Is there anyone on here that still plays MUDs? How about anyone who did but hasn't in a while? I haven't played one heavily in years, but every few months I always go back to one. Unfortunately yesterday I logged into one that was mostly empty. Mind you, the character I logged in as is almost 11 years old (created feb '00), and this place use to regularly have 50-60 people on at any given time. Tonight there was one person on. I find it a little sad. I think a lot of people prefer MMORPGs to good old fashioned MUDs, but I will never be one of those people.
MUD
Concept »
MUDs, or "Multi-User Dungeons", are online text adventure games which support multiple users in a persistent virtual world. Often including gameplay elements from role-playing games and hack-n-slash games, MUDs were the predecessors to today's modern MMORPG, and pioneered many of the concepts that are utilized in online gaming today.
Still playing MUDs?
I played a few years back but never really got anywhere with it, but I'm sure there are some active MUD's out there somewhere.
A MUD is a text based MMO - there are (typically) no graphics at all, everything is rendered in text. Typically there is a lot of customization available for your character, and role playing is a big deal (kind of like a table top RPG).
Hard to describe why they are so fun and addicting, best to play one and find out.
@rubberluffy: When I was in middle school I went to a science camp at a university here in Nebraska and on their local BBS the sysadmin had a MUD running. When I got home I figured out that my teacher parents had access to the internet by way of dialing into the local ESU so I could telnet into that BBS (and browse the web via lynx). So a big chunk of my time from probably 1992-4 was spent playing their MUD. I think it was a Crimson MUD variant. They eventually introduced player housing at some point and I'm not sure but I think my character's house might be in other versions of the game that went out. If you ever see a house of Justarius near a house of Santa in a MUD that was me.
For some reason tonight I had the stupid idea of a Giant Bomb themed MUD, maybe even one that you could access through this site. I'm contemplating making a post in the general forum with a casting call for programmers who could dink around in the code enough to make it work...
Yeah, I know, old thread and all that, which some people apparently don't like it when you resurrect. Anyway, I used to play some muds up until 5 years ago, also was a builder for a local short lived cyberpunk MUD in 2006.
I think it would be interesting to discuss the differences between the MUD and MMO genres, as the latter is generally just seen as the evolution of the former, but some early games that were called MMO's were text-based as well (Legends of Future Past and AT&T's Neverwinter Nights for example, though the latter was not strictly text-based, but included still images as well). I may not have played enough MUD's to make these general statements, but I think one difference is in the name, the MUD's I've played generally focused on one dungeon, like Diablo and Roguelikes, which players explored together (whether helping each other or not) while something like Legends of Future Past (and MMORPG's in general) had several areas and quests, letting players do their thing in different parts of the often huge game world.
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