What is a MOO?

So I was playing You Don't Know Jack and I hit the dis or dat round. I got real giddy when I saw that it was acronyms of medical plans or acronyms of video game genres, cuz ya know, iz all about dem vidya gaems. I was on 6 of 7 right up until MOO appeared. I internally guffawed and hit the medical plan button. I got the big red klaxon and drew a blank stare at the screen. "What the hell is a MOO?" It's not in giant bomb's wiki and a quick google brings me to some genre called a MUD but that didn't really clarify it. I feel jipped out of my $300 Cookie!

What's a MOO?

Err...Master of Orion?

Edit: Okay, it seems like it's a text-based MMO.

MOO?

@beachthunder: jokes aside, you can't be talking about this Master of Orion as it's not a MMO, what game are you talking about?

I assume BeachThunder was referring to MUD, object-oriented (MOO) and not Master of Orion.

It's an object-oriented MUD:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO

EDIT: A MUD is basically a text-based MMO, like BeachThunder said. Imagine a text-based adventure game. Now let multiple players simultaneously, allow players to interact with each other, allow natural language instead of a few basic preset commands, add enemies that can be beaten using D&D combat rolls, allow inter-player combat, and let players chat throughout.

RE-EDIT: Too late...

MUD-Object-Oriented. MUDs (Multi-User-Dungeon) were/are roleplaying oriented chatrooms of a sort. Think of Zork only online with other players. MOOs used the framework to make interactive communities that did some of the roleplaying, but were more oriented towards chat, education and interactivity using the tools available: namely the object oriented programmable nature of the environment.

The object-oriented part refers to the nature of a MOOs environment. Everything is an "object", the players, the rooms, items, etc. "Verbs" are programmed onto the objects that when typed, react in some way.

For example, you make two rooms. In one room's description you write "There is a door to the east." In the other room's description "There is a door to the west." In the first room, you create a verb - which is just a small block of programming code - named "east" that when a character types "east" in the room, it moves them to the other room. Same with the second room with a "west" verb that moves them back to the other room. Characters would have verbs programmed onto them such that they could type something like "smile" and the line of text "*Name* smiles at everyone in the room." appears to everyone in the room.

Then there were also objects themselves, like a stereo. You'd put a "listen" verb on it and when someone types "listen stereo" when in the presence of the stereo, it displays some lyrics or ascii musical notes or something.

This was mindblowing shit back in the early nineties! This was the era of the Genesis and SNES.

And stuff like this happened:

http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace

It was a huge deal at the time. It was easy enough to write a verb that would print to everyone present's screen "Soandso commits random heinous act!" Online harassment has been a thing since the birth of the Internet. Gamergaters are old news...

Only one MOO remains: LambdaMOO. It was the first MOO and now it's the last. You can still connect there: lambda.moo.mud.org:8888 Got a telnet client? Ha!

In the mid-late nineties there were quite a few of them. I spent an obscene amount of time on a number of them: BayMOO, Lambda, RiverMOO, Diversity University. My first Lambda character would be 21 years old this year! As it is, I lost that one in a server move and my current character is a mere 12. MOOs are a pretty fascinating part of Internet history. It's a shame they've almost completely died out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO

Also, you don't know Jack is a bit jacked. MOOs weren't exactly "video games".

You're a MOO

@sinusoidal: man the internet can be awesome sometimes, duder knows his shit.

@sinusoidal: Really interesting, thanks! I've played Zork and Legend of the Red Dragon, but I completely missed out on the MOO bit of the Internet.

@sinusoidal: Great answer, thanks man!

If anyone is interested in seeing what an MOO is like, I have been known to play and enjoy the Discworld MUD.

It's good fun!

Huh, I've never heard of any of this at all. Interesting.

@vampire_chibi said:

I was seriously waiting for something silly to happen...

Massively Online Online.