MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s

For this blog I will be looking into MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s. I will be describing what each one is, along with some of the gameplay elements of each. I will then write a conclusion into my own feelings about how MUD’s, MUSH’s and MOO’s have evolved into today’s games.

MUD stands for Multi – User Dungeon. The first MUD was created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex University. It is a computer game which combines elements of role-playing games. MUD’s were text driven games, the players would have to read descriptions of rooms, objects, events, etc. The players would interact with such objects by typing in commands. MUD’s usually took place in a fantasy world. The object of these games was to kill monsters, or anything that got in your way and explore the fantasy world. Developers of MUD’s got there ideas from pen and paper role playing games such as dungeons and dragons. Ideas also came from gamebooks such as fighting fantasy, choose your own adventure. There are different variations of MUD’s, the first of which is the graphical MUD. This was a MUD that used computer graphics to represent parts of the virtual world. An early graphical MUD was the Habitat which was released in 1985. Another type of MUD is the Talkers. These are MUDs but they have their game machinery stripped away, leaving behind the communication level commands. Next up are RPIMUD, which stands for Role Playing Intensive Multi Layered Dungeon. This type of game leaned towards more realistic enforced gameplay. The object of RPIMUD was not goal based; you had to collaborate with fellow players to create multilayered storylines in a cohesive game world. The last type of MUD was the complex combat MUD. These had a more complicated battle system. It usually meant the game didn’t have an automated fighting system.

MUSH stands for Multi Used Shared Habitats. It is a text based online social medium, where multiple users are connected all at the same time. The earliest uses of mush servers were for role-playing and socializing. There are two variants of MUSH which came from TinyMUD, which is also a social game.

MOO stands for MUD object orientated; it is a type of MUD and is a text based online game. Moo’s interactive systems are well suited for the construction of text based adventure games and with the invention of the internet MUD was formed as a network version, this Led to different types of MUDs and one of these were MOO’s. One feature of the MOO is that it can perform object orientated programming within the server. This aloud people to change things, such as authoring new rooms and objects, creating new levels, and changing the MOO interface.

MMORPG’s stands for massively multiplayer online role playing games. These are online computer role playing games where many players interact with each other in a virtual world. They are usually set in a fantasy world, where the player takes control of a character. MMORPG’s have the traditional dungeon and dragon style of gameplay. They have a character development system. This usually works by the player gaining experience points and then levelling up. In some of the games there is an economy which is usually based on trading, a final game mechanic is that some players will join together and form clans or guilds.

From all that I have written about MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s, I feel that MUDs are the starting point for a whole new genre of gaming. I feel that MUDs with its early text based gaming has evolved into the huge MMORPG’s that we see today. It took its inspiration from dungeon and dragon pen and paper RPG games and with the technology we have I suppose it was only a matter of time that these games found there way onto the computer. From what I have written MUSH’s and MOO’s have been derived from MUDs and these have all helped in the development of MMORPG’s. Another reason that I feel that these games have inspired MMORPGs it that developers from early MUDs are still working but on MMORPGs, something that I do not find surprising due to my findings that the gameplay mechanics are nearly identical to today MMORPGs.