FW: [MUD-Dev] MUD timeline

[Daniel James]

Raph, a few things for the timeline;

Raph Koster writes:
> 1987
> *    MUD2 is launched as British Legends on Compuserve.

I am by no means sure, but I was always under the impression
that British Legends was consistently MUD1. MUD2 certainly
launched in the UK as a stand-alone dialup service operated
by British Telecom. I can't recall the year. Richard?

Blatant plug (though I am no longer associated with its
operation); in 1994 Avalon went onto the Internet (after
operating since 1990 with modems and 'host-play' terminals
in the UK). This is noteworthy, aside from any innovations
in Avalon's gameplay, because I think we were the first 
commercial MUD on the Internet. We certainly got flamed 
as if we were. 

(1993)
>*    Electric Communities is founded by Farmer and Morningstar. 
> Their product is The Palace.

EC's product was not The Palace - that was developed by a 
division of Time Warner and later - 1998, I think - acquired
by EC, who are now communities.com

EC's product (aside from contracting on Worldsaway) was a
major revision of Habitats, called both Habitats and Microcosm.
It had a number of very interesting properties, notably a secure
distributed architecture. It was mothballed during The Palace /
Onlive! acquisition, though I believe they are continuing to
work on the technology and some of it (www.erights.org) is open
source.

>*    Worlds Inc founded in Seattle, launches WorldsChat.

Seattle? Could be. I know they were based in San Francisco, later.

(1998?)
> *    Asheron's Call opens.

This was in 1999.

(1999)
>*    Lyra's Underlight launches doing a roleplay-enforced graphical
game.

I think this was 1998 - maybe even 1997 for the beta. They launched
via mPlayer but have recently gone back to being independent.


Good call putting this together.

Daniel






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