Sunday, May 22, 2011

My MUD Adventures

This post isn't related to how to play Dartmud, but the path that took me there as a player.

My mudding days began in 1994, dialing into my university and browsing using the Gopher protocol. The speed was 2400 baud, and you could watch the text cascade on the screen. Things were slow, new, and the internet was still beneath the public radar. Back then Prodigy or Aol was bigger than the internet as we know it today. There were a few muds hosted there but as they cost money I didn't want anything to do with them.

I had been an avid reader of Tolkien so the first mud I played was MUME. I don't recall the version but it was a Diku mud with some pretty cool PK opportunities. One would play as either a "whitey" or good race, or as a "darkie" or orc type. You could play the game as you liked, stick to the safer areas but there was always the threat of a darkie raid. In those times the game was populated by northern European types, so it felt as strange and unique as it was. Some weekends you'd have 100 plus players, very fun.

You were always on the move, and not much RP was happening. You'd raid the warrens (orc hideout) they would raid Bree. It was a great deal of fast-paced fun but eventually I wanted to move on. Diku muds weren't my favorite and I got into LPmuds next.

The next mud was the TwoTowers mud which in case you didn't guess was also a Tolkien based mud. I started playing this one early on in the development. I played for awhile and joined the ranks of Coders. I spent the next two years learning LPC and coding a few areas. The mud had a pretty rigorous QC system and the bar was set high but eventually I wanted to move elsewhere.

At this point I found Dartmud. I had tried it once before, around 1995, and had farmed with Tellborn for awhile. I remember the mud was down for a while between servers so I moved onto other places. When I returned to Dartmud a few years later it was before the comet and Malice was running around. It was a pretty interesting place! The comet struck and shortly after I soured on Dartmud due to the IC / OOC interactions. I took 5 years off or so and returned. Even today I think a good deal of out of game interaction takes place so I play the game in a manner that removes me (as much as possible) from that sort of thing.

I've learned that as long as I'm having fun it's a cool place to be, but once the fun wears off it's time to take a break and do something else. I've always felt drawn back to Dartmud, it's a rich place that I enjoy playing.

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