[Update] Dune II Mush Status
John Robertson
The following is a copy of a letter I sent to the dune2-players mailing list.
It should be of interest to players of Dune II, who would like an update on
the status of the mush.
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Hello everyone, I hope you have all enjoyed your summers and September finds
you well.
This is Leto, with a long overdue and widely anticipated update on the status
of Dune II mush.
I should begin with something of a recap as to what happened to the mush, and
has led to the current situation.
Our site on Mindport, as you all know, was plagued on and off with system
problems, which were outside the control of the admins in general, or me in
particular. The site would reboot frequently, and we would go down as a
result. Speaking with the Mindport admins, who were very happy with having
Dune II on their site, we arranged for a machine all our own to be set up and
administered for the sole purpose of the mush. The site was set up, and the
admins were testing it when disaster struck.
Mindport's main machine, which Dune II was living on, had a catastrophic
failure, resulting in total loss of its hard drive and its bus. Mindport, a
business first, was forced to cannibalize the machine we were about to move to
in order to keep their business running.
This all added up to the mush having lost its database and source files, and
not having a home to move to.
At the time, I waited patiently for them to either restore our files on the
old machine, or to get the new machine set up and working so we could start
again with backups on it. At the time though, we were rather understandably
low on the priority list of the Mindport admins, and time dragged on.
Eventually, with summer in full swing, it was less of a concern, as summer is
a notoriously slow mushing time.
Currently, mindport still only has one machine, but they assure me that the
other is not far away from coming online. So the time has come when the only
question really, is how interested people are in seeing the mush return.
Looking back on the almost two years of Dune II, I feel that overall, it has
been a success. The main goals of the founding admins were to take Frank
Herbert's Dune setting, and concentrate on an area not covered in the books,
but that was potentially very captivating. Capitalizing on our experiences in
the previous Dune mush, we wanted to take it on a slightly different course,
one based on rules and economics rather than judging and more free-wheeling
roleplay. In that regard, I think we were very successful. On the minus
side, I think that overall, the atmosphere of Dune II may have been a little
too uninteresting for non-faction heads, and may have been a trifle stifling
at times in the name of control. Oh well, nobody's perfect. :)
With these insights in mind, I put the question to all of you. Do you think
that Dune II should continue on its current course, make a radical shift in
tone and structure, or close its doors and look back fondly on what it
accomplished? I can see plusses and minuses for all the above, but I am
interested in what all of you have to say. Feel free to either respond to the
dune2-players list, the dune2-staff list, or directly to me, at this account.
Yours,
John -- Duke Leto