Text-Based MMOs - Muds and Mudding

A MUD is a type of online game where players can interact and explore the game either by themselves or together. A lot of games are like this - for example 'World of Warcraft' - but in order to qualify as a MUD, a game must be playable without graphics, using only text and commands.

Since most MUDs are playable using only text commands, most MUDs have browser-based clients that allow you to play from any browser, without downloads.

Most MUDs have the look and feel of an old 1980's era adventure game, but newer and more modern MUDs may have graphics and other enhancements that are not required but may make the game easier to learn and play.

Lack of graphics is in some ways an advantage. Rather than focus on creating skins for every object, monster, and place in the game, MUDs focus on creating an outstanding game. Many MUDs have huge worlds, with countless quests and other things to do, for all types of players at all skill levels.

Most MUDs are free and open to all comers. These are typically smaller games run by dedicated individuals. There are also a number of pay-to-play and other commercial MUDs out there, often with a substantially larger playerbase than free games.

MUDs attract a specific type of audience, and there are a few specific niches as well. The learning curve is often high for new players, and some player types simply can't function without a graphical interface. Some niches avoid the learning curve nicely, while others simply have the mindset to consider the interface just another puzzle to solve.

Two classes of player that MUDs have in common with other MMOs are the 'explorer' and 'power level' types. Both explorers and power levelers don't really require graphics to get their gaming fix. As long as their stat points creep up over time, power levelers are happy; and explorers simply require a vast and complex world to figure out and run experiments in. MUDs can provide both of these in vast quantities due to the abstract nature of the world allowed by text unhindered by graphics.

One large niche audience are the socialites. For this type of player, a MUD is less about the game and quests than it is about talking to friends and acquaintances. To this type of player, a MUD is a very well featured chat room with things to do when there's no-one to talk to. For a true socialite, having a visual avatar may be less important than having easy, reliable communication.

Due to the heavy use of the keyboard interface, you don't often find casual gamers on MUDs; the learning curve is simply too steep unless you've got a lot of prior MUD experience.

A very large niche audience for MUDs is the class of visually impaired players that cannot play graphical games. The blind and visually impaired make up a substantial fraction of the player base on many MUDs; in some cases, over half of the population may be blind. This is made possible by screen reading software, which can read the game to blind players in real time.

The text-only aspect of mudding serves as a great equalizer here - MUDs are one of the few real-time games where visually impaired players can compete against or work with sighted players on even footing.

Unfortunately, the wide variation in screen reader software and clients complicates the process for blind players. There are also MUDs that are more blind-friendly than others; for example, MUD features such as ASCII-art maps are often worse than useless to blind players.

There are a number of general clients and software packs to aid blind players in their search for MUDs, but most blind friendly MUD games will have customized sound packs and clients intended specifically for that game.

While all MUDs are playable using ordinary telnet (usually even without ANSI extensions), having to use telnet is often very limiting. For this reason, there are a large number of custom clients with special features to help improve the mudding experience. Some of the more common features of MUD clients are:

Command Stacking - the ability to issue more than one command at a time, in quick succession. For example to 'run north', 'steal treasure', then 'run south' as quickly as possible so as not to get caught stealing.

Aliases - the ability to issue several commands using one shorter, simpler command. Aliases are often used in combat to shorten complex commands into simpler ones. Mistyping a complex command, or not being able to type a complex command fast enough, can make the difference between survival and failure when fighting.

Triggers - the ability of the client to recognize when things happen, and perform automatic actions. Triggers are often used to eliminate inconveniences; one of the most common triggers is the 'autodisarm' trigger, which recognizes when your character has been disarmed and automatically retrieves your weapon. Complex triggers can also be used to almost completely control a character; this is called 'botting', as the character is now a robot instead of a real player.

Another common use of triggers by the blind population is to map various events into sounds. Thus, when something bad happens to your character, a trigger can immediately play out a 'danger' sound and alert you to the danger before the reader can complete a sentence.

Maps - some advanced clients add map support, which displays nearby areas you have recently been to. These maps are usually graphical, and not used by blind players.

Status Bars - status bars typically display your health, resources or experience in the form of a graphical bar, to allow sighted players to more easily track the state of their character.

There are many other things that clients can do for you, including saving logfiles and customizing colors. If you're an inexperienced player, you may want to ask if there's a recommended client for the MUDs you wish to play.

Most MUDs are in fact completely free to play, and are graciously hosted by their owners or a small group of dedicated players - but some are not. Public codebases are available from a number of web sites, allowing anyone with a bit of skill and spare time to start their own mud; however, most public codebases prohibit charging fees for the game.

In the very beginning, there were only a few pay-to-play MUDs, two of the more famous being the initial versions of Gemstone IV and DragonRealms. The limitations of public code bases ensured that the vast majority of new MUDs were not commercial. Recently, custom commercial servers have become more commonplace. This has allowed MUD owners to charge for various things without violating any public licenses.

Some MUDs, such as DragonRealms, have monthly fees. Other MUDs, such as those run by Iron Realms, require you to pay (or get someone else to pay) to advance your character. Another business model, used in the past by Medievia, is to allow players to buy limited time 'super equipment', without which the game is vastly more difficult.

Yet another approach is to only offer rewards that would not unbalance the game or grant donating players a meaningful edge over other players. One MUD that does this is Alter Aeon, which primarily sells items for convenience and decoration.

[HISTORICAL NOTE - A lot of MUD codebases are derived from the DIKU source released in the early 1990's. This codebase has license terms that prohibit the use of the code for commercial gain. A handful of MUDs, notably Medievia and NiMUD, have attracted widespread scorn from the mudding community for DIKU license violations. The DIKU team is widely respected and appreciated for their contributions to MUDs and MUDding, making the actions of license breakers even more reprehensible.]

MUDs have a rich history, starting out with the first text-based adventure games in the mid 1970's. In the mid 1980's, the first network based adventure games began to appear on what was to become the World Wide Web; a fairly comprehensive list of the original games and their timeline can be found on Wikipedia in the MUD article.

One of the first widely distributed MUD codebases was AberMUD, written in 1987 by Alan Cox. AberMUD's popularity resulted in several inspired works, the most notable of which were TinyMUD, LpMUD, and DikuMUD.

Both TinyMUD and LpMUD have comprehensive internal languages which can be used to construct things in game; TinyMUD is the basis for a lot of free-form MUSH and MUCK style servers. For LpMUD, it is possible to build a complete game without modifying the C code of the server. Both of these codebases and their various derivatives make up a large fraction of the currently active MUD/MUSH servers.

DikuMUD was one of the more popular code bases in the mid-1990's, with most of the game mechanics already present and hardcoded into the server. Prefab worlds were available, and the idea of being able to simply modify areas without having to program or modify the server code was attractive to many new MUD administrators. From this hack-and-slash style code base were many other code bases derived, including Circle, Merc, ROM, and Smaug.

More recently, custom commercial servers have become more commonplace. The DikuMUD distribution license contains clauses that limit its use in commercial settings; other public code bases have similar restrictions. There are also limitations in the publicly available distributions which may be undesirable when used in a commercial setting.

Unfortunately, the advent of graphical MMOs and MMORPGs has limited the growth of traditional text-based MUDs. Many of these MMOs have the same depth and quality as low-end MUDs, but with the addition of pretty graphics. High quality MUDs are largely considered to have much better long term gameplay than MMOs, but this does not appear to be sufficient to compete against the intuitive graphical interface. While the overall population of internet users has grown dramatically in the last decade, the overall population of MUD players has not kept pace.