[MUD-Dev] Online World Timeline slashdotted

[Ted L. Chen]

Raph Koster wrote:

> - a huge amount of the replies are concerned with things like
> DWANGO, Kali, and other peer to peer matchmaking services. To what
> extent does the list readership think that these can be or should
> be seen as relevant to a history of muds?

I'd say pretty strongly related.  Services like Kali were quite
influential in providing the bridge between IPX and TCP/IP for a lot
of the starting 'multiplayer' games.  While I wouldn't call a
multiplayer game of standard Quake a MUD, the move to TCP/IP for a
lot of these games provided a large enough community for mod-makers
to gather together and share their creations for these games.  How
might this be related to MUDs?  Community and User Content.

One could say that these were online worlds, whose boundary is at
the game-level, not the specific instance.  Sort of like what
Bioware's NWN is attempting right now.

>   - another huge portion of the replies deals with BBS door games,
>   an acknowledged weakness in the timeline. So consider this my
>   repeated plea for further info on these beasts. :)

I'd consider BBS door games as an evolutionary cousin.  That is,
they operated on a smaller scale than your traditional MUD mainly
because of infrastructure differences (< 10 line home/small office
computers versus a multiuser edu trunk or an online service) Because
of that limitation, they tested slightly different gameplay
mechanics like action points per day (i.e. tradewars) and tested the
icky waters of what happens to characters when players go offline.
That branch is pretty much dead now, but still a part of the
evolution of online worlds.

TLC


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