A perspective out of time - the mudreport document

[Nathan Yospe]

The document Chris mentioned (See Gods) turned out to be a somewhat dated
and extremely enlightening piece of work. As I didn't come into the world
of MUDs until late 1994 (having tried Deeper Trouble at the behest of a
then DT wiz in 1993 and having found it lacking) much of what the document
(UK centric and dated ~1990, it appeared... also phone centric, with
little significance taken to the internet) was new to me, and rather
interesting, expecially in light of the discountive predictions for LP and
TinyMUD lines (and we all know what the real breakdown is, sad to say...
LP, Tiny, and Diku, a cheap hardcode clone)

I find it interesting how many advanced concepts were being tackled even
back then (though their willingness to give credit for as yet
unaccomplished claims was amusing) compared to now, where I suspect we
(the members of this list) make up a sizable portion of the groundbreaking
efforts. What exactly happened? I know some of you have been involved in
this for longer than I. Any thoughts?

I suppose, from the perspectives provided in the documents, that most of
it has been done before, if crudely, and often as part of a failed
package. Mention of discreet gridding and coordinate systems, economics,
and sophisticated language implementations are made... and yet there are
Dikus out there, and most of the mentioned muds are gone (except MUD1,
MUD2, Dirt, Shades, and some of the Tinys and LPs... none of which have
particularly impressed me.) Or was the document naive or simply viewing
through lenses of a less discerning nature than we are today? Whatever the
case... somehow we ended up with Nightmare LP, Circle, and ROM. Bleah.

   __    _   __  _   _   ,  ,  , ,  
  /_  / / ) /_  /_) / ) /| /| / /\            First Light of a Nova Dawn
 /   / / \ /_  /_) / \ /-|/ |/ /_/            Final Night of a World Gone
Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu