The Historical DikuMUD List
AxL
The Oldest DikuMUDs
Compiled by AxL
This compilation is an ongoing list of the DikuMUDs that have
withstood the test of time. This is not meant to be elitist in any
way, it is just interesting to keep track of where the oldest muds are
running. If you feel there is a mud that deserves to be on the list
send me mail and tell me. After all, I am sure that I may have
forgotten one or two, or not know that one is around anymore.
However, any mud that does not adhere to the DikuMUD license
agreement, regardless of age, will _not_ be listed. This has always
been the case, but now it is firmly stated.
Update: addresses now in URL format, and the (199x) date is the date
the mud opened to the public.
Current Total: 27
AlexMUD (1991)
Address: telnet://alexmud.stacken.kth.se:4000 (130.237.234.80 4000)
Home Page: http://www.stacken.kth.se/~alexmud
Apocalypse V
Address: telnet://sapphire.geo.wvu.edu:4000 (157.182.168.20 4000)
Home Page: http://sapphire.geo.wvu.edu/~apoc/
Arctic (1992)
Address: telnet://mud.arctic.org:2700 (128.32.43.55 2700)
Home Page: http://www.arctic.org/
Armageddon (1992)
Address: telnet://armageddon.org:23 (204.71.107.55 23)
Home Page: http://www.armageddon.org/
AustinMUD (1991)
Address: telnet://austin.prg.dtu.dk:4000 (130.225.2.6 4000)
Home Page: http://austin.prg.dtu.dk/austin
Blue Facial MUD (1993)
Address: telnet://dallet.channel1.com:1234 (205.240.163.3 1234)
Home Page: N/A
Empire (1992)
Address: telnet://cis.clarion.edu 4000 (209.250.195.11 4000)
Home Page: http://cis.clarion.edu/Empire/
ErisMUD (formerly KallistiMUD) (1992)
Address: telnet://mud.environs.com:4000 (204.255.198.17 4000)
Home Page: http://mud.environs.com
FieryMud
Address: telnet://fmud.fierymud.org:4000 (163.246.96.107 4000)
Home Page: http://www.fierymud.org/
FuskerMUD
Address: telnet://alice.ibmpcug.co.uk:4000 (192.68.174.72 4000)
Home Page: http://odin.cmp.ilstu.edu/~ishu/fusker.html
GrimneMUD (1991)
Address: telnet://grimne.pvv.ntnu.no:4000 (129.241.210.220 4000)
Home Page: http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/grimne/
Imperial
Address: telnet://mandrake.cs.hut.fi:6969 (130.233.40.66 6969)
Home Page: http://mandrake.cs.hut.fi/
Imperial Gizmo
Address: telnet://gizmo.camalott.com:6969 (208.203.140.6 6969)
Home Page: N/A
JediMUD (1992)
Address: telnet://jedi.america.net:4000 (206.113.230.250 4000)
Home Page: http://www.america.net/~jedi
MozartMUD (1993)
Address: telnet://mozart.atpnet.com:4500 (207.54.184.253 4500)
Home Page: http://mozart.atpnet.com
MUME
Address: http://fire.pvv.org/Import/running.html (MUME Server)
Home Page: http://fire.pvv.org
Nilgiri
Address: telnet://nilgiri.mythril.com:8888 (205.169.40.250 8888)
Home Page: http://nilgiri.mythril.com/Nilgiri/
ROM (1993)
Address: telnet://rom.org:9000 (206.102.31.199 9000)
Home Page: http://www.rom.org
Ronin Mud
Address: telnet://ronin.mux.net:5000 (207.96.1.15 5000)
Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dungeon/3624/
Sloth II (1992)
Address: telnet://slothmud.org:6101 (129.237.80.113 6101)
Home Page: http://www.slothmud.org
SneezyMUD (1992)
Address: telnet://sneezy.stanford.edu:7900 (171.64.12.242 7900)
Home Page: http://sneezy.stanford.edu/
Sojourn (Formerly Toril) (1993)
Address: telnet://toril.org:9999 (24.131.0.78 9999)
Home Page: http://www.torilmud.com
StackMUD
Address: telnet://mud.terkel.dk:8000 (195.8.128.141 8000)
Home Page: http://mud.terkel.dk
Worlds of Carnage (1992)
Address: telnet://carnage.labs.emich.edu:4000 (164.76.108.52 4000)
Home Page: N/A
Valhalla (1993)
Address: telnet://valhalla.com:4000 (208.219.30.9 4000)
Home Page: http://www.valhalla.com/
VieMud (formerly NaVie)
Address: telnet://ritual.darkrune.org:8000 (208.138.115.85 8000)
Home Page: http://democracy.queensu.ca/~fletcher/VieMud/
ZeeMUD (formerly Mudde Pathetique) (1991)
Address: telnet://mud.zeemud.org:4000 (140.174.164.51 4000)
Home Page: http://www.zeemud.org/
--
-AxL a...@wpcr.plymouth.edu "In Christianity, neither morality nor religion
j_he...@oz.plymouth.edu Come into contact with reality at any point."
http://mindwarp.plymouth.edu/~axl - Nietzsche
Brigand
Brigand of IllusionMUD.
AxL wrote in message <6vlbv8$hq2$1...@oz.plymouth.edu>...
Rob Wynne
> You need a girlfriend.
>
> Brigand of IllusionMUD.
> AxL wrote in message <6vlbv8$hq2$1...@oz.plymouth.edu>...
> >
> >
> >
> > Compiled by AxL
> >
Y'know something, this is just sad. I've been invovled with mudding now
for nearly a decade. At one time, the mudding community was vibrant, and
full of hope and promise. The streets were cleaner, the food was cheaper,
etc. etc.
Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
population? Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people like
this just make the really interesting people who were interested in a sense
of virtual community find better things to do with their time?
JediMUD has been running since 1992, and I've been a part of making that
happen since 1993. And you know what -- I'm damn proud of that. And I
should be. Consider that in 1992:
* The World Wide Web did not exist.
* Almost everyone mudded from a shell account.
* Email addresses were badges of geek pride, not something you
put on your business card.
* The most widely used and powerful way to find information on the
internet was Gopher and Veronica.
* 90% of the e-mail addresses you saw ended in ".edu"
Point being: this was, if not the Pleiocene era of the Internet, very
likely the early middle ages. For any institution to have survived,
let alone prospered, for this length of time is an amazing feat.
It is the dream of any creator, be they writer, artist, musician, or
even mud implementor, to create something that is of lasting value.
Every person invovled in the success of the muds on that list have
done that, and they are all to be commended. What of lasting value
have you contributed to the Internet community?
+doc
The Original JediMUD: jedi.america.net 4000
--
Rob Wynne \ The Autographed Cat \ d...@america.net
The best original science-fiction and fantasy on the web:
Aphelion Webzine: http://www.aphelion-webzine.com
Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Timothy Timbrook
Rob Wynne <ro...@zen.america.net > wrote:
>Brigand (bri...@illusionmud.com) wrote:
>> You need a girlfriend.
>>
>> AxL wrote in message <6vlbv8$hq2$1...@oz.plymouth.edu>...
>> >
>> > The Oldest DikuMUDs
>
>Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
>rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
>population? Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people like
>this just make the really interesting people who were interested in a sense
>of virtual community find better things to do with their time?
My favorite theory is the average age of mudders has dropped. Now
days, there seems to be large numbers of 14-16yos mudding - even
trying to start their own muds. (many even younger than this.)
With the average age dropping, so does the level of maturity of
the overall community. (The downside of the net mainstreaming,
I'd guess...)
>+doc
>The Original JediMUD: jedi.america.net 4000
JediMUD was the first mud I ever played. 'Tis nice to see it's
still alive. :)
Drifter
AxL
>You need a girlfriend.
Hmmm....and this means what? If you are attempting to make a
lame-assed assumption that since I maintain two diku-related informative
lists I therefore must have no life, that is laughable.
Perhaps it takes you a few days to type a page of information,
but the rest of us grown-ups have it down to far less than that.
K E Overstreet
wrote:
>Y'know something, this is just sad. I've been invovled with mudding now
>for nearly a decade. At one time, the mudding community was vibrant, and
>full of hope and promise. The streets were cleaner, the food was cheaper,
>etc. etc.
Ahh yes. It seems like only yesterday on Copper we were all talking
about that "new" area, Dwarven Kingdom. And you had to get 15 people
together to kill a tree or a blob (two creatures that didn't seem to
survive past copper MUD) When level 20 was IT! And the Matrix still
hung over west main street.
>Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
>rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
>population? Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people like
>this just make the really interesting people who were interested in a sense
>of virtual community find better things to do with their time?
I think that most of the interesting, more intellectual people left
the MUD field years ago for reasons that they had more interesting,
intellectual things to do. Most of the new people you see on are like
the monkeys living in the Brahman houses in India. They just leaped
into the abandoned building and took over the mansion. blissfully
unaware that the place might have contained something else besides
monkeys
..
>JediMUD has been running since 1992, and I've been a part of making that
>happen since 1993. And you know what -- I'm damn proud of that. And I
>should be. Consider that in 1992:
my friends played JediMUD. I was loyal to Grimne, Copper and Judy at
the time. I just have a question for Axl. JudyMUD was up in 1992 and
it's still up, though its switched sights. Every few years it seems
to move, but it's still VERY MUCH the same mud. it's always been up
at <person name>.indstate.edu 1200 (4000 for a VERY brief time) and
it's quite a funky little gamma code that has gone feral and mutated
into something quite strange.
> * The World Wide Web did not exist.
What's funny, is i refused to get on the web when it first came out.
It was too flashy for my tastes.
> * Almost everyone mudded from a shell account.
Something else an old "geek pride" was to figure out how your VMS
administrators disabled telnetting to ports and get around it. (the
Unix shell admins just didn't have the heart to do it) At our school
it was even MORE of a geek pride if you could find a way to weasel a
Shell acount from the admin without being a CS major. Even bigger
geek pride was to figure out the backdoors they used to always set up
for visiting faculty and MUD from there without having an account at
all!
> * Email addresses were badges of geek pride, not something you
> put on your business card.
Did you brag to your friends about how many accounts you had and what
level access they gave you?
> * The most widely used and powerful way to find information on the
> internet was Gopher and Veronica.
Don't forget word of mouth! sometimes that was the only way to find a
mud! I have vague memories of also punching in addresses and adding a
port 4000 to them to see if a MUD would pop up. There would be like 6
of us in a room all doing it and when we found one wed all get on the
found one, Usually surprising the people there because they didn't
think their MUD went public yet.
> * 90% of the e-mail addresses you saw ended in ".edu"
yep.
>Point being: this was, if not the Pleiocene era of the Internet, very
>likely the early middle ages. For any institution to have survived,
>let alone prospered, for this length of time is an amazing feat.
Yes, I was amazed that there were a few muds there that were
established when I got on! Also, I intend to use this list to find out
what happened to the excellent old chesnuts.
>It is the dream of any creator, be they writer, artist, musician, or
>even mud implementor, to create something that is of lasting value.
>Every person invovled in the success of the muds on that list have
>done that, and they are all to be commended. What of lasting value
>have you contributed to the Internet community?
It seems now that few people contribute more than poorly executed
flames and spam. What's really odd to me, is that back in the "old
days" my posts were seen as "fluff" because they didn't talk about
coding or ways of making ranged combat possible. Instead I'd ask
questions like "why not have players get cold if they walk around
naked in the snow?" (something I STILL ask) But now, my posts are
treated with some dignity and respect.
I don't think that's a good thing. Cream always floats to the top, but
pour off the cream and add lots of dung, and milk starts to look alot
like cream.
KEO
>+doc
>The Original JediMUD: jedi.america.net 4000
>
Chris Jensen
<snip>
: Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
: rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
: population? Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people like
: this just make the really interesting people who were interested in a sense
: of virtual community find better things to do with their time?
I have a few theories below.
: JediMUD has been running since 1992, and I've been a part of making that
: happen since 1993. And you know what -- I'm damn proud of that. And I
: should be.
I think you should be too.
:Consider that in 1992:
: * The World Wide Web did not exist.
True, but not directly relevant IMHO.
: * Almost everyone mudded from a shell account.
True, and quite relevant. No zmud, only tintin (if you were on a system
it was ported to) or clever use of keyboard macros in <insert comm program
of your choice> (Q-modem was my fave). I spent 2 days tracking down a
binary of tintin for VMS (no access to the compiler on my account at that
time) only to find out that I could only run it for about an hour before
it used up all my CPU quota. Win based MUD clients will be the downfall
of modern society, mark my words!
: * Email addresses were badges of geek pride, not something you
: put on your business card.
: * The most widely used and powerful way to find information on the
: internet was Gopher and Veronica.
: * 90% of the e-mail addresses you saw ended in ".edu"
90% of net users either held a college degree or were working towards one.
90% of mud users were the typical computer-geek. The typical computer
geek is a reclusive, socially backward, non-aggressive person. If you
make these people more socially adept, you have the perfect mudder (from
this IMPs perspective anyway). Other things that made 92 better than now:
* AOL had crippled NET access.
* No hotmail.
* Only technically knowledgeable, responsible adults were allowed to be
sysadmins.
flame* > /dev/null
Chris J.
John Miley
>the time. I just have a question for Axl. JudyMUD was up in 1992 and
>it's still up, though its switched sights. Every few years it seems
>to move, but it's still VERY MUCH the same mud. it's always been up
>at <person name>.indstate.edu 1200 (4000 for a VERY brief time) and
>it's quite a funky little gamma code that has gone feral and mutated
>into something quite strange.
JudyMUD...was this not known as Albanian for awhile? The imp's name was
Mel, I think? I miss that place; it was my favorite hang out for a long
time, after I left Eltanin. Is it still in existance somewhere?
--JSM
Timothy Timbrook
Dulcinea West <dulc...@X.exit109.com > wrote:
>Chris Jensen <cje...@potter.ieee.uh.edu> wrote:
>>Other things that made 92 better than now:
...
>And do you know how hard it is to find a shell-only account these days?
>I had to hunt high and low to find one. I still prefer to mud from a
>shell account.
Heh... I can't find local access to one. As far as I know, all the
ISPs around me are "PPP only". The usual responce when I ask about
getting a shell account is either "huh?!" or "what?". ;)
(One did say "We can't for security reasons." lol.)
Drifter
Chris Jensen
: Chris Jensen <cje...@potter.ieee.uh.edu> wrote:
: >Other things that made 92 better than now:
: *sigh* If only we could put those worms back in the can.
: >* Only technically knowledgeable, responsible adults were allowed to be
: > sysadmins.
: Hmm. I would debate the "responsible adults" thing. I knew far too many
: sysadmins in my time to say that. :-P But they WERE more responsible than
: many are now.
What I was trying to get at was that only a limited number of people had
root access to the machines doing the actual TCP/IP comms, nowadays
everybody has access to raw sockets and can do all kinds of mischief by
exploiting the weaknesses inherent in TCP.
Chris J.
Brigand
are 13-14 year olds. Im sure youve made many a smartass remark in your time.
The fact that the average age seems to be dropping in the MUD playing/owning
community, should show that kids are becoming more capable at computers than
many adults. I'm 18, I've run a MUD since I was 16, its still alive and
thriving, I've been working with computers since I was nine. I may be young,
but i remember many of the "old" days before the www existed, etc. Hell, I
remember when Compuserve was the dominant Net provider. When we first bought
a computer, (a 486dx2 33, with a 60 meg harddrive and 4 megs of ram and a
*gasp* 5"/1.44" combo drive) it ran us over 4 grand. now you can buy
desktop home computers that are state of the art for under 3 grand. With the
world moving towards a paperless society, Kids are beginning to see the
importance of gettig a good base in computer knowledge. *ramble*
Brigand
Timothy Timbrook wrote in message <53275.t...@bright.net>...
>On Mon, 12 Oct 1998 14:46:00 GMT,
>Rob Wynne <ro...@zen.america.net > wrote:
>
>>Brigand (bri...@illusionmud.com) wrote:
>>> You need a girlfriend.
>>>
>>> AxL wrote in message <6vlbv8$hq2$1...@oz.plymouth.edu>...
>>> >
>>> > The Oldest DikuMUDs
>>
>>Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
>>rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
>>population? Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people like
>>this just make the really interesting people who were interested in a
sense
>>of virtual community find better things to do with their time?
>
>My favorite theory is the average age of mudders has dropped. Now
>days, there seems to be large numbers of 14-16yos mudding - even
>trying to start their own muds. (many even younger than this.)
>With the average age dropping, so does the level of maturity of
>the overall community. (The downside of the net mainstreaming,
>I'd guess...)
>
>>+doc
>>The Original JediMUD: jedi.america.net 4000
>
Timothy Timbrook
Brigand <bri...@illusionmud.com> wrote:
>It's funny I think, that just because someone makes a smartass remark, they
>are 13-14 year olds. Im sure youve made many a smartass remark in your time.
I am not going by the flames here. I go by my _direct_ mudding
experience. I've had many 14(and less) beg to build on my mud.
I stress I'm less worried about their age and more about their
maturity. Also, I've let a number of 14-16yos try, they only
proved my suspicions on their immaturity.
Not to mention what I see when I do my drifting over the past
4+ yrs in muds.
>The fact that the average age seems to be dropping in the MUD playing/owning
>community, should show that kids are becoming more capable at computers than
>many adults.
Never said it was above them. Only pointed out the lack of maturity.
(btw. Age isn't the only factor. Some teens are more than their over
all group. I've met way too many immature adults too. I'm speaking in
_general terms_, younger usually means less mature.)
There's a gigantic difference in a mud run by a 14yo and a mud run by
someone run by someone twice that age.
The lowering of the average age was my "theory" for explaining what
the original poster described as "the malcontent pissants becoming the
majority in the mudding community".
>... With the world moving towards a paperless society, ...
*chuckle* Oh really? I think someone said something like that more
than 20yrs ago. I've only seen an increase in paper usage. I kinda
doubt society really will move away from paper in the real sense.
Drifter
H. McDaniel
>Brigand (bri...@illusionmud.com) wrote:
>Y'know something, this is just sad. I've been invovled with mudding now
>for nearly a decade. At one time, the mudding community was vibrant, and
Since Alfa Diku in 91' for me.
>full of hope and promise. The streets were cleaner, the food was cheaper,
>etc. etc.
There were friendly games where PKing was verbotten. Wizards, even those
who had been promoted from player by points were noble and fair. Well
maybe not completely fair.. but they tried. Which is more than can be said
for some around nowadays.
>Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
>rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
>population?
Since Mudding became less of a community experience. Well atleast
where I learned to MUD, there were a *lot* of people in the computer
labs who knew each other and mudded on many of the same games. In
that atmosphere one could never be 100% anonymous. And with identity
come certain responsibilites that otherwise would not exist. Which is
to say that the lone geek is more likely to be a "malcontent pissant"
than someone who knows that the guy he's badmouthing online might have
a close friend sitting in the same room right next to him or something.
Or that people will know lots of personal things about his life (or
lack thereof) which can be spread online for everyone's amusement.
> Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people like
Expansion definently plays part of it.
>this just make the really interesting people who were interested in a sense
>of virtual community find better things to do with their time?
Mudding can be an addiction for some people. I did the whole Mudders
Anonymous thing and kicked the habit... I mean, let me put it like this:
One day back in 92' I was coding on my Diku (a 0.0 gamma of course,)
when I remembered I'd promised to pick this total babe up from the place
she worked at. I checked my watch and found that I couldn't make it to
pick her up on time (it was like 11 at night, can't be certain as we used
sundials back in those days.) So I just kept on coding, stood her up. She
never would talk to me after that. And who could blame her. She was like
stranded somewhere. I was a mud addict behaving badly. I was out of control,
man. So I got help.
Remember (or see) the folks that play MUDs for 8 hours a day, or stay
up all night? Very brielfy (thank God) I was one of them. Those kind
of people need help. And no, I'm not trying to be funny. I think there's
some organ inside some of us that shrivels up and dies when you spend too
much time online. Hee hee.. no jokes about that... please ;) Oh.. okay if
you really must.
Which reminds me... it used to be that women/girls actually identified
their true sex way back in the early dark ages (91'.) Then came along the
virtual bands of rapists and other perverts. I remember having to
personally advise the girls I'd introduced to mudding that they should
from then on use a male persona in-game. It seemed like a good idea
at the time. But then things got to the point where the only female
characters were played by beared guys...
Well.. to be honest even the non-perverts had a hand in this change.
A lot of guys would try and "help" every female character. Too much
unawanted attention from the women's perspective. And incentive to
play the female role from certain guy's perspective (free gold... I
guess a whore is just a whore, virtual or not afterall.)
But back to *me* (hee hee, always that) getting help. You ever heard
the scripture, "if your eye offend the pluck it out?" I had to unplug
my keyboard (my belley button still stings to this day) and keep out of
the whole MUD scene for a couple of eons (in MUD years.) Sigh. I
wasn't completely honest. I never quit the "havit" utterly. I just
went off it for some years. Once exposed.. always vulnerable. Beware,
you who have never mudded and read this. Course they won't listen...
but us dinos have a right to say crazy sounding things from time to time,
eh?
> * Email addresses were badges of geek pride, not something you
> put on your business card.
Geek pride? More like geek shame, to be shared only with friends.
[...]
> * 90% of the e-mail addresses you saw ended in ".edu"
And the other 1,000 belonged to mudders in Europe.
-McDaniel
Altair Maine
Brigand wrote:
> It's funny I think, that just because someone makes a smartass remark, they
> are 13-14 year olds. Im sure youve made many a smartass remark in your time.
> The fact that the average age seems to be dropping in the MUD playing/owning
> community, should show that kids are becoming more capable at computers than
> many adults. I'm 18, I've run a MUD since I was 16, its still alive and
Some things make one embarrassed to be a youth, hmm? I have the dubious
distinction of being 18 as well, but it's a plague which shouldn't last
more than another six months or so.
This argument is pretty silly. Obtaining and using an Internet account is
incredibly more trivial than it was 5, or for that matter, 10 years ago.
For the most part, the increase in the computer-using population has
little to do with any fundamental increase in the computer literacy of the
population. There's an incredible number of people with PCs and AOL
accounts, many of whom are my age. Does this reflect some idealistic goal
on the part of "Kids beginning to see the importance of getting a good
base in computer knowledge"? Nah. I've sat people in front of a Windows
box, their first computer experience ever, and had them reasonably
comfortable within an afternoon. So long as you don't have the desire to
program or do anything particularly complicated, using a PC is fairly
trivial, these days. Youth, for the most part, need more training in
reasonable English skills than in learning how to double-click on the
pretty icons. Any idiot can figure out the latter.
The increasing proportion of youth with Internet access isn't so much the
problem as the increased ease of Internet access. There isn't any
demographic that has a monopoly on stupidity.
I've been mudding for three years, and it may be immodest of me to say it,
but I think I make a reasonably mature player, builder, and (very amateur,
assistant) coder. Some of the people I've respected a great deal on
various MUDs have been as young as 14. One MUD had a single 15-year-old
imm among a staff of married individuals in their 30s, and I thought he
was the most level-headed of the bunch.
(This is not to say that I haven't run across numerous kids who shouldn't
have been let out of their juvenile detention centers, much less
been allowed Internet access.)
"ISP"s like AOL and MSN and the popularization of the WWW are really more
the problem with the mudding population than youth in specific. I'm not
sure there's any remedy but a careful imm staff weeding out the idiots as
necessary, unless one simply decides to siteban a couple of major domains.
I HAVE met, contrary to the stereotype, quite intelligent individuals who
happened to be subject to the misfortune of having .aol tacked onto the
end of their email addresses. Too many sitebans will shrink a potential
player base to a non-useful level, and I tend to think of them as a last
resort.
I will confess to being a second-generation computer nerd, which no doubt
affects my perceptions. Both of my parents program for NASA, Dad's been a
sysadmin for over a decade, and I was raised on Pong and drawing designs
with LOGO. I started reading Usenet groups at 7 or 8, about 10 years ago,
with a bit of help from Dad in getting Emacs to cooperate.
You have to do a little more sifting of the wheat from the chaff, so to
speak, than perhaps was necessary a decade ago. Nonetheless, the absolute
NUMBER of pleasant and intelligent people with Internet access has risen
dramatically over time, even if their relative proportion has decreased.
There is yet hope, in my mind, for the mudding community. And we're
hardly served by complaining about the stupidity of the typical "newbie",
eh? Seems to me as though a bit of judicious use of the "deny" command is
all that is really necessary to maintain a reasonable mudding population.
Bemoaning the imminent death of "MUDding as we knew it" is both pointless,
and in my mind, quite baseless.
I fall into the college-going male science-oriented computer geek category
very nicely, but I'm pretty glad that we have mudders who DON'T. It adds
more character to the player base to have grandmothers and accountants and
yes, even lawyers (I'm only being flippant, Aristotle, don't sue me...)
among the crowd.
It's well past when I should have gone to bed, and I think I've begun to
babble. So I shall spare you (collectively) any further ramblings.
_____________________________________________
Altair Maine
alt...@gps.caltech.edu
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
California Institute of Technology
chryse
Dulcinea West <dulc...@X.exit109.com> wrote in article
<6vu70v$kvu$1...@news1.exit109.com>...
> Brigand <bri...@illusionmud.com> wrote:
> >The fact that the average age seems to be dropping in the MUD
playing/owning
> >community, should show that kids are becoming more capable at computers
than
> >many adults.
>
> Technologically capable. Emotionally, just as stunted as they ever were.
The problem with broad-sweeping generalizations such as this is, well,
they are generalizations and tend to do a disservice to both the 14 year
olds and 40 year olds out there. The realization that age often has little
to do with maturity was brought home to me when in the span of 2 hrs
I found out a mud admin I thought was 16 was really 30, and one I thought
must have been in their mid-thirties was actually 16.
> You're eighteen. Hell, at eighteen I'd forgotten what a stupid ass I was
at
> 13 or 14 as well. Maybe ten years from now you'll realize that you didn't
> know all the answers at 13 or 14, or at 18 either.
In the words of my very wise, very old grandfather:
"Everytime I think I have found all the answers, I realize I just missed a
question or two."
Chryse
m...@doitnow.com
wrote:
>Brigand <bri...@illusionmud.com> wrote:
>>It's funny I think, that just because someone makes a smartass remark, they
>>are 13-14 year olds. Im sure youve made many a smartass remark in your time.
>
>The smartass remark in question SOUNDED like a 13-14 year old's type of
>remark.
>>The fact that the average age seems to be dropping in the MUD playing/owning
>>community, should show that kids are becoming more capable at computers than
>>many adults.
>
>Technologically capable. Emotionally, just as stunted as they ever were.
>
>You're eighteen. Hell, at eighteen I'd forgotten what a stupid ass I was at
>13 or 14 as well. Maybe ten years from now you'll realize that you didn't
>know all the answers at 13 or 14, or at 18 either.
The same could be said for someone of any age.
John Miley
Sejnet was my first. 8 years ago? Maybe 7.
>Mudding can be an addiction for some people. I did the whole Mudders
No kiddin'! Over the years I managed to blow 2 semesters of college, got
myself fired from a job 'cause all I did was hang out in the 24hr lab, drink
beer, and MUD like a fiend. Horrible. After I got myself somewhat under
control, I had a roomate that became worse than me; he couldn't ever pay his
damn rent 'cause he sat in the house and MUD'd all day. Finally my other
roomate and I locked 'im out of our account (we all shared a university VMS
account...about 5 of us on that thing) and threatened to box anyone's ears
that gave him access. *chuckle*
>Remember (or see) the folks that play MUDs for 8 hours a day, or stay
>up all night? Very brielfy (thank God) I was one of them. Those kind
>of people need help. And no, I'm not trying to be funny. I think there's
*nod* I believe my longest MUD-a-thon was in the neighborhood of 36 hrs,
with brief intervals for coffee, food, and a shower here and there.
'Course, for some silly reason, we'd have competitions to see who could go
the longest. Some sort of twisted badge of honor, I reckon. Thank gawd
those days are over.
>wasn't completely honest. I never quit the "havit" utterly. I just
>went off it for some years. Once exposed.. always vulnerable. Beware,
>you who have never mudded and read this. Course they won't listen...
I still MUD as well, though not nearly as much. Even if I _did_ have the
time, MUDding just doesn't have quite the same allure anymore; the
atmosphere is totally different these days. I've often considered opening a
MUD exclusively for us old-school types, though I've no clue how I'd go
about the screening process. I realize it sounds a bit haughty, but the new
generation of MUDders just annoys me. Ah well. Here's to the old days!
--JSM
R&D Programmer
CyberSERV, Inc.
Vienna, VA
flet...@democracy.queensu.ca
> * Almost everyone mudded from a shell account.
> * The most widely used and powerful way to find information on the
> internet was Gopher and Veronica.
And 'Archie' for those who could never understand Ronnie. Something to
which I admit. *grin*
Ae.
AxL
>*nod* I believe my longest MUD-a-thon was in the neighborhood of 36 hrs,
>with brief intervals for coffee, food, and a shower here and there.
>'Course, for some silly reason, we'd have competitions to see who could go
>the longest. Some sort of twisted badge of honor, I reckon. Thank gawd
>those days are over.
I'm sure it was similar elsewhere, too. Back in my freshman
year, the peak of mud addiction, our badge of honour was seeing who
could get kicked out of the lab by security the most. We'd stay til 2
or 3am, when the building closed at 11pm (unsupervised lab, vt terms).
I think my 40+ kickouts and two summons to meet with the chief
of security earned me the top spot. :) That was on a single semester,
actually.
Timothy Timbrook
AxL <j_he...@oz.plymouth.edu > wrote:
>John Miley <jmi...@cyberserv.com> wrote:
>>*nod* I believe my longest MUD-a-thon was in the neighborhood of 36 hrs,
>>with brief intervals for coffee, food, and a shower here and there.
>
> I'm sure it was similar elsewhere, too. Back in my freshman
>year, the peak of mud addiction, our badge of honour was seeing who
>could get kicked out of the lab by security the most. We'd stay til 2
>or 3am, when the building closed at 11pm (unsupervised lab, vt terms).
Thank god my college daze was before muds... I'm certain I would have
been doing dumb stuff like that too. (I was already spending way too
many hours in computer labs without muds. :)
Drifter
Holly Sommer
> And 'Archie' for those who could never understand Ronnie.
> Something to which I admit. *grin*
Wow, the first service I've never heard of. What was Ronnie?
-Holly, mourned the passing of the Cologne gopher server
H. McDaniel
>John Miley <jmi...@cyberserv.com> wrote:
>>*nod* I believe my longest MUD-a-thon was in the neighborhood of 36 hrs,
>>with brief intervals for coffee, food, and a shower here and there.
>>'Course, for some silly reason, we'd have competitions to see who could go
>>the longest. Some sort of twisted badge of honor, I reckon. Thank gawd
>>those days are over.
> I'm sure it was similar elsewhere, too. Back in my freshman
>year, the peak of mud addiction, our badge of honour was seeing who
>could get kicked out of the lab by security the most. We'd stay til 2
>or 3am, when the building closed at 11pm (unsupervised lab, vt terms).
We had mostly Zenith 80 (or was it 20, I forget) dumb terminals. No
footprint compared to the common PC and monitor today. So you could
pack in 100 terminals, where now you only have 40. And people actually
knew how to use UNIX. People actually had the option of connecting
directly to the mainframes. Now I have to suffer the humiliation of
going through the lab's MS Windows and their inevitable unexplained crashes.
"Where have all the cowboys gone?"
-McDaniel
AxL
I thought he was referring to Veronica, as Ronnie can be a
shortened nickname for that. :)
I don't recall a Cologne off-hand...been awhile. Wasn't there a
huge one in Minnesota called "the Mother of all Gophers" or something
like that?
Holly Sommer
>
> Wasn't there a huge one in Minnesota called "the Mother of
> all Gophers" or something like that?
Quick trivia quiz: What is the University of Minnesota's mascot? :)
The UMN gopher server is still up :)
-Holly, that's where she found MUDs
Richard Woolcock
>
> j_he...@oz.plymouth.edu (AxL) writes:
>
> >John Miley <jmi...@cyberserv.com> wrote:
> >>*nod* I believe my longest MUD-a-thon was in the neighborhood of 36 hrs,
> >>with brief intervals for coffee, food, and a shower here and there.
> >>'Course, for some silly reason, we'd have competitions to see who could go
> >>the longest. Some sort of twisted badge of honor, I reckon. Thank gawd
> >>those days are over.
>
> > I'm sure it was similar elsewhere, too. Back in my freshman
> >year, the peak of mud addiction, our badge of honour was seeing who
> >could get kicked out of the lab by security the most. We'd stay til 2
> >or 3am, when the building closed at 11pm (unsupervised lab, vt terms).
>
> We had mostly Zenith 80 (or was it 20, I forget) dumb terminals. No
> footprint compared to the common PC and monitor today. So you could
> pack in 100 terminals, where now you only have 40.
[snip]
I used to use vt220/vt320s, often two or three (sometimes four) at a time.
You could usually tell how experienced a mudder was by the number of
terminals they were using at once ;)
KaVir.
r...@rift.eushc.org
Oh my GAWD at the memories of this thread! I may have actually mudded
with the lot of you at one time or another.
I think the name of the UM Gopher server was like Spinaltap or something
like that and HA! I had to mud on a VM/CMS MAINFRAME eeeek! tn3270 as you
wanna be! And when I was really good I dialed in with KERMIT 2400 baud
and got the clear screen key mapped without an escape sequence *strut*!
tintin? was there a version written in COBOL? I think not.
What does Wrong Option mean? I do long for the good 'ole' days of fun
but perhaps it is lost due to our knowledge, wouldn't it be great to
have never been a mud admin and just been a forever curious mortal,
finding it all over again? ACK!
Curse the spinal tap gopher for delivering me to way to much internet
fun.
Holly Sommer (hso...@micro.ti.com) wrote:
Dave Clapper
nearby Junior College. The whole thing was set on a grid; the further
from 0,0 you got, the tougher the mobs were. My buddies and I discovered
a bug that you could manipulate to gain ridiculous numbers of levels.
Whenever you nicked a tribble to death, there was a fair chance that a Dr.
Death would arrive, saying "Dr. Death doesn't like you killing harmless
tribbles!" or something of the sort. Dr. Deaths were supposed to be
NASTY, but... there was one spell you could cast that would alter your hp
by the number you stated. You could cast it to add a negative number of
hp, and Dr. Death was always set such that his killing blow would be one
greater than the number of hp you had. Cast the spell to bring yourself
to -1 hp and Dr. Death would constantly hit you for 0 hp. Nicking brought
more exp than regular hitting, so a level one could gain hundreds of
levels (there wasn't a level limit) by nicking Dr. Deaths. :) This was
all on... are you ready? A 150 baud modem. You know, the big clunky
things you actually had to put the phone into? We played on dummy
terminals that were just basically printers with keyboards. Ah, those
were the days.
Oh, yeah. UM's mascot is the Golden Gopher. :)
On 13 Oct 1998 r...@rift.eushc.org wrote:
>
> Oh my GAWD at the memories of this thread! I may have actually mudded
> with the lot of you at one time or another.
Robert L. Peckham
> > >John Miley <jmi...@cyberserv.com> wrote:
> > >>*nod* I believe my longest MUD-a-thon was in the neighborhood of 36 hrs,
> > >>with brief intervals for coffee, food, and a shower here and there.
> > >>'Course, for some silly reason, we'd have competitions to see who could go
> > >>the longest. Some sort of twisted badge of honor, I reckon. Thank gawd
> > >>those days are over.
>
> You could usually tell how experienced a mudder was by the number of
> terminals they were using at once ;)
No way. Better was owning a vt220 + 1200 baud modem (later upgraded to
vt320 + 2400!, all spares from my parents' company's PDP 11/73) and just
swapping back and forth with ^Z/%n, especially when running 3-4
characters,
and immortals couldn't tell. Pure typing speed! (Actually, I wrote most
of
PKmud on the vt320 in my dorm room, and my office room description has
never
been updated to not that I don't have it anymore.)
I think I did the 36 hour thing on Eltanin once, right before they did
the
equipment purge... Had to use up the pair of +75 hp titaniums for as
much a they were worth, since post-purge mage wouldn't be able to get
exp as fast :) (Pop the thalos-golems all night, woo.)
Alas, UCLA has always been kind of short on student-accessible 'net
access,
so I never really met too many local mudders. However, when eventually
I did,
(my access was running out.. got kicked off too many networks, randomly
found
someone in another department...), he had this funky habits: game says
"You are hungry."... get bread bag;!;eat bread;!, eat mini donut in
real life!
Alas, it hosed my ME GPA, but got me into CS grad school. I guess
mudding
isn't THAT bad ;)
R.
flet...@democracy.queensu.ca
> I thought he was referring to Veronica, as Ronnie can be a
> shortened nickname for that. :)
me wonder... who named those services Archie, Jughead, and Veronica...
and why wasn't there a 'Betty', or a 'Reggie'? *grin*
Ae.
Chris Jensen
: >Since Alfa Diku in 91' for me.
: Sejnet was my first. 8 years ago? Maybe 7.
never spoke, only emoted being a monkey...now _that_ is rp!, but I
digress.
: >Mudding can be an addiction for some people. I did the whole Mudders
: No kiddin'! Over the years I managed to blow 2 semesters of college, got
: myself fired from a job 'cause all I did was hang out in the 24hr lab, drink
: beer, and MUD like a fiend. Horrible. After I got myself somewhat under
: control, I had a roomate that became worse than me; he couldn't ever pay his
: damn rent 'cause he sat in the house and MUD'd all day. Finally my other
: roomate and I locked 'im out of our account (we all shared a university VMS
: account...about 5 of us on that thing) and threatened to box anyone's ears
: that gave him access. *chuckle*
: >Remember (or see) the folks that play MUDs for 8 hours a day, or stay
: >up all night? Very brielfy (thank God) I was one of them. Those kind
: >of people need help. And no, I'm not trying to be funny. I think there's
I too was addicted to muds, and I knew many others that were as well. I
have an addictive personality (I was addicted to alcohol for a while, and
I'm still addicted to sex, but who isnt?! :O ) I see this as a serious
addiction, not just muds, but also IRC, and other related anonymous
chat/VR environments. Has there been any research done in this field? I
am very curious.
Chris J.
<note: followups directed to rec.games.mud.diku>
Jeff Stine
Dulcinea West wrote in message <6vtgip$3mg$1...@news1.exit109.com>...
>
>I remember back on CircleMUD in '91, going in to kill a giant tree,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dont let the History Police get you. * :)
I doubt things have not changed all that much. It is amazing how much
we embelish the past. There is no one single "golden age of mudding".
You increase by 100 times the number of people who have access to
mudding and you increase by 100 times the number of jerks -- not too
hard to figure out. I'd wager that there is still a strong showing of people
who show at least a modicum of courtesy. You just have to look a little
harder, because they tend to be less vocal. If there was a "golden age"
it was before DikuMUD. Diku leads to the dark side.
-jeff
(Everyone's favorite Angel of the Abyss)**
* DikuMUD did not exist in the gamma form until '91 (Oct. I believe)
and you can count on three fingers the number of DikuMUDs until '92
** In keeping with the title of this thread, Adversary still lives in
spirit,
if not actual code, at ishar.cyberverse.com 9999
AxL
>* DikuMUD did not exist in the gamma form until '91 (Oct. I believe)
> and you can count on three fingers the number of DikuMUDs until '92
I thought Alfa, and maybe Grimne started up in early 91? I know
I myself was playing on Austin and Eltanin in Oct of 91 for sure nd
friends of mine were over on Epic. There were at least a dozen or so dikus
by then, though. There used to be mudlists you could download from the
cwru.edu FTP site, I recall.
>** In keeping with the title of this thread, Adversary still lives in
>spirit,
> if not actual code, at ishar.cyberverse.com 9999
Damn I thought your name looked familiar. :) Abbadon, right?
Yea, Temple/Adversary was great...I still recall logging in the old site
one day in `93 or so and finding myself in a brand-new MERC mud called
Medievia. *shudder*
John Miley
Chris Jensen wrote in message <70196c$m3j$1...@Masala.CC.UH.EDU>...
>I too was addicted to muds, and I knew many others that were as well. I
>have an addictive personality (I was addicted to alcohol for a while, and
>I'm still addicted to sex, but who isnt?! :O ) I see this as a serious
>addiction, not just muds, but also IRC, and other related anonymous
>chat/VR environments. Has there been any research done in this field? I
>am very curious.
I don't know of any formal research, but I do have my personal opinions. ;)
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the "addictive
personality". If you consider the nature of the things most addicts are
addicted to, they all seem to share a common denominator: they offer an
escape from how one would normally feel. Even something as simple as
cigarrettes or coffee make you feel differently than you would had you not
partaken of them; for those people with "addictive personalities", these
alterations become less the luxury and more the necessity. Take pot for
example; I, for awhile, would get stoned every single day. Now, pot isn't
physically addicting, but I was "addicted" in the sense that I spent more
time stoned than not stoned, because I'd just rather not be sober. (Don't
get me wrong; I'm an avid supporter of pot. I just had to get out of that
every-day syndrome. A lot like my relationship with MUDs now.) The altered
reality was a much more comfortable place. The same was true for alcohol;
why be sober when I can _not_ be sober? Granted, some substances have
physical addictions associated with them, but I personally believe that the
_mental_ addiction is far more dangerous in that one _chooses_ to put
themselves in that state. Now, going back to the main point; the addictions
to MUDs/IRC/etc are similar in nature, in they are an escape from reality.
Why deal with real life when you can be someone else entirely in a virtual
world? For most, this is simply entertainment; for those with "addictive
personalities", the entertainment becomes the necessity. We would much
rather immerse ourselves in the virtual realities we create instead of
coping with the real-world.
--JSM
H. McDaniel
>Jeff Stine <jls...@psu.edu> wrote:
>>* DikuMUD did not exist in the gamma form until '91 (Oct. I believe)
>> and you can count on three fingers the number of DikuMUDs until '92
> I thought Alfa, and maybe Grimne started up in early 91? I know
>I myself was playing on Austin and Eltanin in Oct of 91 for sure nd
>friends of mine were over on Epic. There were at least a dozen or so dikus
>by then, though. There used to be mudlists you could download from the
>cwru.edu FTP site, I recall.
>>** In keeping with the title of this thread, Adversary still lives in
>>spirit,
>> if not actual code, at ishar.cyberverse.com 9999
> Damn I thought your name looked familiar. :) Abbadon, right?
>Yea, Temple/Adversary was great...I still recall logging in the old site
Shhhhhhhh. You are rattling old and dangerous bones, my friend. History
is not completely forgotten. Or did you know.. oh nevermind.
-McDaniel
Euan Kilgour
(Dulcinea West) wrote:
>Chris Jensen <cje...@potter.ieee.uh.edu> wrote:
>>Other things that made 92 better than now:
>>* AOL had crippled NET access.
>
>*sigh* If only we could put those worms back in the can.
>
>>* Only technically knowledgeable, responsible adults were allowed to be
>> sysadmins.
>
>Hmm. I would debate the "responsible adults" thing. I knew far too many
>sysadmins in my time to say that. :-P But they WERE more responsible than
>many are now.
>
>And do you know how hard it is to find a shell-only account these days?
>I had to hunt high and low to find one. I still prefer to mud from a
>shell account.
Shell accounts!?
The holy grail would be easier to find nowadays. ;-)
I think they were phased out in my area about 2 years ago. Now only cs
grad students and sysadmins whose bosses don't mind the extra CPU load get
to MUD from shell.
--
To reply via email remove the antispam message from my address
I will delete unread any unsolicited commercial email
Bradley J. Thorson
>>I had to hunt high and low to find one. I still prefer to mud from a
>>shell account.
>
>Shell accounts!?
>
>The holy grail would be easier to find nowadays. ;-)
>
>I think they were phased out in my area about 2 years ago. Now only cs
>grad students and sysadmins whose bosses don't mind the extra CPU load get
>to MUD from shell.
>
Primenet is a decent national service that provides shell accounts. You
can even direct dial if you wish. I think if you telnet to primenet.com
log on as guest password guest you can get more info.
--
___ __ _________ __ The True Spirit of Duris Lives at Arcana:
\ \/ /\/ / /_ |\ / | arcana.yermom.org 4000
> <\ // /__| | \/ | Xyzom, the God of Breaking Sh*t and Causing Chaos
/_/\_\_//____|__|\__/|_| tho...@primenet.com
Jeff Stine
AxL wrote in message <702k1k$s27$1...@oz.plymouth.edu>...
>Jeff Stine <jls...@psu.edu> wrote:
>>* DikuMUD did not exist in the gamma form until '91 (Oct. I believe)
>> and you can count on three fingers the number of DikuMUDs until '92
>
> I thought Alfa, and maybe Grimne started up in early 91? I know
>I myself was playing on Austin and Eltanin in Oct of 91 for sure nd
>friends of mine were over on Epic. There were at least a dozen or so dikus
>by then, though. There used to be mudlists you could download from the
>cwru.edu FTP site, I recall.
>
Ack! Sorry, my bad. Your memory is in fact better than mine. I had to find
some old
printouts with a date on the cover sheet to confirm it, and sure enough they
were
dated March of '91.
So, to set the record straight:
* Alfa was the first to my knowledge, opening sometime in late '90 (Oct I
believe).
* Eris was number two, opening around early November of that year.
(First from Alaska, then later from Berkeley.)
* Temple (Adversary) was the third, officially opening in late January '91.
(There was also one operating from U of Kansas for about two or three
weeks at about the same time Eris opened.)
After that I don't know the exact order, but Sequent and Copper where the
next
two that I am aware of. And it is quite probably the original CircleMUD was
in
business sometime in the later part of the year. So, I am the one to get
hauled away
by the History Police!
-jeff
Jonathan Crowley
> >>spirit,
> >> if not actual code, at ishar.cyberverse.com 9999
>
> > Damn I thought your name looked familiar. :) Abbadon, right?
> >Yea, Temple/Adversary was great...I still recall logging in the old site
>
> Shhhhhhhh. You are rattling old and dangerous bones, my friend. History
> is not completely forgotten. Or did you know.. oh nevermind.
>
> -McDaniel
Eek in a major way. The first mud I played. Twitch, I'm gonna have dreams of
this I'm sure. Adversary was the mud that got me kicked out of 2 different
schools in 2 years until I wound up at a school where I couldn't get computer
access(Thank god) But yeah, those were the good old days. {Looks back with fond
memories.} But yeah, I have to look back at those days in comparison to today
and the variety of codes and muds available and I definatly have to think that
quality is suffering, not just in the players(which I'll get to in a moment) but
also in the muds being built. I've explored a number of pop up muds and they
have some very shoddy areas on them. Every time you bring a new mud up, you thin
out the pool of qualitiy builders and coders available and the result is some
really bad muds out there and people wind up reacting to them in kind by
behaving badly. I'm not just talking about the 14-16 year olds who make up a
fair number of the disruptive players on the mud I currently Imm on, this is
not to say that all 14-16 year olds are trouble makers, there are a few who are
ok, but by and large the quality of trouble making players has increased over
the years. I mean, in the old days, how big a problem was mudvertising? How many
muds made a big deal out of multiplaying? How many people broke rules about how
to talk on public channels? My memory is not that many. Nowadays, problems like
these seem to have skyrocketed with the growth of the web and the increase in
the number of ISP's. I don't know, I wish the good old days would come back.
Shrug.
Oh, and on a side note about Adversary(and you can correct me if I'm wrong) but
I believe that Artic mud also came out of the demise of Adversary. My memory
tells me that the original imm staff was made up of old time Adversary players.
I also seeing a fair amount of similar code that was unique to Adversary. Shrug,
I just thought I'd toss that in there for the sake of tossing it in there.
J.C.
jad...@hotmail.com
r...@rift.eushc.org () wrote:
>
> Oh my GAWD at the memories of this thread! I may have actually mudded
> with the lot of you at one time or another.
>
> like that and HA! I had to mud on a VM/CMS MAINFRAME eeeek! tn3270 as you
> wanna be! And when I was really good I dialed in with KERMIT 2400 baud
> and got the clear screen key mapped without an escape sequence *strut*!
> tintin? was there a version written in COBOL? I think not.
I started out on VAX/VMS, also using gopher. I remember the
first mud I ever played was Northern Lights, and Aber, then decided Diku was
more to my liking, first mud I ever got seriously into was Mudde Pathetique,
based at Berkeley.
[SNIP]
> Curse the spinal tap gopher for delivering me to way to much internet
> fun.
>
Ah, fun, and to this day I still mud, but not nearly as much as I *used* to.
> Holly Sommer (hso...@micro.ti.com) wrote:
> : AxL wrote:
> : >
> : > Wasn't there a huge one in Minnesota called "the Mother of
> : > all Gophers" or something like that?
>
> : Quick trivia quiz: What is the University of Minnesota's mascot? :)
> : The UMN gopher server is still up :)
>
> : -Holly, that's where she found MUDs
>
Sara
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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H. McDaniel
>Oh, and on a side note about Adversary(and you can correct me if I'm wrong) but
>I believe that Artic mud also came out of the demise of Adversary. My memory
>tells me that the original imm staff was made up of old time Adversary players.
I was one of the first three builders on Arctic. Arctic was born long
before Adversary's demise. And the modified DIKU code Adversary was running
wasn't available. From day one, Arctic's own coders were working to
enhance things. There was a long period during which a lot of players
left Adversary *or* still played there but complained... before that game's
ultimate demise. But yes, I believe the admin all came from Adversary.
When I was recruited in late 91', the original founder of Arctic never
mentioned any political (say related to Adversary's society) or other
reactionary motive for creating the game. That may be partly why
Arctic is still around, because it was founded for a lasting concrete
purpose (provide a specific form of entertainment.) And not some
abstract ideology. But I'm speculating, as someone who built a game
based on a reactionary ideology back then that *did* not stand the test
of time.
>I also seeing a fair amount of similar code that was unique to Adversary. Shrug,
>I just thought I'd toss that in there for the sake of tossing it in there.
Well... the MUD community has always been about looking at your neighbor,
seeing what you like and coding something similar if not better. That's
one of the reasons why MUD standards (and player expectations of the
user interface, and basic commands) have changed over the years. Also,
back then the DIKU gamma 0.0 was very minimal in some areas. Out of
the box it had a few errors and broken commands. And if you wanted in-game
building (which everyone did... and does) you had a lot more "fixing"
to do. Some functionality certainly did pop up in different games, and
not because people were stealing code. Just because people coded the
same functionality .. or someone gave them the code.
And you'd be surprised how closely various admin & builders cooperated
to share code innovations, ideas and admin privledges on each other's
games. That is the games which were under development (Apocolypse
for instance.)
Looking back on it.. it's amazing *how much* was developed in such
a short period of time (91' - 93'). Or is it just amazing that things haven't
*really* changed that much (from a user's perspective) since the mid-90's?
-McDaniel
Roger Paulen
--
In the early days, the following people contributed code, some of which
is still used in one form or another:
Jhalavar from Armageddon, Loki from Silly, WhiteGold from Epic,
Geraden Domme from Epic, Twilight from Epic, and Riverwind.
We would like to give special mention to one of the legendary figures
of DikuMUD: Jeff Stine, otherwise known as Abaddon from Adversary.
Jeff supplied us with some useful code, but moreover inspired us to
strive for a "better mud". Adversary was one of the most stable, and
popular muds. One of our goals was to strive for the same image that
Adversary had.
--
During those early days, everyone had to start somewhere. I am sure Dale
Woolridge and/or Dean Gaudet (or any other early Waterloo coder) could
provide specifics about Adversary and Arctic affairs.
Roger C. Paulen
fl...@arctic.org
In article <7078c5$lik$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>,
H. McDaniel
>During those early days, everyone had to start somewhere. I am sure Dale
>Woolridge and/or Dean Gaudet (or any other early Waterloo coder) could
>provide specifics about Adversary and Arctic affairs.
Arctic did not start with Adversary code. I know because Adversary
code was not released to anyone at the time (late 1991, early 92') and the
original founder of Arctic put the code on an FTP site for builders to grab a
copy for themselves. Clearly that changed at some point, unknown to me.
But I highly doubt Arctic really started with Adversary code as far
as building went. By public opening (I wasn't even there then,) sure.
Now, if the Arctic admin could shed light on these early dark days, it
would be welcome.
-McDaniel
Matthew Williams
>
> On Mon, 12 Oct 1998 14:46:00 GMT, ro...@zen.america.net (Rob Wynne)
> wrote:
>
> >Y'know something, this is just sad. I've been invovled with mudding now
> >for nearly a decade. At one time, the mudding community was vibrant, and
> >full of hope and promise. The streets were cleaner, the food was cheaper,
> >etc. etc.
>
> Ahh yes. It seems like only yesterday on Copper we were all talking
> about that "new" area, Dwarven Kingdom. And you had to get 15 people
> together to kill a tree or a blob (two creatures that didn't seem to
> survive past copper MUD) When level 20 was IT! And the Matrix still
> hung over west main street.
Woo! Another Copper-mudder!! Heh. Those were the days.
> >Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
> >rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
> >population? Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people like
> >this just make the really interesting people who were interested in a sense
> >of virtual community find better things to do with their time?
>
> I think that most of the interesting, more intellectual people left
> the MUD field years ago for reasons that they had more interesting,
> intellectual things to do. Most of the new people you see on are like
> the monkeys living in the Brahman houses in India. They just leaped
> into the abandoned building and took over the mansion. blissfully
> unaware that the place might have contained something else besides
> monkeys
> ..
> >JediMUD has been running since 1992, and I've been a part of making that
> >happen since 1993. And you know what -- I'm damn proud of that. And I
> >should be. Consider that in 1992:
>
> my friends played JediMUD. I was loyal to Grimne, Copper and Judy at
> the time. I just have a question for Axl. JudyMUD was up in 1992 and
> it's still up, though its switched sights. Every few years it seems
> to move, but it's still VERY MUCH the same mud. it's always been up
> at <person name>.indstate.edu 1200 (4000 for a VERY brief time) and
> it's quite a funky little gamma code that has gone feral and mutated
> into something quite strange.
>
> > * The World Wide Web did not exist.
>
> What's funny, is i refused to get on the web when it first came out.
> It was too flashy for my tastes.
>
> > * Almost everyone mudded from a shell account.
>
> Something else an old "geek pride" was to figure out how your VMS
> administrators disabled telnetting to ports and get around it. (the
> Unix shell admins just didn't have the heart to do it) At our school
> it was even MORE of a geek pride if you could find a way to weasel a
> Shell acount from the admin without being a CS major. Even bigger
> geek pride was to figure out the backdoors they used to always set up
> for visiting faculty and MUD from there without having an account at
> all!
Heh. Did you go to the same University I did? ;)
> > * Email addresses were badges of geek pride, not something you
> > put on your business card.
>
> Did you brag to your friends about how many accounts you had and what
> level access they gave you?
>
> > * The most widely used and powerful way to find information on the
> > internet was Gopher and Veronica.
>
> Don't forget word of mouth! sometimes that was the only way to find a
> mud! I have vague memories of also punching in addresses and adding a
> port 4000 to them to see if a MUD would pop up. There would be like 6
> of us in a room all doing it and when we found one wed all get on the
> found one, Usually surprising the people there because they didn't
> think their MUD went public yet.
>
> > * 90% of the e-mail addresses you saw ended in ".edu"
> yep.
> >Point being: this was, if not the Pleiocene era of the Internet, very
> >likely the early middle ages. For any institution to have survived,
> >let alone prospered, for this length of time is an amazing feat.
>
> Yes, I was amazed that there were a few muds there that were
> established when I got on! Also, I intend to use this list to find out
> what happened to the excellent old chesnuts.
>
> >It is the dream of any creator, be they writer, artist, musician, or
> >even mud implementor, to create something that is of lasting value.
> >Every person invovled in the success of the muds on that list have
> >done that, and they are all to be commended. What of lasting value
> >have you contributed to the Internet community?
>
> It seems now that few people contribute more than poorly executed
> flames and spam. What's really odd to me, is that back in the "old
> days" my posts were seen as "fluff" because they didn't talk about
> coding or ways of making ranged combat possible. Instead I'd ask
> questions like "why not have players get cold if they walk around
> naked in the snow?" (something I STILL ask) But now, my posts are
> treated with some dignity and respect.
Some MUDs do this and have done it for some time now.
> I don't think that's a good thing. Cream always floats to the top, but
> pour off the cream and add lots of dung, and milk starts to look alot
> like cream.
Heh.
>
> KEO
>
> >+doc
> >The Original JediMUD: jedi.america.net 4000
> >
> >--
> >Rob Wynne \ The Autographed Cat \ d...@america.net
> >The best original science-fiction and fantasy on the web:
> >Aphelion Webzine: http://www.aphelion-webzine.com
> >
> >Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread,
> >For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise.
> > --Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Matthew Williams
ba...@megsinet.net
P.S. Who were you on Copper? I was Kylar/Texan/Voyager and you may
recall a few "wacky" characters I played once in a while: Vashno
(gotta love that "cast 'vent' armadillo free diamond-edged broadsword
to the first person to tag me"), Gatekeeper (one of my all-time favs),
and Referee (my *all-time* favorite!). =)
Mike Harrold
> Ack! Sorry, my bad. Your memory is in fact better than mine. I had to find
> some old
> printouts with a date on the cover sheet to confirm it, and sure enough they
> were
> dated March of '91.
>
> So, to set the record straight:
> * Alfa was the first to my knowledge, opening sometime in late '90 (Oct I
> believe).
> * Eris was number two, opening around early November of that year.
> (First from Alaska, then later from Berkeley.)
> * Temple (Adversary) was the third, officially opening in late January '91.
> (There was also one operating from U of Kansas for about two or three
> weeks at about the same time Eris opened.)
>
> After that I don't know the exact order, but Sequent and Copper where the
> next
> two that I am aware of. And it is quite probably the original CircleMUD was
> in
> business sometime in the later part of the year. So, I am the one to get
> hauled away
> by the History Police!
>
AlexMUD - Birthdate, March 09 1991 (and still going)
/Miko@AlexMUD
fl...@primenet.com
tho...@primenet.com (Bradley J. Thorson) wrote:
> >>And do you know how hard it is to find a shell-only account these days?
> >>I had to hunt high and low to find one. I still prefer to mud from a
> >>shell account.
> >
> >Shell accounts!?
> >
> >The holy grail would be easier to find nowadays. ;-)
> >
> >I think they were phased out in my area about 2 years ago. Now only cs
> >grad students and sysadmins whose bosses don't mind the extra CPU load get
> >to MUD from shell.
> >
>
> Primenet is a decent national service that provides shell accounts. You
> can even direct dial if you wish. I think if you telnet to primenet.com
> log on as guest password guest you can get more info.
Yep, it took me about a week of calling every ISP that I had local access to
when I finally stumbled upon Primenet (20.95/month, 56K, Shell, PPP, 5MB for
home page). If you live in an area where Primenet isn't available I'm sure
if you call around you will find someplace that respects those of us who
still love shells.
-Corey Flath
Forbin's Ghost
back some mad memories. It was my first mud I played religiously. My first
mud was Epic, but I didn't really play it after I found Copper. Anyway, just
wanted to share in the nostalgia.
Greg Miller
Rob Wynne wrote:
> Seriously, when exactly did whiny, malcontent pissants go from being the
> rare exception we all had to deal with to being the majority of the
> population? Is it because of the Internet expansion. Or did people
We were nearly all adults back then. Now children play games on the net.
--
http://www.classic-games.com/
If you commit perjury, you go to jail... Is the President of the United
States above the law? If so, what was the American Revolution about?
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