[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2001 22:43:04 -0700 
Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jun 2001 21:54:04 -0700, J C Lawrence <claw at 2wire.com>
> wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Jun 2001 18:20:51 -0700 Caliban Tiresias Darklock
>> <caliban at darklock.com> wrote:

>>> I'm shocked. NONE of them have this? Why not? It's one of the
>>> primary wish-list features for my own system. Has been for
>>> years.

>> The usual MUD implementation is to have an NNTP server off the
>> side and then build a netnews client into the MUD.

> But that's public. What about private communications? 

Caught me.  I was skipping that as MUD-Mail and other like
solutions, all the way down to POP3/IMAP exports (as Brian relates)
are common.  Even Aber has a MUD-Mail patch/implementation, I think
with a POP3 export, and that's arguably the most primitive of the
widely distributed MUDs at this point.  AIR LambdaMOO (or was it
JH?) did some interesting work in this area and tried to make it a
subject of academic study.

  Sadly MySQL successfully ate the Library DB before I had a chance
  to move it to PostgresQL, or I'd do some checking on this. (I'm
  getting very diesenchanted with MySQL).  I should get a backup
  copy restored by this w/e.

The NNTP approach is less common, but I think more interesting as
its a successful integration play, something that's rarely been
tried successfully in other venues (eg webMOO, MediaMOO, etc).

> I mean, personally, I'd think in a medieval setting you would
> think first about player-to-player and *then* player-to-group.

I posit that attempting to artificially restrict the communication
abilities of players is implicitly doomed to failure (for all my
ranting on private namespaces, user/account/character distinctions
and so forth).  You can do it, but the players will conspire, and
successfully to boot, to bypass and controls you attempt to instill.
ICQ is hardly IC and its use in games is rampant.  There's little
reason to not bolt on something similar with themed frippery if
you're concerned about presentation models.  The potential gains for
your service are large.

ObNote: While I actively dislike and do not use IM (horrible idea),
I've been waiting for someone to integrate one or more of the
popular IM servers (AIM, ICQ, etc) into/with their service.  At a
programming level its not hard.  The interface jockeying can be a
bit tricky.  The player penetration/perception rewards seem to be
rich and waiting..

--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
The pressure to survive and rhetoric may make strange bedfellows
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