What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
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What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
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Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#2The MUD I played back in high school (Frontier, found on frontier.mudservices.com:7680) has evidently been dead for some years now. When I first played it ~2004 it was already on its second wind, having died and been revived once previously by new management.
I vaguely wonder what happened to it.
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#3The science-fiction mud I met my ex (and my ex-with-benefits) on is long gone. There are fragments here and there - logs on my hard drive, other people's logs on their own drives, files with room descriptions from when people were building stuff - but the place itself is gone.
There might be an archive of the database. I don't know. There's been some talk of an unofficial panel at an upcoming convention, where a few key players/admins would share stories with younger folks in our community for whom this place is a bit of a legend. Feels weird to think about it.
One of my own characters from there is now the mascot of my publishing company. These things stay with you as your personal mythologies.
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#4The science-fiction mud I met my ex (and my ex-with-benefits) on is long gone. There are fragments here and there - logs on my hard drive, other people's logs on their own drives, files with room descriptions from when people were building stuff - but the place itself is gone. There might be an archive of the database. I don't know. There's been some talk of an unofficial panel at an upcoming convention, where a few…
There was a Wheel of Time MUD (The Weave) that I and a lot of friends played on and met on for nearly half a decade. It eventually disappeared and nobody's been able to find the source or area files to bring it back.
MUDs are generally so low-maintenance that we kind of wanted to bring it back as a preserve or a museum -- somewhere we could go when we were feeling nostalgic.
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#5It's too bad almost none of the old VRML communities still exist. I wonder if there are backups of CyberTown worlds floating around somewhere...
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#6It's too bad almost none of the old VRML communities still exist. I wonder if there are backups of CyberTown worlds floating around somewhere...
Active worlds!
Apparently it got overrun with terrible people before it went away. It used to be so fun just building things. :(
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#7When I was eleven years old, I discovered a star wars themed lpmud. Mudding led to creating, which led to mudlib hacking, which led to software development.
I still get goosebumps when I think about the impact that community had on my life.
MUDs tended to be free to play and were run by unix hippies. The line between playing and coders was thin and easily crossed; playing the game led almost inevitably to understanding the mechanics and becoming a coder. I feel sorry for today's generation of gamers, since there is a much larger wall between playing and creating these days. CodeCombat and others are trying to bring that link between gaming and programming back - good for them.
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#8I joined SL late in 2008, the author should have been there in 2009-2010, that’s when you could have seen the empty Sims of IBM, Best Buy (Geek squad headquarters was in a volcano)and others. Most of those have been closed or reclaimed for other purposes.
The indications of abandonment is usually its grandeur and emptiness along with the signs advertising events long past.
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#9When I was eleven years old, I discovered a star wars themed lpmud. Mudding led to creating, which led to mudlib hacking, which led to software development. I still get goosebumps when I think about the impact that community had on my life. MUDs tended to be free to play and were run by unix hippies. The line between playing and coders was thin and easily crossed; playing the game led almost inevitably to understandi…
This triggers a memory- I was watching a documentary about the internal combustion engine, and how everybody who drove a car in the early days needed to understand how it worked, because they'd inevitably have to troubleshoot it. Same for old TVs that had to get their tubes replaced from time to time. It's all really interesting.
Re: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?
#10The MUD featured in this article, Achaea, I used to play as well way back in the day. I moved on to its sister game, Lusternia, where I met quite a few friends which I still remain in contact with to this day.
It's a shame how modern games don't even come close to the amount of immersion simple text-based games offer. Even popular MMOs don't even scratch the surface on the amount of connection I felt towards these universes. It's a she that they're not as popular.