[MUD-Dev] Re: Supporting articles found for UOL play style

["Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>]

On Saturday, May 02, 1998 1:41 AM  John Bertoglio 
[SMTP:alexb#internetcds,com] said:

>There is one thing that will set the successful commercial online 
world
>apart from even the best hobby run systems: numbers. Few muds have
>assembled a player base that was large AND divirse enough to even 
begin to
>create meaningful behavior models.

For me the classic example of this is DartMUD. I regard it as a 
seminal mud design-wise. Unfortunately, its many cool ideas (skills 
being taught by other players, a fully plyer-driven economy, etc) 
require PLAYERS to be there. And they never got critical mass.

> (BTW, the resource links on MudConnector point a sites where 
various
>commercial muds are being developed.

When Andrew Cowan decided to open that section, he asked me to provide 
the specs for what a listing should look like--I'd been in touch with 
him many times over the years, and was the only person he knew working 
on a graphical project at the time... I think he is still using my 
format.

>UO and M59 get most of the press
>around here but new kida are coming onto the street. Some have 
interesting
>ideas. Everlight for example has no NPC's...Sony's Everquest has 
reacted to
>the anti-pk in UO by installing a pk switch...hardly a new idea but 
other
>things they are doing are.)

Minor correction: Underlight, not Everlight. An interesting feature of 
Underlight is that they are also room-based. By that I mean fairly 
small rooms within which you navigate in 3d engine, at least version I 
saw (it has been some time since I saw it). Interestingly, they are 
going to try to go with full hands-on admin.

Once upon a time, long long ago, I invited the Everquest designers to 
the list. I have no idea if they accepted or stuck with it though. :)

>>Its also the single point which challenges the most
>>un-examined assumptions in players, and which they thus find
>>uncomfortablely alien; to whit, "Its not fair!"
>Quoting myself : "If (or perhaps when) the epitath of America is 
written
>the engraving on the headstone will read: 'Here lies the remains of a 
great
>experiment, killed by two words, Rights and Fair.'"

Ya know, I'd really like to see an "aphorism database" for the list. 
:) There's so much quotable stuff here...

-Raph


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