[MUD-Dev] A Brief History of Commercial MUDs

[Travis Casey]

Monday, March 19, 2001, 2:40:02 PM, Sellers, Michael <MSellers at maxis.com> wrote:
> Travis wrote:
>> Brian Hook wrote:

>>> I'm specifically curious to see a ranking of commercial MUDs (text
>>> or graphical) based on subscribers.
 
>> The best timeline of muds that I know is Raph Koster's, at:
>> 
>>   http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/mudtimeline.html

> Wow.  I hadn't checked Raph's timeline for awhile.  Accurate and
> intensive, as usual.  But viewing the years 1995-2001, I feel like I
> have a case of temporal whiplash.  And I'm sure I'm not alone in
> that!

I've been looking over the timeline, and have some corrections and
additions to submit:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

1937
 - The Lord of the Rings was not published in 1937 -- The Hobbit was.

1954-1955
 - The three books of the Lord of the Rings are published in England.
   This is their first publication.

1972
 - Sandy Morton, who was also involved in the creation of ADVENT,
   has written in rec.arts.int-fiction:

    "Well, Will Crowther made the game up after we had been playing
     D&D for a few months.  A new arrival on the ARPANET project
     was also a housemaster at Harvard at the time and D&D had
     pretty much just appeared.  He dungeounmastered up a dungeon
     and a bunch of us from the project team got sucked into
     playing."

   Since D&D had not been circulated in 1972, Crowther could not have
   written ADVENT then, if this memory is correct.  Chapter two of
   Dibbell's _My Tiny Life_ states that ADVENT was written in 1976,
   but I haven't found anything else to confirm that.

1975
 - Basic D&D was not published in 1975.  The original '74 D&D set was
   the only version of D&D until 1977 (although supplements were
   printed during that "in-between" time).

1977
 - A new version of Dungeons & Dragons with simplified rules, later to
   be called "Basic Dungeons & Dragons", is published.  It contains
   the first known use of the term "role-playing game".

1980
 - "Basic Dungeons & Dragons" and "Expert Dungeons & Dragons" are
   published.  This publication marks a split between "Dungeons &
   Dragons" and "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", as TSR modifies the
   rules of BD&D to be less like AD&D.  The split was made for
   legal reasons -- David Arneson, the co-creator of D&D, had left
   TSR and sued for royalties from D&D.  TSR maintained that AD&D was
   a different game, and they therefore should not have to pay
   royalties to Arneson on it or its products.  Maintaining this,
   however, required that they not replace D&D with AD&D, as had been
   their original intent.  For this reason, TSR continued to produce
   both D&D and AD&D, and to change the two game lines to be different
   from each other, into the early '90's.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   


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