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

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Caliban Tiresias Darklock [mailto:caliban at darklock.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 1998 5:37 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Ugh, IS Diablo a mud?

> Personally, I think everything which can be played in a multi-player
> environment with some individual character or group of 
> characters is a MUD.
> The key to MUD is the term "Multi-User", and as a result 
> anything which is
> played over a network with multiple players and involves some 
> semblance of
> role-playing or role-assumption is a MUD in my eyes. So not 
> only is Quake a
> MUD, *Doom* is a MUD. So is Warcraft. So is Dungeon Keeper.

Here's something about those last two that I find interesting--I don't
see playing Warcraft as assuming a role, necessarily. And I think that
Dungeon Keeper is just barely doing that, and perhaps I feel that way
because DK doesn't have a sense of "you" in the game very strongly--it
feels more like a god game instead.

Is a requirement that there be an avatar of the player in the game?

(As an aside, I re-discovered recently that some places call muds
"habitats" after Lucasfilm's effort. This colors the term for me--I
would have great difficulty in calling most of these borderline cases
"habitats" because of connotations of the word. Thoughts on that?)

-Raph