[MUD-Dev] About.com article on Skotos

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Christopher Allen wrote:
>
> > The term 'next generation' or 'second generation' MUDs
> > is in itself insulting. A mud is a mud is a mud. There's
> > nothing 'innovative' that can be done with a MUD that
> > can't be done better through a graphical MMORPG."
> 
> Many people have rebutted this statement, including our our Raph
> Koster, Dave Whatley and Solomon of Simutronics, as well as quite a
> few other folks.

I'll rebutt on this as well.

It shows how short sighted he is. With current technology, text based
muds offers a much better chance for achieving some of the lofier
goals of electronic roleplaying games, as programmers and NPC's have a
much more suitable level of abstraction than they do in graphical
muds. Thus developments of things like natural language parsing, goal
based NPC reasonning and the like.

Futher more, yes perhaps many of the innovation Skotos have made could
be done in a graphical MMORPG. But not for the same price! (remember,
this is buisness!). The production price of a storyline/plot in an
MMORPG is much higher due to the cost of adding the graphics &
sound. So, the product Skotos delivers is of much higher entertainment
value, as they are able to offer much more and changing storylines
than does a MMORPG with the same resources.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but only one in a thousand will
be able to paint that picture, using hundred fold more time.

Hans Henrik Stærfeldt   |    bombman at diku.dk    | work:  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk      |
Address:                |___  +45 40383492    __|__       +45 45252425     __|
DTU, Kemitorvet,        | Scientific programmer at Center for Biological     |
bygn 208, CBS.          |  Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark|

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