Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: d91fe@krokis.pt.hk-r.se (Fredrik Ekman)
Subject: Re: MUD thoughts
In-Reply-To: Andrew Lewis Tepper's message of Tue, 11 Jan 1994 22:20:28 -0500
Message-ID: <D91FE.94Jan12161038@krokis.pt.hk-r.se>
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Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci. Soft Center, Ronneby
References: <4hAqlwq00iUzQC6B0S@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 15:10:38 GMT
Lines: 22

In article <4hAqlwq00iUzQC6B0S@andrew.cmu.edu> Andrew Lewis Tepper <at15+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

   I'll admit I've only tried a few MUDs, and none held my interest for one
   reason: They were all like fancy chat lines; there was very little
   role-playing going on, and _NO_ puzzle solving.

You obviously missed the best MUDs. In particular, LP MUDs are the ones
you're after. Avoid MUSH and MUCK at all cost, unless you really want
"fancy chat lines". For example, NannyMUD (130.236.254.259 2000 or
mud.lysator.liu.se 2000) has something like 60 quests, some extremely
large, some extremely good and some for several players.

Still, even on the best LP MUDs, your criticism has a quite strong point.
The reason that there is so little of special features in most MUDs is
that most Wizards (the people that code the stuff) are often very
inexperienced coders. Making rooms and simple NPCs are mostly very
simple, but as soon as you want to add some AI, or other things that
require advanced coding, most will fail.

Or at least, that's what I think. Other thoughts?

  /F
