[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Merillat <harik at chaos.ao.net>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Friday, August 25, 2000 10:39 PM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] UO rants
>Attempting to call a large group of people with no RL interaction a
"community"
>of any kind simply because they are all interacting in the same system
online
>is a mistake.  A community may for, or multiple communities, but the whole
thing
>is a collection of people interacting with people that have nearly no
impact on
>their RL lives.   Fairly obvious why grief playing is so common, no?
>
    I'll refer you to "A Story About A Tree",
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/essay1.html .  I defy you to explain
how that *wasn't* a community, even though few if any of the participants
had any RL interaction.  It's just one of many such examples I've personally
witnessed.

    Raph has pointed out that the first year of UO recapitulated the
socio/political evolution of medieval Europe from about 700-1000 AD in many
ways.  These communities are real social networks whose connections happen
to run through cyberspace.  They do present some unique challenges because
the "landscape" and "physics" are completely different, but they are as real
(or not real) as any based on RL interaction.  As we learn more about how to
meet those challenges, the communities will grow stronger, and more complex.

--Dave Rickey




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