[MUD-Dev] Ugh, IS Diablo a mud?

[Koster]

So I got into a discussion on Usenet with a fellow named Jag about
whether or not Diablo was a mud. It started out because he wanted to
know if there was any difference between the following terms:

mud
persistent world (PWOG)
massively multiplayer online rpg (MMORPG)
online rpg (ORPG)
online game

In particular, he wanted to know if Diablo was a mud.

I said there are three things that muds can change or save:

- the world proper: eg maps, exits, room descriptions, etc.
- the stuff in the world: eg stuff you drop on the ground.
- the player characters.

I said that muds either had a static map pre-built that was reset to
each time the game booted, or had a dynamic map that evolved and that
was reset to its last state each time the world booted.

I said that whether or not a mud saved stuff in the world, or
characters, or stuff on characters, was irrelevant.

I said that a mud implied some sense of spatiality.

I basically had this table built in my head, that looked like this:

             World   Stuff  Characters  Char's Stuff   Char's Standing
Early muds
Dikus
LPs
MUSHes
UO
M59
Subspace
Quake
Diablo
   
World means that the map dataset can change and said changes are saved.
Stuff means that items left loose in the world can change and their
state is saved. Characters means that the player's character can change
and the change is saved. Char's stuff means that stuff carried by the
character is saved. Char's standing means that you may not save anything
about the "character" except a point value, but that at least said point
value is preserved from game to game (ladder systems, levels, what have
you).

Now, of course, you can't simply plop down Xs in different places in
this table because codebases evolved. Originally, as I recall, LPs
weren't capable of saving character's stuff? And many Dikus have added
the ability to save if not all, then some of the stuff laying about in
the world, etc.

Now, by these criteria I ended up with something that looked sorta like
this:

             World   Stuff  Characters  Char's Stuff   Char's Standing
Early muds
 and many
 PK muds                                                      X
Dikus                            X            X               X
LPs                              X            X               X
MUSHes         X       X         X            X               X
UO                     X         X            X               X
M59                              X            X               X
Subspace                                                      X
Quake                                                         X
Diablo                           X            X               X

And to my dismay, Diablo has a map that is the same each time you return
to it, (at least in town), saves your character over time, saves the
stuff your character acquires, and saves your character's standing. This
was disturbing because I don't see it as *persistent*. But in fact, the
town area is indeed as persistent as stock Dikus are.

So I feebly said, "well, but there's multiple instantiations of the town
space... you're playing in separate games..." But then I realized that
there are multiple instances of the town of Tos in Meridian 59, too, and
of Britain in UO, and indeed of Midgaard in Dikus. This is not
necessarily an obstacle.

Neither is quantity of players. Plenty of muds that support 250 only get
5 at a time.

The point made by Jag was that rebooting a Diku and starting a new game
of Diablo isn't really very different. Yet in my gut, I still think that
Diablo is not a mud, and a Diku is.

Am I nuts? And if I am not nuts, is there a specific chain of logic that
shows it? ;)

-DD