[MUD-Dev] First Muds - newbie magic?

[Martin Keegan]

On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Nathan Yospe wrote:

> :> feeling I got when I first played it, and that vision has stuck with
> :> me ever since.  So to me it's actually kind of amazing that others
> :> play the game and consider it just a big game of Zork with lots of people
> :> around to talk to.
> 
> :Those are the people who never got into mudding, or who, like me, have
> :passed beyond the initial login experience, but have forgotten what it
> :felt like.
> 
> Or they played on a mud _designed_ exactly like that. No offense to
> Keegan, but Island had a huge element of that.

Assumed orthodoxies again, I fear. As far as gameplay went, yes, it was a
big game of Zork with lots of people to talk to, and proud of it. The
point was that there was more to it than just being a bunch of socket code
with game features. The most important consequence of TinyMUD was to
establish the potential of muds as an artistic medium - a step beyond mere
hypertext - after all, there was buggerall else to do on Tinys! :)
Island was seething with devious wordplay, cryptic allusions and
references, dangling subconscious suggestions, etc. No wonder people hated
it :)

Mk