[MUD-Dev] NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies -No, Really! (By R. Bartle)

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 16th November 2004, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

> Btw, I also totally disagree with Raph's idea that "virtual world"
> ought to be seen as an umbrella term.

How many times are people going to split the umbrella terms before
we get one that everybody can agree on?

This is the MUD-DEV list, because at the time it was begun MUD was
the umbrella term. Unfortunately, some people decided that "MUD"
meant "hacking and slaying and killing stuff", so they invented
their own acronyms ("MU*" is still seen fairly regularly).  Also
unfortunately, when graphical worlds came along their players
decided that "MUD" meant "text", and "MMORPG" was more appropriate.
As a result, we had no umbrella term by which we could refer to
MUDs, MMORPGs, MU*s etc. in general.

I needed an umbrella title for my book, and used "Virtual World"
because that was the best on offer. Now you're saying that we can't
use "Virtual World".

OK, so what do YOU think we should use when we want to refer to
things like MUD1, LambdaMOO, UO, EQ, SL etc.? Or are you saying that
there shouldn't be an umbrella term because they're so different
that we shouldn't lump them all together?

	     Richard
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