[MUD-Dev2] BIZ: welcome back to me (warning long but exciting)

[Frank Crowell]

first i would like to welcome me back, i am frank crowell and once ran
the site maddog studios - if you remember that. i plan to re-open either
maddog studios or renamed as mischief works. i havent decided yet.
anyway, the goal is to pursue the notion of a "personal" 3D network game
platform.
 
It's been a few years since I posted and the biggest difference is that
now we have EQ/EQ2/WoW and a few more. All of them run by big companies
on huge networked infrastructures, closed source, closed content, closed
rules. Fun to play but it reminds me of the ancient computer centers of
the mainframes.
 
another development, much less public, has been the emulators with UO
probably being the best known but there have been a few other fairly
good ones. But as usual, misunderstanding of the legal issues and no
legal defense funds scares these projects. the public view is that 
courts have upheld copyright/EULA violations. that is not the case. most
groups are scared off with a simple cease and desist letter. the bnet
(or whatever it was called) was settled on a couple of obscure points
based on the DCMA - an act intended to protect the entertainment
industry from media pirates.
 
Another approach - and one with no champion yet - is to encourage these
big companies to open up their game worlds a little including a home
edition or storefront edition or little business center edition. Instead
of fighting the emulators, why not encourage especially for older
products such as pre-8th editon Everquest. put them on their own
network, open up the content, make the servers open source, provide a
scripting language or three, and a so on.
 
So, we have still no open source, readily available core server that can
handle something like EQ or WoW. We have no open content system (except
for NWN, although i dont think they expressed it as open content) for
small personal nets. Second Life has some sort of open content but then
so did the VRML servers. And second life is another closed - we want to
run it all - system.
 
Not a lot has changed over the years except that maybe two or three
companies have managed to get a monoply (trioply?) into the modern day
mud and everyone else is still back in 1991. ok maybe not everyone else,
but close enough.
 
Ok I have to mention them again - NWN. There you have a server you can
run under either windows or linux, scripting language, tools, and
somewhat open content. An open source version of that and one that can
run multiple zones, persistence, and full 3D could be a very good
starting point i believe.
 
frank