[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wire d Magazine...)

[Robert Woods]

On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

> Have you ever logged onto a MUD and seen that everyone on it is apparently
> idle, but the who list says they're active? And then after a little
> investigation, you discover a heated debate about the relative merits of
> Hanson and the Spice Girls on some internal channel? 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. ;)
> 

I have seen that many times, and wondered about it.  One time, I asked one
of my friends (an avid player of MUDs) why he logged on to them rather
than something devoted more to chatting.  His reply was "Because if the
conversation gets boring, I can go out and kill stuff."  I thought about
it, and it sounded weird, but right.  One of the great appeals of a
multi-player game is the interactions with other live players, whether it
is pkilling, stealing, classes/guilds/clans, or just chatting.  If there's
nobody on to interact with, however, you can still just go out and kick
some NPC butt, go on a quest, etc.

Plus, so many MUDs have those really cool emotes that you often have to
make yourself on IRC :)

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I'm not insane, I'm just irrational.

-Bob