Before you EQ'd your WoWage into a RIFT, did you used to MUD?

I'm just curious whether anyone else used to MUD back in the day.
(Multi-User Dungeon...like a text-based MMO, or playing a combat-oriented Zork with 10-100 players).

In university (early 90s), I used to have to ration myself to a couple hours a day, because I felt playing MUDs was about as much computer crack as WoW when it first came out. In fact, I have a friend who failed out of school because of his MUD addiction.

RP, PvE, PvP, and all that are nothing new. I used to play on a MUD called "The Forest's Edge", which for the most part was PvE, although they did this experiment with characters who declared themselves Lawful Evil being able to attack and be attacked by other players, but were limited to 10 lives and then deletion. I was in a guild, was a guild leader for a while, had close friends I'd never seen in my life. Couldn't leave the computer to talk to my girlfriend because I was the only cleric in the group and if the tank bit it...

All in text, baby.

To keep in mind how old MUDs are, one PvP strategy would be to dump as much junk on the floor as you can, because it would generate a line of text for each item:
"An old, smelly apple lies here."
"You see a shiny, brass sword lying in the dust."

and if you could dump around 50-100 items, you could wait for someone to enter who was on a slow modem (like 300, or 1200 bytes per minute...), and while their modem was loading these 50-100 lines of text, you'd be typing "cast fireball" or your macro/alias equivalent as fast as possible, and by the time they could see the last line of item text, they'd start seeing,
"A loaf of bread is moldering on the ground here."
"Bigby the Mage attacks you!"
"A fireball DECIMATEs you."
"A fireball DECIMATES you."
"A fireball...."
"You are dead."
"You have lost 89234 experience points."
"Bigby is now looting your corpse, and junking the items he can't carry."

Having just tried RIFT, I was thinking back on how all of the game mechanics have evolved, and then remembered that, "back in my day, we didn't have pretty pictures and 3D shader anti-whatsit polygonal shiny crap, we had text. And we liked it."

And after 8 hours of MUDding, you might be walking out of a university computer center at 3 in the morning. And see an empty water bottle on top of a trash can, and think, "I should pick that up. It might be useful later, or I can sell it for a few coppers..." And then promise yourself to go back to your 2 hour limit.

Ahem.

I spent gobs of time playing MUDs. Then it got really crazy when my friends started playing. We'd all meet at my friends hall on friday night and would end up playing non stop through the weekend.

I too played MUDS and loved them. They were alot of fun. Arcane Nites and Genocide were my vises. We'd do much the same, gather in a computer lab and play to the early morning. Our cue to pack it up for the night was the sun coming up.

My one and only experience with MUD gaming was in one called The Promise Land. I have no idea how I found it, but i played for a few months. That was my first ever online game experience...crazy times to see how far its come!

Its where my addiction of Jolt cola started... The good ole days

Yah, I used to play a MUD called SPAM, and once you got max level, you could be tested combat wise, and be recreated as a more powerful lower level. Plus you got the ultimate item in game "a crappy tshirt".

I used to play zMud all the time in high school.

I played many old MUD based games. But I mostly played in the TinyMUD variant space. MUSHes, MUCKs, MUXs, etc.

I forget many of them, there were many.

The fact that old-school MUDs even existed is slowly being wiped from the internet.

Not having my own computer until the end of college, while I did play MUD's back then, I was stuck with computer lab hours and there was a lot of competition for the computers at the time. But yeah, MUD's are what got me started with MMO's!

I played a MUD about dinosaurs once. We were a pack of raptors or something. It was pretty cool because we weren't allowed to talk, what with being stupid dinosaurs. I kept an acorn in my mouth because it was something I found and didn't know what the hell else to do with it (dinosaurs are also not agriculturists). One guy went against the alpha and humped one of his lady dinosaurs (don't ask, I didn't) so we had to kill him.

In conclusion, MUDs are weird.

I played Island of Kesmai on Compuserve in the mid 80's for about 6 years.. that was my first MMORPG experience. Pretty much all the basics used by MMOG's today in ASCII "Roguelike" Graphics. It was turn based but in real time in that if you didnt do something in the 10 seconds or so a turn was then the round advanced. Lots of good times and my Guild lasted well into EQ as well. The real danger of "perma death" and losing all your gear to the dreaded "Janitor" made boss fights very thrilling and risky no matter how powerful you were.

breander wrote:

I used to play zMud all the time in high school.

zMUD was a utility app for MUDs. You probably used it to play on a specific MUD. It ended up with mapping routines and other goodies at the end.

I started getting into MUDs/etc in high school. I was big into the BBS scene, and the local college had a dial-up service that was strictly no-gaming. Which didn't stop me from getting some account info and logging in to play.

Back then, it was raw telnet for the most part. Very crude compared to later client applications like TinyFugue, etc.

"Thread about MUDs attacks you."
"You are afflicted with NOSTALGIA."

Alas an era past. The majority of people I talk to won't even read the limited text in a graphical mmo so I know they'll never have the patience for anything wholly text/ascii based.

Yep, I used to play all sorts of MUDs and MUSHes and MOOs in college. Good times. Also bad grades. But good times, mostly.

Started MajorMUDD in highschool and wasted many many hours camping people's scripting spots in college.

ranalin wrote:
breander wrote:

I used to play zMud all the time in high school.

zMUD was a utility app for MUDs. You probably used it to play on a specific MUD. It ended up with mapping routines and other goodies at the end.

Sorry it was called ZeeMUD.

Hell ya, I played the hell out of a MUD called DragonSwords. Started out as a player, then worked my way up to an area builder, until I started coding and finally became an Implementer (top most admin level). Surprisingly, it's still up to this day. Lots of fond memories of my days spent adventuring in the world of ASCII.

Was just browsing Massively and found this article. Ah the memories...

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/04...

I played (and still play occasionally) 3 Kingdoms during my university years, along with Highlands, Dune, and a few others whose names have been lost in the mists of time. M**s cost me many grade-points, but man they were fun.

I saw many lives destroyed by mudding. Although not as many as I saw destroyed by netrek...

IMAGE(http://www.netrek.org/cinema2/jpg/tom5.jpg)

I was really (and mean REALLY) into MUDS in college. Started in 91 on Kobramud (based in Finland). I prefered MUDS that were LPMUDS (DIKU's weren't my style and never got into MUSHs MOOs). Other MUDS I put in considerable time were End of the Line (EoTL), Vahalla, ZombieMud, Red Dragon (which became Islands of Myth). The last one I played for 7 years (97-04) and contributed code to.

I also played netrek.

Netrek still gets a tiny bit of play on the internet.

I'm suspecting that SC2 destroys more lives nowadays, though.

Ah, good ol' University. Played both Netrek and MUDs. A lot. Too much!

I still play ZombieMud a few times a year, and it is going strong, although after more than 10 years I am still very much a SamuNoob

Both this:

BadMojo wrote:

I played many old MUD based games. But I mostly played in the TinyMUD variant space. MUSHes, MUCKs, MUXs, etc.

I forget many of them, there were many.

The fact that old-school MUDs even existed is slowly being wiped from the internet.

And this:

BadMojo wrote:

I started getting into MUDs/etc in high school. I was big into the BBS scene, and the local college had a dial-up service that was strictly no-gaming. Which didn't stop me from getting some account info and logging in to play.

Back then, it was raw telnet for the most part. Very crude compared to later client applications like TinyFugue, etc.

Man, there are times when I miss MU*'s, and then I remember some of the really freaky/annoying/sad people that tended to hang out on the fringes of them. Then I remember that I might have been one of those people.

Not only did I play a LPMUD (one of the more popular ones still in existance), I also coded for it.

Most of my coding was soft-code. Kinda keeerazy.

WiredAsylum wrote:

Started MajorMUDD in highschool and wasted many many hours camping people's scripting spots in college.

I played on a BBS where this guy actually spent months altering his response strings in his MMUDD script to be able to do such delightful things as attack back (somewhat common), chase (unusual), and reroute to the temple and wait outside for them (ridiculous). People thought it was just him at the keys claiming it was a good script till we had a BBS get together at someone's house and the man was present. So, of course, we tested the theory. Good times.

At one point when I was PvPing all of the little evil PvPers out of existence (asshats/griefers, and potentials alike), I did use zMUD for scripts in a way that let me automatically chase someone, bash them down, and, you know, kill them. Again and again. I just had to set the alias for the name/description and attack and off zMUD went, hunting them down.

I forgot, that I was also an immortal on the MUD I played on, in the sense that I had an account that would let you do all that stuff, but I only used it to leave copy-editing and other notes for the people building. Everyone wanted to build, and nobody wanted to be editor/play tester. So I used my huge immortal powers to...leave notes in rooms about text that needed editing, etc.. And, yeah, I had a good time with it.

Oh god yes, I played MUD's before EQ. Spent a lot of time on Mortal Realms, which was a DIKU that ran out of a university in Oklahoma (I think). It was a PvE mud until level 36, and then the Assassin class could PK and everyone could hunt the Assassins. Fun stuff. I was terrible at PK because the adrenalin rush would prevent me from typing well enough to win a fight. zMud was a revelation - I finally understood how people were so good at killing other people Duh.

Did anyone else spend (too much) time browsing The Mud Connector, trying to find new places to play?