[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 27 Jul 1998 19:26:08 -0500 
Koster, Raph<rkoster at origin.ea.com> wrote:


> It's worth noting that as much as UO gets brought up as an example
> of the freewheeling highly dangerous game (and the "kitchen sink"
> too) its original intent was actually fairly easily summed up. We
> wanted to make an alternate world. A microcosm. 

I'd suggest you also implicitly aped SX MUD's "Do what thou wilt",
which encouraged a very laissez faire, exploratory, frontier aspect.

> It's sort of bizarre for me now to see UO as such a touchstone on
> the list...

Its probably worth examining why:

  1) UOL has a large active player base

  2) UOL is well documented on the web etc.

  3) UOL attempted a number of "experiments" which while not unusual
in MUDdom, had never successfully been applied to large sets of
onconstrained players, and not all at once.

  4) We happen to have UOL insiders on the list.

The first three seem the real keys.  Not only do we know what UOL is
attempting (even if few of us have ever even logged on (I haven't)),
but we have the hundreds upon hundreds of web pages and list posts by
players to stand testament to how UOL is functioning.  Given #3 we get
to see not only the inside causes, design goals, and mechanics of an
item, but the views taken of it and its effects on the player
population.

Petri dish.

> (is this the longest thread in the list's history yet?),

It certainly is one that has caused me to double ckeck every time I
spell "killer" now.  

> (It's also interesting to see the Usenet mud community somehow fail
> to notice UO is there).

Considering Usenet's signal ratio, its tacit derision of for-pay
games, the number of well ridden hobby horses, and the deeply
entrenched LP/Diku/etc franchises, this can't be too surprising.

> Yeah, it was designed as much MORE of a "sandbox" than many other
> muds, I suppose. But I am sure that there must be text muds out
> there with less controls on PK, in a far more gaming oriented
> environment. (Aren't there?)

Of a surety.  However they don't have the player bases or the level of
documentation _by_the_players_ of wht's happening there.

A more interesting question is why M59, which does have the player
base and does have the online documentation, has rarely been
comparitively mentioned on the list, and almost never as a touchstone.
I'd suggest that #2 (level of experimentation) is/was lacking in M59.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...