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MMOs aren't as good as MUDs
jsw40
Member Posts: 214
I've played MMOs for a long, long time. My very first MMO was EverQuest and it's what got me addicted, and from there I branched out to Asheron's Call 2, EverQuest 2, World of Warcraft, Matrix Online, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Face of Mankind, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. etc.
The point is, I've played a crap ton of MMOs in my day. Yet, I found that I wasn't able to stay with MMOs for too terribly long, because after I got the gear I wanted and the character level I sought after, I was bored. End game raids turned repetitive, player interaction was based around others getting the same gear I had, etc. The grinding seems to appear the same in every game when you're a veteran, so when you experience a grindfest in WoW, you recognize it instantly when you play a new game. Basically, once all the pretty distractions are out of the way, the MMO boils down to being nothing more than a habit.
I searched all over for a game to capture my imagination - with player politics, player wars, active roleplay and deep, in-depth combat that really put me into the game world. While each MMO had it's high points that I liked, I never really felt satisfied with an MMO (after the initial shock of EverQuest) until I played a good MUD.
For those of you that don't know, MUDs are entirely text-based games. They have no graphics what-so-ever, and all the room descriptions, attacks, etc. are written. At first, for many years actually, I was put off by this thought. It seemed way too nerdy, way too complicated and just plain ridiculous. Why should I play a game that makes me work and read when I can pay for some visual artistry? The reason why, I found, is because good MUDs sacrifice graphics for intense, deep and absorbing worlds. As I became more and more involved in MUDs and more familiar, I found myself absorbed in the lore of the world around me and I became involved with the game on the personal level.
I found myself substituting things like 'Return to me with 12 wolf pelts for a pair of gloves' with much more meaningful experiences. As a matter of fact, in one Romanesque game, I played a thief that practiced palming coins in alley ways to get skilled enough to be able to cut and lift purses off of prostitutes and escape with their nightly earnings. Eventually, my thief was caught and thrown in jail - he managed to slit his own wrists and kill himself with a sharpened coin he had hidden on his person to avoid being hanged in front of the rest of the playerbase. Where in ANY MMO would I find immersion like that?
I found myself replacing 'You hit a ghoul for 13 points!' with 'Tightly gripping your boison dagger, you make a quick underhand stab aimed at a thug! Critical Hit! The boison dagger pierces flesh and muscle, leaving a thug with a new orifice on his chest! A thug's waist slowly oozes blood.' to 'Borscin draws his blade back and plunges it deep into your helpless body impaling it to the hilt. Blood bubbles and froths from your mouth as you gasp your last breath and slide off the weapon.
You have been slain by Borscin.'
Since I've started playing MUDs (more than one, mind you) I've participated in religious holy wars, I've desecrated a god's shrine and been smited by the god himself, I've performed surgery on another player that was shot in the chest with an arrow and dressed his wounds, I've been apart of a conspiracy to overthrow a player-city leader and succeeded, among many other things. I have never, nor will I ever found any immersion close to this in any MMO.
Flame me all you want, but I thought I would inform you all of meaningful gaming experiences. I keep reading about people wanting them, and, if you take the time to check out a good MUD, you'll thank me later.
Comments
I've tried a MUD and had a hard time getting into it personally, I should probably give it another shot sometime soon,
but I will admit, I think MUD's can offer things that an mmo can't, especially more depth.
Check this MUD out == http://www.thornsofwar.com
It's different, and new... similar to WURM I guess... nothing like I've seen before in a MUD.
I used to love downloading and playing old text games - there was some real innovation there - A Mind Forever Voyaging is an amazing piece of game. Played a few MUDs as well - Achaea, the Discworld MUD. However my trouble with them is that sometimes it's a big unnatural moving around, it's hard to feel like you're in a real space. (Especially if you're like me and get East and West confused, apparently some MUD players have entire mirror images of the game world in their heads).
Then I found a new genre of games, based on the old text system but with a grid-based map for navigation. It's hard to explain way, but being able to actually see the space you're travelling in and explore it in an intuitive way (OK, typing 'N' isn't hard, but being able to go 'see location' - click - 'move to location' makes so much difference). Urban Dead, where players are survivors and zombies in a quarantined city, is the blockbuster of the genre. Then there's Shartak (a tropical island), Nexus War (lots of factions in a war between good and evil), Shintolin (people building villages at the dawn of civilisation). Well, the last one's my own game, but a game maker has to spam. www.shintolin.co.uk - someone told me it reminded them of old Infocom games, which I think is very cool.
Actually, I think you'll find that instead of maps in their heads, they instead make maps using graphing/grid paper. That's how us fogeys done it back in the stone ages
of gaming.
Why play games without graphics in 2009? I outgrew that stuff in the 80s and even then we had Atari, C64 and or an Apple IIc. Theres nothing BETTER about a text game. Can't be immersed in it. If I want to read a poorly written book I can, but why? Reading, "you hit the Orc for 5 dmg with your sword" just doesn't quite thrill a person anymore. Sorry.
Nice try though. If I get so desperate that a MUDD seems interesting, I'll ask my wife to shoot me=)
i have only ever tried 1 MUD which was a wheel of time based one, i couldnt help but get totally lost when trying to navigate around the game world, it seemed very absorbing, i was a channeler and ended up going out of the starting city in the night and got hopelessly lost then got attacked by a wolf and killed
i just didnt understand how to fight or equip items, i would really like to get into it and am going to have another crack at it after i finish this post, i just hope i can find a good MUDs for beginners guide lol
When I said 'mirror image' I mean the entire game world was reversed, so east was west and vice versa. If they drew a map on paper (I remember I used to have quite a few, Colossal Cave, Zork, etc). I read about three guys, I think from MUD1, who met up in real life, and were drawing a map of the game. Two of them had east/west confused, the third guy failed to convince them that they had the entire world backwards.
For me, it's not so bad. I know that East is East. Unfortunately, I also think that West points East. Very confusing.
You should try a text-based MUD that has a map function built into it. If you want a more graphical map, you could look at some of the Skotos Games (like Grendel's Revenge - it's a bit too empty and simple for me, but it's a great way to get used to MUDs) or an Iron Realms Entertainment MUD. You mentioned Achaea - did you know you can make it to where each time you move, you see a map of the area you're in with a marker designating where you're at? It's just like reading a 'YOU ARE HERE' map in a Mall.[
I recommend trying an IRE (Iron Realms Entertainment) MUD for starting out in the whole MUD genre. While you may not want to -stick- there because they run off of a 'Item Shop'-esque business scheme, they have some of the most polished and newbie-friendly MUDs I've seen. They even have a channel with paid guides devoted to helping new players. You should check them out.
I think my original post explains why I think text games are more in-depth and better - I don't really know how to put it any differently. But, I respect your opinion. Not everyone likes MUDs - that's why the MMO market is so large. I made this post for those that are looking for something deeper and lasting in a game... obviously you're not one of those people and are perfectly fine with grinding/repetition.
The game I suggested has a graphical map... you see other players, everything moves frealy, not tick based.
I still remember the times of MU*. Using your imagination was all the graphics you need.
however, modern day graphical MMOs brought a level of grouping and team play that could never be attacined in MUDS. In the end, Muds were still a solo or 1 on 1 game
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
While this is true for most MUDs, many have ways of avoiding this. I've played several MUDs where classes are designed to be in a group and serve as a support class, and I've participated in frequent raids where I would have been destroyed had I not been in a group with five buddies.
I've actually played a few of the iron realms games and enjoyed them quite a bit. Even loved a lot of the concepts in lusternia like every class playing insanely differently, the social concepts in the game, how the PvP wasn't just people bashing each other's heads in, and the PvP+Environment. Loved my monk and the kata system of mixing small abilities to make bigger ones.
However I got insanely disheartened when I realized how much of real combat you're going to be delagating to a programming/scripting system while you just control the general direction and make decisive decisions only. I'd love to play a mud that had a slower paced combat sytstem and a system that doesn't allow any form of scripting outside of simple aliasis/abbreviations. Not having classes would be a bonus as well(maybe specializations like lusternia).
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
anyone know any ones like that? Ive never really played any muds, but i would love to try one just to expirience the depth.
This might help. Some player reviews there as well.
www.mudconnect.com
MUDS were so awesome that you had ti use a script to play them for you, as the awesome was to much for one brain to comprehend so much text.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Whatever rings your bell, but the people playing muds these days don't hold a candle to the creative ones that used to roam there.
Personally, while I enjoyed muds in their day, I would not touch one today, now that would bore me to no end.
I've tried MUDS several times, but I just can't do it. This is my main problem, moving around. It's to frustrating.
You see a road. You can travel E, W, N, S. You travel South, you see a small village. You cannot travel in that direction. You cannot travel in that direction. You travel North, you see a road. You can travel E, W, N, S. You travel South. You see a small village. You cannot travel in that direction. You cannot travel in that direction.
Crap! I quit.
I think there is a value in MUDs with using textual bits to help create a setting and ignite a user's imagination. I noticed Everquest used a bit of it in it's gloomingdeep tutorial- stuff like 'you feel the wind as you enter the room', that just adds an extra dimension that I hope hasn't completely died out with MUDs.
Its like telling that cassete player is better than MP3. MMOs are evolution of MUD, next generation online games. MUDs were great in early 90s, now they are the past. Cant compete with visually stunning content.
Most polished MUDs have in-depth mapping systems. Heck, I know that Aetolia (one of the IRE games) has a window dedicated to a map that is built in to their system.
Not really.It's more like saying The Beatles have more depth to their music than Hannah Montana, which is true.
Hannah Montana may have more advertising, a flashy Disney label and action figures, theme-parks and what-not, but when it comes down to the content - the Beatles reign supreme.
Always like muds that have a "hunt" skill, if ya get lost and want to find your way back to town then ya can just type "hunt <name-of-twonsperson>" where-ever ya been just remember a name, hehe..
http://www.myspace.com/jhypsyshah
I don't think you played enough of them there were a number of forced grouping MUDs with party formation mechanics. They tended to be LP MUDs rather than DIKU MUDs. Just look up RetroMUD or other similar MUDs of that codebase. They have a front line, middile line, back line and tanking mechanics/ healing mechanics
Some MUDs were mostly solo play, almsot all MUDs had some kind of grouping feature but in many it was primitive. EQ did not invent tanks and spank. Not by a lopng shot. The only thing you might be able to say is that for an MMORPG based on the DIKU style it had more group mechanics. But a game like retroMUD had them before EQ was ever even released.
You can argue that EQ adds in some kind of use of a 2D plane via distance and positioning to the equation, but you can also argue that RetroMUD has much richer formation mechanics since EQ has none at all and no collision detection to enforce a formation. Whereas RetroMUD enforces formation even if its on the level of being like Bard's Tale circa 1984.
Most polished MUDs have in-depth mapping systems. Heck, I know that Aetolia (one of the IRE games) has a window dedicated to a map that is built in to their system.
Not really.It's more like saying The Beatles have more depth to their music than Hannah Montana, which is true.
Hannah Montana may have more advertising, a flashy Disney label and action figures, theme-parks and what-not, but when it comes down to the content - the Beatles reign supreme.
There are too many MUDs (or were many are gone now) to say much of anything. But MUDs were much more free to experiment and elaborate on the RPG aspects of their games.
If you take MUDs as a whole they are far far more advanced and innovative than MMO in regards to RPG mechanics. And in some rare MUDs they are just simply much more in-depth. The class system of RetroMUD is far more complex than most any MMORPG. They have literally tens of thousands of possible class combinations when you consider all Praimry, seconadry and tertiary class combinations.
However MUDs are restricted by their interface any honest must admit that. And many many MUDs were at least somewhat shoddy or haphazard and very very few MUDs measure up to a conventional MMO in all regards.
When taken as a whole MUDs versus MMO, its no contest; MUDs are far more creative. But finding a single MUD that compares well to a AAA MMO is hard and there are not too many. Something like Gemstone or some of the other long running large MUDs or whaterver.
If you are really looking for RPG innovation in the online world, frankly it happened 10 years ago. Most MUDs already implemented 90% of the suggestions you see on these boards to one degreee or another. The only question is did they do it well.
I mean the way that BEast Mastery works in Star Wars Galaxy is almost a carbon copy of the way necromancers from GateMUD (which never quite got off the ground) worked. You made your own pets, had to find good corpses to make better version of a skeleton or zombie. You named em and put em awya and resummoned them. You level them with XP and taught them skills. 90% of it is all exactly the same. Not that SWG copied that MUD unless some dev from that MUD works for Sony there is like no way. only a handful of people ever did much in that MUD it never got a real player base. But the SWG re-design of Beast Mastery was already implmented and designed in a MUD almost 12 years ago to about a 90% degree.
MUDs were far more experimentaly MMO are pretty stagnant frankly. But most MMO are money making ventures and most MUDs were not.
things can be done in text and in your imagination that cannot be done in a game.
"In the box you find a spherical cube. you get a headache when you stare at it too long"
MUDs were forced to innovate in order to differentiate themselves from the stock code base that everyone could simply download and run. The client was telnet. The graphics were ANSI.
I remember connecting, and if "Choose your class" was Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, I disconnected. 0 tolerance for the same generic out of the box experience. And you know what, I found plenty of muds to play that intrigued me and some amazed me with their depth and creativity.
MMOs are reaching this point or will in the next 5 years. Graphically, many F2P games are competitive with their P2P counterparts, and there are several times as many out there. The wider appeal of MMOs has reached people who didn't tire of Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief because they never played MUDs. This new group of people is starting to get just as tired of the generic as I was with MUDs.
Because MMOs are phenomonally expensive, the rate of innovation is much slower, but it will come eventually.