Dragonmud

From Game Theory's latest episode based off the future of the MMO by looking into its past and seeing how it has evolved I wanted to learn more about these early MMOs. We're taking a look at less World of Warcraft and more Zork, I've waited a long time to name drop Zork, the MMO of the 1970s was very different to how we know it now. Forget your fancy graphics we're talking text based adventures over the earliest forms of the internet!

The MMO was known as the MUD, the Multi-User Dungeon, where, as you can guess, multiple users existed in the same game. Imagine it at the time! The first MUD was Colossal Cave Adventure in 1975, a time when people were amazed by Pong and playing on the Magnavox Odyssey! Players could see information about the virtual world before they joined such as information about other players or the NPCs in the game, all of this over text. As is the case now, many MUDs were based off of fantasy realms like todays WoW or Elder Scrolls Online with themes and creatures taken straight from Dungeons and Dragons! However, if fantasy isn't your cup of tea there were also MUDs based off of Science Fiction settings and worlds based off of popular books! MUDs truly were for everyone, right? They had a fair share of problems, one of which was the fact that you needed internet, this was a huge problem.

It seems strange today to be away from an internet connection, even some phone booths have Wi-Fi! You can't get away from an internet connection! However, this was the 1970s and the internet had only just been invented and not many people had it. Early MUDs, and even other text based adventures like Zork were supported by ARPANET, what is ARPANET? ARPANET was an internet service which connected a few universities across the globe which was only online at certain times of the day. But ARPANET was online all weekend. So to play a MUD you have to be a university student, easy. Problem 1 solved! Problem 2 is a little bit harder to solve, however. ARPANET charged internet service per hour, to play an early MUD such as Dragonmud you had to pay $7 an hour. That's the basic rate, they charged based off of hourly rates and distance the connection had to travel, that cost begins to rise, quick! You don't need to eat at uni, right? If you played a MUD then chances are you didn't! Problem 3, you could only input one command every 10 seconds! That's a problem when you play a text based adventure, you know the deal "Turn left" "I don't know what left is". That cost you, every direction until you try before giving up costs money, you'll want to get each decision perfect so you can squeeze as much out of that hourly/ distance fee as possible!

To play a MUD you had to be a rich university student, or just survive off of one pot noodle a week! But that was the start of the problems, ARPANET was only online between 2am and 8am on each week day, ouch. No midnight partying for you, you've got to read about how well you're doing against that hoard of Goblins! The early MMO had plenty of problems, it more or less dwarfs the complaints of the monthly subscription fee imposed by companies like Blizzard! The MUD made it's way to CompuServe in 1978 where complaints were so plentiful that the MUD became disconnected from CompuServe and a service provider all together. Now the costs to play the games dropped drastically and the MUD beacme more advanced implementing graphics! The MUD eventually became the MMO and now even that is hitting hard times. As Game Theory concluded, maybe the future of the MMO lies in the mobile gaming market with things like Game of War and Clash of Clans. These problems the beloved MMO faces seems tiny compared to those dedicated students up at 4am slaying dragons whilst paying a small fortune to cast a spell of healing!

#MMO #MUD #PC