The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

One part of MUD history that rarely gets told in English: the Chinese game industry basically started there. In the mid 90s Chinese students overseas ran wuxia MUDs like Xiakexing (侠客行, 1995), all text, built on the LPMud family.

Wuxia fit text games perfectly because every player already had the whole world in their head from Jin Yong novels, so zero graphics needed. A lot of the people who built the first Chinese online games came out of those communities.

King of Kings (万王之王, 1999), usually counted as the first Chinese graphical MMORPG, was a Taiwanese MUD team putting a graphical client on their existing game.

MUDs are really cool, but for anyone looking for a narrative fantasy experience, my first recommendation is going to be The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, but more specifically the mod scene around that game as well as the OpenMW replacement game engine.

Bethesda’s game was a gem that was full of rich lore, plenty of readying, and very flexible RPG systems (although being a magical glass cannon does tend to be the best build). However, it was also a relatively flawed game (which Bethesda game isn’t?) that the community has expanded and fixed into a juggernaut.

I recommend picking up a mod pack from modding-openmw.com and checking it out. Tamriel Rebuilt is particularly impressive: fans have added a massive bank of new maps, quests, etc.

Something cool about the OpenMW engine is that it supports scripting that exceeds the original engine so that new quests are more rich and dynamic than original ones in the game. They are even starting to expand into custom spell effects (as the original game had a rigid list of spell effects that wasn’t malleable).

I'm sure you mean wotmud.org, and I always look for someone to mention this one in MUD threads, but rarely see it.

Man I was hooked on that game in high school. Joined the Lion Wardens, multiple high level characters, knew the zones. Nothing has come close since then.

That feeling of leveling in a safe zone when your screen fills with red names of opposing faction characters and you just get deleted and lose all your gear and a level... so good.

Ah! Well, enjoying a MUD is still a great shared experience haha. Nothing like them since. I still gravitate to punishing games with obscure mechanics and steep learning curves, and I imagine I'm still chasing that MUD high.

I think what made them special was that they were populated by others that put in that effort, and so the community felt invested. And you'd see the same names every time you logged on cause there was a single server, and reputation mattered. Ah man, what a time of life haha.

I miss MUDs. My old MUD went through a rename, a fork, and what have you --- but it's limping on, though with few playing it. The cost of hosting these things are so cheap today that you can just let it sit and mind its own business.

Back in the 90s you needed a permanent internet connection (rare!) and fast enough to handle all the usually uncompressed text, so it had to be a - shocker - T1 or better. Then you needed a server.

My old MUD has a discord; turns out a lot of the people I knew 25 years ago were there and remembered the my nick if not a little about myself back then. That was a fun nostalgia trip.

MUDs will eventually see a resurgence, I think. Mobiles with little language models to give flavour text and quests, plus a little tool calling language behind it to make it happen? I can see it working; in fact, I might just myself...