two things the latter are better at are
    1. Graphics (obviously) and
    2. Sheer numbers
    For everything else, from combat to PVP to player housing, I've found some MUD that's done it better. If I found a MMORPG that was nothing more than a graphical conversion of one of my favorite MUDs (say, DragonRealms [play.net]), I'd be there in an instant. I have to also wonder how many additional people would try it out then, w
  • The Kingdom of Loathing [kingdomofloathing.com] is a sort of middle ground between them. Extremely tight community, mostly text-based puzzles, RPG-style gaming, and a buttload of goofy humor thrown in. There are others that are similar, too, but they didn't grab me, so I don't have links.
    • I'll second that one; I think the best thing about it is the originality -- some things are so off-the-wall that you actually have to think about things, as opposed to already knowing what to do. Most MUDs are based on books or mythology, so you know that, to kill a vampire, you need a cross or silver bullet. In KoL, you need to put things together with meat :)
  • Not only are MUDs still being created, but even the MUD engines are still in development. I can think of three off the top of my head that are being programmed in .NET/Mono (TigerMUD, PMud, and MITE).

    As the lead programmer for MITE, I can tell you that it's really nice having the Code DOM in .Net to compile scripts on the fly in C# or Boo. Very cool stuff. :)

  • Defining Community (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nytewynd ( 829901 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:33PM (#13136911)
    I think the issue relates to how you define community. I am an avid WoW player and completely hooked on the game still. To me the community isn't the entire player population. It is broken into subsets.

    All Players -> Server -> Faction (Alliance/Horde) -> Level Range -> Guild -> Friends in Guild.

    The lowest common denominator in WoW is really people in your faction, since you can't communicate with the enemy at all. Also, you don't really do much with people outside of your level range, so those guys are the ones you see most of the time.

    I really only consider my guild mates to be my real community. We mostly do instances together, so I see them a majority of the time without a whole lot of interaction with other people. I have a fairly large subset of people in my guild I would consider friends and mostly spend my time with that subset.

    I don't think it is fair to say that because MUDS have less people, you have more community. I just don't think you can define "community" as the millions of players that have accounts.

  • Immersion is key, can be ruined. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have been seriously considering trying my hand at a MUD.

    With any game, especially RPGs, forgetting that you are Tim, Level 47 Copier Repairman, and getting really into being Dante, Level 27 Blackguard, is key.

    Not to sound elitist, but the kiddies and the gold farmers and the ninja looters just f-ing *ruin* it for me. Would these kids have even *played* D&D?

    D&D required imagination, as I imagine text-based adventures do. Who is usually in posession of that attribute? Intelligent, thoughtful fo
    • Well, I know a guy, that though he doesn't play the MMOPOS things, used to play quite a bit of D&D... he always played an evil monk, and spent most of his time slapping people and trying to steal things from them (both PCs and NPCs). Granted, he was inevitably killed. I'm somewhat suprised that he never got involved with the MMOs, though perhaps its since I don't think any of them have good means of stealing (he loved Morrowind, for obvious reasons).

      • Re:Immersion is key, can be ruined. (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        oh yeah, grief players *did* exist in my time as a D&D player, for certain (always seemed to be a cousin from out of town who wanted to play for the weekend).

        there were two mitigating factors in that situation, though.

        1) the class and manner of scoundrel: an evil player character can make things VERY interesting if played, again, by an intelligent and thoughtful person.

        2) the number of "evil" players was almost always in the minority, and the will to put them "in their place" was most certainly wit
    • I've been playing on MUDs for over a decade, And while I pretty much only socialize these days and maintain some real estate I built about 8 years ago, I still prefer it to most MMO's. The biggest reason is that you have better interaction with the other characters in a MUD than on an MMO, plus your imagination just does a better job. On top of that people who cause problems tend to get the boot very quickly, and there aren't any people there who's sole purpose is to rape the game so they can make money off
    • Play Neverwinter Nights. Hop on a persistent world. A lot of them are exactly what MMORPGS promised, visual MUDs.

  • If you don't like something in a MUD you can write a patch, bug the IMMs to do it for you, or even become an IMM yourself.

    If you don't like something in EverQuest you just have to complain in the forums and hope someone with power reads your plea.

  • Its the kids. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DirkDaring ( 91233 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:48PM (#13137026)
    All the kiddie jerks that play the MMOs that trask talk, l33t speak, etc that just ruin the games. Percival Role Play server in DAOC was simply the best place I have ever seen for any MMO. All the kiddies stayed off of it. Too bad Mythic just ran DAOC into the dirt.
  • Best thing about MUDs? You can play at work. Text-based, so not as obvious. You have a telnet connection, not a web-based interface that IT can track every click on.

    My favorite, circa 1995, was the Crystal Shard...
    • You have a telnet connection, not a web-based interface that IT can track every click on.

      It would be pretty easy for IT to sniff the telnet packets off the wire and analyze / trace them.

      I wonder, are (any | most | all ) MUD's supporting SSH these days, or no?
  • I've tried several MMORPGs and could sustain my interest no longer than 3 weeks on any of them. In the text-based realm, though, when I combine my time on each MUD, MUX, MOO and MUSH I've played over the years, I've clocked well over a couple of decades.

    The generally smaller playerbase of a text-based game provides a number of advantages (when viewed through the lens of my personal tastes): greater attention from GMs, greater opportunity for non-combat roleplay, greater visibility as a player and a stro

  • I played Simutronic's text based MUD, DragonRealms, for 8 years and have played most every graphical MMORPG to date since then. I was lured away by the eye candy of the 3D world, but I have never had as rich an experience in any MMORPG that I have had in my MUD days. The communities in MUDs seem much more close. Roleplaying is much more prevalent. Experiences seem much more fulfilling. I find my imagined view of the world I am reading about in a text based game is much more enriched and detailed than wh
    • also.. Not all MUDs are free. DragonRealms charges monthly fees that rival today's MMORPGs. You can pay $15 for a basic account and up to $50 a month!! for premium accounts that give you access to all sorts of goodies..
  • NCMUDD, a Diku that has been around since 1990. Player numbers have declined a bit over the last few years, but a lot of new features have been added.

    telnet://ncmud.org:9000 [ncmud.org]Connect to NC

    http://ncmud.org/ [ncmud.org]NCMUDD

  • Size Matters (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rAiNsT0rm ( 877553 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @02:30PM (#13137540) Homepage
    I know it has been said in a number of ways but here is my observation. I am not a big online game player, I tend to enjoy my solo experiences rather than deal with people and all their downfalls online (cheating, ego's, n00b's, etc.) I recently bit th ebullet and bought Guild Wars as it was billed as a skill/strategy over hours played game. This was the case the first week, then it went horribly off course.

    Now it is filled with all the usual crap. I put in three solid months and always hope for it to turn around but it isn't going to. So ultimately I spend all of my time solo or with AI henchmen to form my parties. I was in a solid guild but they all left for WoW. Not having any RL friends that play games I'm stuck.

    The sheer number of players in the game and no real way to hook up with like-minded folks leaves you alone in a sea of people. This is no fun. A MUD has a more intimate setting and feel and even though I can go in not knowing anyone I can make friends and team up within a week and have a good feel for everyone involved. I wish it could be this way in an MMO. Multi-game guilds/clans are worse because they are a defined structure and everyone is not welcoming to outsiders.

    It makes playing a game into a big social experiment... the exact thing I play games to get away from.

  • MUDs have many advantages (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Optical Voodoo Man ( 611836 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @02:42PM (#13137667)
    MUDs have a few advantages over MMORPGs. The biggest in my mind is that they require more imagination than MMORPGs because they are text based. This also allows for the developers to say things like "12,000 ice skating elephants with hockey stick glide onto the ice, snatching helpless contestants from the Zarbania Curling Olympics." Try showing that graphically. The text based nature of MUDs brings the player's imagination into play far more than the graphical MMORPG interface. The verbal descriptions are not only more descriptive, they are also far easier to modify. You want rhinos instead of elephants? Easy, just change that word.

    You actually get to roleplay your character, which is an important part of the experience. Instead of killing X number of rats so you can gain points to kill bigger things, or mining gold so you spend more billable hours on the game, the range of options and quests is much broader.

    Certainly the ability of the players to customize their environment is also much higher, as well as being easier to accomplish. Adding flair and pizzazz to a player can be as easy as modifying a text string.

  • Shameless plug for looneymud (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rubberbando ( 784342 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @03:27PM (#13138200)
    yeah I miss the old days of mudding. My personal favorite was Looneymud [looney.com] it was something totally unconventional compared to other muds which were usually D&D based. This MUD was more based on television, cartoons, and movies. It was a place where you could encounter just about anything, whether it be Bert and Ernie or Darth Vader. I would spend hours exploring its intricaces. I check in now and then and it is still up after all these years, just not as busy. If you are looking for a place to kill a lot of time and some very strange mobs, check it out sometime. :-)
    • I was on the original ToonMUSH, a similarly-themed one inspired by toontown in Roger Rabbit...until that server died. I quit MUDs by my junior year of college because every MUD (or muck or mush) I was on either got corrupted or the owners of the machine found a real use for it (not knowing the students had set up the MUD) and shutdown the server. Usually this shutdown involved a re-install of the O/S without a decent backup so the entire MUD contents were gone.

      ALL of them went through this (around 1991).
  • All the MUDs, MUSHes, MUCKs and MOOs I've ever been on have been communal efforts that still carry out the self-policing the Net of Yore was capable of providing its users.

    People on MUDs are well spoken, too. These are worlds made of words, and if you want to be a real character or stick out from the crowd, you have to chat and write well.

    Not to mention the general quality of person you find there. I have never once been called 'n00b' or 'fag' or 'looser' [sic] on a MUD.

    I enjoy CS and Halo and all (sor
  • Just a quick post to pimp my favourite Diku-based MUD, Turf [turf.org].

    Not many people seem to be on there nowadays, you virtually have the server to yourself. Unfortunately, that means it sucks for grouping when you're trying to level up.
  • Yes, after reviewing specs on the graphics chips in new consoles, I'm *sure* they are preparing for the return of text-based games...

  • Smaller MUDs can be very unpleasant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by grumpygrodyguy ( 603716 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @05:12PM (#13139417)
    When I've asked them why they returned, they've said that the virtual community in MUDs really seems to set them apart from the newer MMORPGs

    This is probably true as long as you avoid MUDs with less than ~30 people on-line at once. In these MUDs everyone who's anyone seems to know each other, and they are usually very cliquey. Playing on servers like that can become 6 months of fraternity hazing instead of 6 months of gaming. The smaller MUDs are even worse, usually occupied by a ring-leader admin and a handful of 'admins' who bully and abuse the server. I remember this one wasteland themed MUD where the admins were so abusive that they threatened to ban me because they didn't like my character description.

    Lots of people have experienced this kind of thing on CS servers, where 95% of the people who apply for admin do so in order to bully the other players with threats of being kicked/banned/llama'ed if someone says or does something the admin doesn't like. This is very prevelant on some of the smaller MUDs also. There are exceptions, but they seem to be in the minority.

    In short, if you've never played a MUD before but would like to try one...do some research first and try to find a MUD that caters to at least 50 players online at once. This increases your chances of finding a game you'll enjoy.
  • I've heard plenty of people rejoice at reaching level 50 of their favorite MMORPG, but my high school friends had MUDs to thank when they wrote their homework at 100 WPM.

  • Anecdotal evidence (Score:3, Interesting)

    by buffer-overflowed ( 588867 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:20PM (#13141267) Journal
    My old MUD(which I don't run anymore) has recently gone through a resurgance of popularity. Average online players is back up to over 100, with peaks in the 150s and lows in the 40s.

    Like most MUDs it's been in one state of development or another for over a decade. It's code pedigree traces back even further to the early days of DIKU and MajorMUD. It's seen staff come and go, changed servers, lowered the GPAS of several groups of college students, and still it endures.

    Honestly, I still prefer MUDs to MMOs. They are far more polished, the systems are better, the admin staff is better, the communities are far more tight knit, and well... everything is better except the UI and eye candy.

  • Mudding and me (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Konerak ( 902066 )
    I always compared MUDs to books, and MMORPGs and stuff to movies. Book leave things to your imagination. A dragon there is a *huge* fearsome creature.. You're bent over the keyboard, reading the text, going north and back south immediately to have a quick glimpse.. your imagination does it for you.

    I can't help but feel not bound to the MMORPG characters.. it's just a few pixels on a screen.. it's like pacman for me. It's not me, and if it died, *I* didn't die. My remote control midieval guy did.

    And just a
  • Don't forget about MAngband!

    http://www.mangband.org/ [mangband.org]

    It's pseudo-open source, so you can make your own variant if you're so inclined. And also insane.

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