One of the things that got the media's attention lately has been MMORPG's like EverQuest – which is actually funny to me the concept is not new at all. The only thing that's new is 3D accelerated video cards and big corporations like SONY getting in on the act.Call me oldschool though, but I much prefer MUD's. For those who don't know, a MUD is a Multi-User-Dungeon. Unlike MMORPG's you play a MUD in plain text, much the same way the old text-adventure games worked. Rooms have descriptions and you make your way through them, gradually advancing your character, going on quests etc. etc. but with one major exception. You are doing so on a server, where you can interract with other players, combat and share ideas and skills.A lot of the success of a MUD comes down to two things. 1. It needs to be big – so there is plenty to explore. 2. It needs to have plenty of real people there to play with. In this regard the discworld mud (http://discworld.atuin.net)has hit upon a winner, with nearly the entire disc mapped (at least all the major cities), and an NPC group taken from a series now close to 30 books in size, it had plenty to build with. It has in fact been running (and growing) for ten years, and in terms of number 2 – discworld has more players online at any given moment than most MUD's have total players in all.Of course you won't meet them all, and in fact (kina like nethack) you can expect to play years if you want to explore the whole world (and you'll need to be moving pretty fast since the world is still expanding), but there is always and adventure to be had, jokes and puns to be enjoyed and things to bash over the head.You can play it (like any MUD) using a simple telnet client, but ideally you should have a dedicated MUD client. I really like the mudmagic client myself, if anybody wants it, I have an here. If you choose to play discworld by the way, look me up. Just ask for Fingaz, current residence: the guild of thieves, Ank Morpork.
