[MUD-Dev] Re: [Mud-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 04:45 PM 8/14/98 -0500, I personally witnessed cat jumping up to say:
>Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>
>> And you 
>> look around at this huge MUD that people spent a lot of time and effort 
>> to build, and you wonder why everyone would waste it on some stripped-down 
>> imitation of IRC? 
>>
>> I don't get that. Maybe one day I'll figure it out. ;)
>
>Sounds great to me!  America Online has made billions on providing a place
>to chat about popular music groups and such for people.  :X)

I always thought AOL's major attraction was that it cut through all the
crap. It was slick and pretty and easy to get around on and most
importantly, easy to find what you wanted on. I never understood the chat
craze on AOL. Maybe I'm spoiled by IRC and whatnot, but I found it really
annoying that anyone could turn around and tell the AOL staff that you were
being obscene or whatever and then the AOL police would come in the room
and tell you to stop what you were doing -- and of course, they wouldn't
hesitate to terminate your account if you objected.

>To me it looks like an issue of whether the MUD is there to satisfy the 
>desires of the people that made it, or the people that play it.  

I'd say it's definitely *supposed* to be there for the people that play it,
but believe me I understand how much of an annoyance it is when you work
REALLY hard on something and then the players ignore it completely. (It's
even worse when they complain that they want it, bother you to build it,
and then once you get it working they complain about what an annoyance it
is and demand it be removed.)

>For the record, I always viewed IRC as a stripped-down chat mud.  I can't 
>see viewing a mud as a stripped down IRC, when in a mud you can type "look 
>Joe" and get a description.  

I wasn't saying that the MUD itself was a stripped down IRC, but that the
internal channel system was a stripped down IRC. Most such systems don't
have the same benefits as being in the same MUD room with someone... they
generally don't offer much beyond say, emote, and a WHO list. :)


---
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