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janc
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Grex MUD?
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Feb 12 13:37 UTC 1998 |
At last night's staff meeting, Steve Weiss suggested that we consider the idea
of setting up some form of MUD on Grex. Staff reactions were mixed.
On the plus side, MUDs fit very well into the kind of community-oriented stuff
that is Grex's primary mission. They are certainly all about people getting
together on-line and talking. They probably do more community-building than
E-mail does.
On the minus side, they tend to be seriously addicting, at least for some
people, and could turn out to be significant resource hogs.
In any case, it might be a neat thing to try.
Various ideas were suggested for how to run a MUD in a resource-limited kind
of way. We didn't really reach any conclusions, but it is probably possible
to keep it from eating all of Grex.
Some people with MUD experience seemed to feel that MUDs tended to accumulate
too many wizards and evenutally collapsed. Various ideas for slowing this
down were suggested (only members can become wizards?).
General feeling was that it might be something we could consider doing. It
would take some research into what kind of MUD to run, and it would require
a suitable person to take the lead in running it. And it would require
public discussion and approval.
So what do people think?
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| 62 responses total. |
dpc
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response 1 of 62:
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Feb 12 14:29 UTC 1998 |
I suggest we wait on the MUD until the 670 is up. On our present machine
doing a MUD would probably bring everything to a grinding halt.
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keesan
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response 2 of 62:
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Feb 12 15:07 UTC 1998 |
Please, what is a MUD and what is a wizard? (I obviously am not one).
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davel
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response 3 of 62:
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Feb 12 17:51 UTC 1998 |
If you have to ask, you can't afford to know ...
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albaugh
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response 4 of 62:
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Feb 12 19:23 UTC 1998 |
Since I had the same question, I did a quick Alta Vista search, and found:
From http://nmsmn.com/~cservin/jargon/m/mud.html :
MUD [acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt. Multi-User Dimension]
1. n. A class of virtual reality experiments accessible via the Internet.
These are real-time chat forums with structure; they have multiple `locations'
like an adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a simple
economic system, and the capability for characters to build more structure onto
the database that represents the existing world.
2. vi. To play a MUD (see hack-and-slay). The acronym MUD is often lowercased
and/or verbed; thus, one may speak of `going mudding', etc. Historically, MUDs
(and their more recent progeny with names of MU- form) derive from a hack by
Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the University of Essex's DEC-10 in the
early 1980s; descendants of that game still exist today (see BartleMUD).
There is a widespread myth (repeated, unfortunately, by earlier versions of
this lexicon) that the name MUD trademarked to the commercial MUD run by Bartle
on British Telecom (the motto: "You haven't *lived* 'til you've *died* on
MUD!"); however, this is false --- Richard Bartle explicitly placed `MUD' in PD
in 198
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other
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response 5 of 62:
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Feb 12 22:45 UTC 1998 |
wow. that would be neat. i used to be a very regular mud player at Vincent's
Hollow at Iowa State University. I never made wizard, but i had about 104
out of a possible 120 levels. yes, it was very addictive, yes it way cool
in its interactive nature. i was elected master of the oldest and most
prestigious player guild in the Hollow. i haven't thought much about those
days in quite a while. (real life at that time was kinda blah).
i used to have some large sheets of graph paper on which i had mapped out the
realm...i wonder what i did with them...
it was at port 23 at mud.iastate.edu there was some protocol about using
port 23 for muds...
<other meanders the depths of memory...>
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scg
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response 6 of 62:
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Feb 12 22:48 UTC 1998 |
Port 23 is the default telnet port.
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aruba
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response 7 of 62:
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Feb 12 23:17 UTC 1998 |
I had a coworker from Sweden who met his wife while mudding. Apparently she
impressed him enough that he crossed the Atlantic to marry her and live in
Ann Arbor.
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mta
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response 8 of 62:
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Feb 13 03:49 UTC 1998 |
*sigh* Here we go again. I've said it before, but:
Just for the record it's my considered oipinion that a mud would be just one
more distraction from the main focus of grex: the sharing of information. I
don't think it would add to grex in proportion to the resources it would
require and so don't consider it a good idea.
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davel
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response 9 of 62:
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Feb 13 11:46 UTC 1998 |
<dave is impressed to learn that there were MUDs in the year 198>
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n8nxf
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response 10 of 62:
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Feb 13 12:31 UTC 1998 |
Another recreational computer drug. I'd never mess with it unless I was
bored out of my gourd.
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robh
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response 11 of 62:
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Feb 13 12:53 UTC 1998 |
Re 9 - That's right sonny, and believe me you modern programmers
have it easy, with your fancy electricity and silicon. We had to
use sunlight and wood! Do you whippersnappers have any idea
how long it takes to etch a MUD program into an oak tree without
using a clean room?
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remmers
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response 12 of 62:
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Feb 13 18:15 UTC 1998 |
When users have asked about MUDs in the past, the response was always
that it would be too taxing on Grex's resources to run one, as well as
a diversion from its main purpose. Apparently, the thinking of at least
one staff member has changed. I'm curious why srw thinks this might be
a reasonable thing to do now and will listen with an open mind.
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mta
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response 13 of 62:
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Feb 13 20:48 UTC 1998 |
I'll admit that my mind is as open as I'd like, but I'm certainly willing to be
convinced if the reasons are good. ;)
I guess my main objection, which I wasn't all that clear about before, is that
we can't be all things to all people. We simply don't have the resources.
That being the case, I just as soon see us stick close to our original
"charter" to provide as much information access to as many of the world's
"information have nots" as we can.
"Cyberdrugs" may be lots of fun -- but they won't make a serious difference in
the ability of very many people to keep up with the information age. E-mail
can, sharing information in conferences can, even party can. Because where you
have people talking to each other, you set up an atmosphere for casual
information exchange.
If we had the extra resources to throw around, I'd prefer to see us provide
more ambitious options for web sites. Why? Because web sites have become one
of the markers of who's a technology "have" or insider.
Sure, most people can afford the $12 a month (or whatever it's running these
days) to get access through a real ISP. But not all can. Those are the
people, ideally, that I think Grex is here to serve.
It only works, of course, if we're a fun community for the folks who can help
us keep going. So if it doesn't serve our primary purpose, I'd have to be
pretty convinced that it would meet the secondary purpose of strengthening our
community.
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mta
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response 14 of 62:
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Feb 13 20:50 UTC 1998 |
Make that "is *not* as open as I'd like.
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e4808mc
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response 15 of 62:
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Feb 13 22:30 UTC 1998 |
As an avid MUDder, I'd suggest that Grex NOT put up a mud. I can spend 5-8
hours at a time telneted to my mud, and usually log on for no less than 2
hours.
Yes, I have lots of cyber acquaintences, yes it is a "community" for me, and
yes, I like it lots better than party, cause there are "projects" that my
friends and I can team up together on.
But muds need lots of people on at once to be much fun, and they have all
the community balancing and ajudication issues of any community. Unless
we have a cadre of mature wizards, and a cadre of programmers who can find
and fix all the bugs that players find in the code, the mud will be very
contentious.
Most of the muds I've played have a large number of immature players, who
need lots of guidance and occasional site-banning. If we can find people
willing to be on-line 24 hours a day, and be the elders for the community,
as well as the technicians, then we could run a MUD that would build up a
cyber community. Otherwise, I worry about our ability to provide a
positive experience for MUDders.
I have not addressed the capacity needs of Grex equipment to make this
successful. Can anyone figure out from what I've said how this might
impact our speed and access?
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scg
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response 16 of 62:
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Feb 14 00:20 UTC 1998 |
I'm not wild about the idea, but don't have strong objections if we can limit
the resources it sucks. What I said at the staff meeting was that I would
only support this if it were on a separate machine and bandwidth limited, such
that it couldn't suck up too much of the Net connection. I'm also not very
interested in helping run it, but if somebody else wants to administer it I'm
not going to stand in their way.
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mag
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response 17 of 62:
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Feb 15 00:25 UTC 1998 |
I'm totally against the idea of running a MUD on Grex! It would slow the
system down tremendously, but more importantly this place would be infested
more and more by the type of geeks we don't want on here. Don't we already
have to wait long enough in the telnet queue? If we were to add a MUD to
Grex, we'd get a terribly slow system and a system hogged by game freaks.
No way to MUDs on Grex...I'm sure this type of craze wasn't contemplated when
Grex was founded and nor should it be now!
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mdw
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response 18 of 62:
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Feb 15 13:04 UTC 1998 |
MUDs were definitely mentioned during the founders meetings. So, yes,
MUDs were contemplated.
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dang
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response 19 of 62:
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Feb 15 20:49 UTC 1998 |
Mic, I've mudded fairly extensively, and know many people who have, and I
certainly wouldn't consider myself "the type of geek we don't want on here."
As for slowing the system down, the *only* way this could get my support (and
I suspect the rest of staff and board, not to mention many to most of the
users) would be if it were on another machine and limited to it's bandwidth,
as Steve said. If that were the case, it wouldn't affect Grex's speed, telnet
queue, etc.
I at one time looked into setting up a mud. That said, I doubt I'm qualified
to run one without more research. I'm ambiguous about it's usefulness on
grex. I don't see it as being against Grex's mission, which I see as being
a community.
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mag
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response 20 of 62:
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Feb 16 21:50 UTC 1998 |
I know of people who MUD for 10 hrs+ a day...I think these people have a
problem, but then again - I've been wrong before. Not all MUD players have
a problem...a little of everything in moderation is good.
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mag
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response 21 of 62:
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Feb 16 21:52 UTC 1998 |
Marcus: it's good to see the Grex founders contemplated a wide range of
issues, but had enough sanity not to run a MUD on Grex.
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arthurp
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response 22 of 62:
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Feb 17 04:04 UTC 1998 |
There are lots of other places that can do a far better job of providing
MUD for the world. Grex can not be everything to everyone. I don't see
MUD as an onramp to the have-nots, so I don't see a need for it.
Hey, if you really want to MUD, pay grex $6 and telnet there from here.
I've done that a couple times.
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jep
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response 23 of 62:
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Feb 17 17:54 UTC 1998 |
Maybe Grex can form an alliance with other sites that offer MUD, and
direct users there who wish to play the game. It seems to me that MUD
will consume a lot of resources, but not provide much of what Grex wants
to do. People complain about party now, and e-mail, because people do
these things instead of use the conferences. MUD is like that, too,
isn't it?
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cmcgee
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response 24 of 62:
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Feb 17 21:47 UTC 1998 |
>Re muds: we used to have a mud conference on Grex. It was recently folded
>into the Amalgam conference. There is a sporadicly used item that directs
>people to various muds. Other than that item, I havent seen a lot of
>conferencers express ANY interest in muds. We cant even keep one item about
>them busy.
>..
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