MUD, MOO, MUSH, MMORPG, VW, Metaverse,,,,
I just wanted to put a marker down to record current usage of terms. In fine OED style this is descriptive of actual use rather than normative of how I, or others, think they should be used – well, let’s see how long that can hold up.
I’m not citing source on any of this, mb that’s a hive mind thing.
Game world (also Ludic World) – used in contrast to ‘Social World’ under the super-set of Virtual Worlds. i.e. those with a game mechanic built into the code, generally from the DikuMUD strain of design
Metaverse – Currently has at least three uses (ultimately derived from N Stephenson, of course – but the book meaning is not that which it presently tends to denote)
1. The 3D web of the future built, possibly, on some of the Social World technology we have now.
2. The general set of Virtual Worlds implicitly of the present dominant form.
3. In relation to the ‘Thin Virtual Worlds’ that are web based, a term to explicitly denote the current mode of virtual world be it either Social or Game.
MMORPG – (Massively Multiplayer On Line Role Play Game) A term that seems to be dying out. Pronunciation varies from M.M.O.R.P.G. to ‘More-pig’. Generally means the same as Game World (though not generally used in contrast to Social World in the same way) but is sometimes used as a super-set in a similar way to ‘virtual world’ when used in that mode.
MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) – Probably now used more than MMORPG, often simply as a contraction, sometimes, to indication that the RPG element is not there hence as a generic super-set in a similar way to ‘virtual world’ when used in that mode.
MOO / MUSH – really not used at all these days, the difference between MUD, MOOs and MUSHs is probably an enigma to all cept those that actually used them.
MUD – not a term used much these days. Until a few years ago it was still used as a generic for virtual spaces, not just text ones, so was a pre-curser to ‘virtual worlds’ (under some uses). Now tends to be used by what we might call first generation virtual scholars as a generic or others as a generic for text spaces.
Synthetic World – generic term intended to encompass all types of virtual world essentially the same a Virtual World.
Social World – used in relation to Game World and sometimes MMORPG or MMO under the super-set of Virtual Worlds. Denotes a virtual space either with no game mechanic in the code or at least no over-aching game mechanic e.g. where there is a social space with embedded mini-games.
Thick Virtual World – those which are not ‘Thin Virtual Worlds’ (see below).
Thin Virtual World – (term genially used possibly only by me) browser based virtual space that meets Bartle’s definition but tends to be small, possibly user created, and is not ‘massive’ in term of the use of any one world. Used to indicate difference with many current Virtual Worlds.
Virtual World – this I have found now has two uses (which is what got me thinking about all this), these are relational.
1. When used in relation to Social Worlds and Game Worlds, Virtual World is the super-set of these, generally following Bartle’s technical definition.
2. When used in relation just to MMO’s or Game Worlds the term is synonymous with Social worlds.
OK, so what have I got wrong, what did I miss?
Remember I’m trying to record just how the terms are used not what we think they should mean.
I've got one :-)
RCE - (Real Cash Economy) A subset of Virtual Worlds that contain an economy tied to real world dollars. Main identifying factor is the ability to deposit and withdraw (exchange) the virtual currency for real currency. Usually tied to the USD. Can be paired with VW (RCEVW), MMO (RCEMMO), etc.
Posted by: Nate Randall | Mar 03, 2008 at 16:48
"MOO" and "MUSH" are fairly system specific. I don't think "MUD" was often used for worlds which didn't have its roots in text. E.g. only for systems where graphics were attached to a "text engine". People who were into 3D came from VR, so they used other terms and viewed text worlds as inferior (or so I believe)...
As for terms, which culture are you looking at? Academia, business, gamers, people in the streets?
Anyway, let's rate your list (using Google search, leaving out terms which have lots of false positives):
Of course, one are better of adding the name of a virtual world thus:
348,000
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Mar 03, 2008 at 18:27
Oh, when I come to think of it. I made a similar list in 1999. It's a the bottom of the webpage.
(Screw my typos.. Grr.)
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Mar 03, 2008 at 18:54
Not to get overly technical...or is it semantic...or philosophical...What are we calling the grand popa collection of the "world" plus its fan-sites, forums, blogs, listservs, ebay trading grounds and the like? Is "Metaverse" taking the lead? I'm looking for something at the mezzo level, like "ecommerce."
Posted by: Suzanne Aurilio | Mar 03, 2008 at 19:46
And the now famous RMT: Real Money Trade as "Exchange between InGame Money and Real currency"
Posted by: LG | Mar 04, 2008 at 02:07
Ola Fosheim Grøstad>I don't think "MUD" was often used for worlds which didn't have its roots in text.
Uh? Of course it was! We called the graphical ones "graphical MUDs" and the textual ones "text MUDs".
>People who were into 3D came from VR, so they used other terms and viewed text worlds as inferior
What? No they didn't! VR didn't impact on graphical MUDs at all. The 3D stuff came from regular computer games, not from VR. We called them "graphical MUDs" because they really were/are just MUDs with a graphical interface instead of a textual one.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Mar 04, 2008 at 03:20
> Suzanne Aurilio
> What are we calling the grand popa collection of the "world" plus its fan-sites, forums, blogs, listservs, ebay trading grounds and the like?
I’m not sure there is a term for that. I guess some fields might talk about very inclusive notions of the ‘text’ but that would be field and possible method specific.
Posted by: Ren Reynolds | Mar 04, 2008 at 07:16
> MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online)
In my experience, in industry circles MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) is used interchangeably with MMO and Game World, meaning either the superset of all game-based virtual worlds, or a specific game world without role playing aspects. I've also heard it used in reference to game worlds that do technically have role playing gameplay, but which do not follow traditional DikuMUD gameplay, and/or do not have a fantasy or scifi theme. Pronunciation is generally "M.M.O.G" or "mog".
> What are we calling the grand popa collection of the "world" plus its fan-sites, forums, blogs, listservs, ebay trading grounds and the like?
Within the industry, we generally refer to this as the game's (heh, showing my bias) "community", encompassing the game itself, official message boards, unofficial message boards, fan sites, news sites, strategy guides, blogs, real-world gatherings, etc. At one point in time, at least a handful of MMOG teams had an "OCR" department, Online Community Relations, to manage and report back to the development team on the various activities of the community.
But like I said, I'm showing my bias: my experience is with commercial game worlds, so non-commercial worlds or social worlds may have different terminology.
Posted by: Samantha LeCraft | Mar 04, 2008 at 12:05
Only INTRADAY STOCK MARKET TRADING TIPS...
Posted by: Shambhu | Mar 04, 2008 at 12:23
Richard... The term "MUD" was used to designate "text MUD". "text" was implied. Yes, the term "graphical MUD" was used, but a lot less frequently than the alternative terms and often in relation to its text counterpart. Although systems like Pueblo, BSX etc were always referred to as "graphical MUDs". I never heard anyone talk of XPilot or Crossfire as "MUDs", well not outside mud-dev. If "MUD" was generally accepted as a catch-all phrase then why did people who played MOOs and MUSHes object to it? You know the answer. For most people who knew of the term "MUD", the term was associated with a specific type of textual game, and many objected to those associated qualities thus picked other terms.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Mar 04, 2008 at 12:42
I think you're wrong, Ola. As the OP said, a lot of the "first generation" vw thinkers use/used MUD as a generic for all types of worlds. Still to this day I typically make sure to specify text MUD if I mean a text MUD rather than a MUD-in-general. Richard did the same thing, so did Raph, etc.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Mar 04, 2008 at 12:47
Matt, the first MUD I used was a graphical MUD. That was in 1993. I've also read many of the early papers and have a fair idea of what terms "early thinkers" used/abused. If I stated "MUD" in a discussion people would assume text. They would not assume stuff like Active Worlds. In fact many thought a "graphical MUD" was an aberration. What "MUD" was taken to cover varies from culture to culture, of course. Mud-Dev fostered a specific one with pretty heavy handed norming in which "MUD" was a catch-all, in order to avoid endless debates. In fact, it was the only topic that the moderator explicitly banned!
Of course, if you by "early" mean prior to 1990 then there weren't many graphical multi user environments... hence no schism.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Mar 04, 2008 at 13:57
I'm sticking by my original definition of MUD, if only from personal experience. I certainly used to hear 'MUD' or more usually 'MUDs' in the same way that Virtual Worlds is now used, there was no implication of textness. And, as Matt says, the phrase 'text-MUD' reinforces this view and again is a term that I used to hear quite a lot.
Posted by: Ren Reynolds | Mar 04, 2008 at 16:28
Intraverse - A metaverse inside a company firewall
Paraverse - A mirror world approach instrumenting a real or parallel world.
Posted by: epredator | Mar 05, 2008 at 06:14
Ren, stick to whatever you want for whatever reasons you have. If you want the truth about what was commonly used, use real data, like USENET. Of all posts made to the USENET prior to 1994 only 21 used the term "text MUD" and only 1 used the term "textual MUD". 79700 used the term "MUD". 2300 used the term "virtual world" and 19500 used the term "virtual reality".
There was no catch-all phrase, people used whatever words they knew to get by. "virtual world" or "virtual environment" was more commonly used for 3D like systems and they weren't called MUDs by most. It is quite possible that Dragonspire was called a "graphical MUD" due to it's gamelike feeling which appealed to people with a strong background from text MUDs though.
And Richard Bartle, I understand that you want to put MUD1 in the center of the universe, but current systems doesn't have a single source of inspiration. Get over it. 3D gaming grew out of VR simulations (Flightsims and Combat sims) and VR ideals.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Mar 05, 2008 at 07:29
Would http://www.citypixel.com be classified as a Thin Virtual World or a Game World?
Posted by: Big A | Mar 06, 2008 at 08:26
Ola Fosheim Grøstad >Of all posts made to the USENET prior to 1994 only 21 used the term "text MUD"
Yes, well this is hardly surprising given that there were so few graphical MUDs around. The only reason to use "text MUD" would be in the context of discussing some aspect of text that didn't apply to graphics.
>There was no catch-all phrase.
Did you actually look at the NAMES of the groups in which those Usenet posts appeared?
alt.mud
alt.mud.lp
alt.mud.programming
rec.games.mud
rec.games.mud.admin
rec.games.mud.announce
rec.games.mud.diku
rec.games.mud.lp
rec.games.mud.misc
rec.games.mud.tiny
OF COURSE there was a catch-all phrase! It was MUD! What kind of revisionist history are you trying to throw at us here?!
>"virtual world" or "virtual environment" was more commonly used for 3D like systems and they weren't called MUDs by most.
Yes, and they have no place in the MMORPG audit trail.
>And Richard Bartle, I understand that you want to put MUD1 in the center of the universe, but current systems doesn't have a single source of inspiration. Get over it.
AberMUD was, for a while, known as AberMUG. The reason it was known as AberMUG was because I asked Alan Cox not to call it AberMUD because otherwise people would think MUD was a generic term. I used to use MUA ("Multi-User Adventure") as the generic term. It didn't catch on, and despite my efforts, MUD did become the generic term. You're attributing false motives to me.
>3D gaming grew out of VR simulations (Flightsims and Combat sims) and VR ideals.
You're confusing the interface with the underlying principles. What makes an MMORPG an MMORPG is not the graphics but the shared worldliness, and that does come direct from textual antecedents. Almost all MMORPGs are indeed direct descendants of MUD1, whether you or I wish that to be the case. There are exceptions: DAoC has its roots in Aradath, for example, and Simutronics' Hero's Journey (should it ever appear) descends from Sceptre of Goth. The overwhelming majority (including those developed in the Far East) are ultimately from MUD1.
When it comes to the history of virtual worlds, there are three irritations that occasionally arise which I find intensely annoying.
1) People attempt to talk up the influence of something that simply did not figure in how things developed. PLATO advocates are good at this.
2) People overstate the influence of things that did have an impact, buffing it up out of proportion. Richard Garriott's publicists are good at this.
3) People accuse me of self-aggrandizement, even though I always correct assertions that I wrote the first MUD (I co-wrote it with Roy Trubshaw) and even though I regularly point out that this was an idea that we were always going to have, and that others (eg. Kelton Flinn & John Taylor, Alan Klietz, Mark Jacobs, Randy Farmer & Chip Morningstar) did indeed have it.
You just did the first and third of these.
Look, I can't help it that MUD1 was the progenitor of today's virtual worlds, but it was. Sure, we couldn't have the likes of WoW without the 3D graphics, but we also couldn't have it without the database software, the billing back end, Internet networking protocols and its actual hardware. None of those make WoW a virtual world, though. What makes it a virtual world is its heritage: EQ, DikuMUD, AberMUD, MUD1.
Wikipedia being what it is, I don't expect current and future generations of players to have anything other than a deeply flawed impression of how virtual worlds came about. There are just too many people who seem to have an axe to grind. I don't know what your motive is for trying to rewrite history, and I don't particularly care.
You're wrong, though. Get over it.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Mar 08, 2008 at 09:25
Speaking of MUD...
One thing constantly lost on me is when people throw out terms like "DikuMUD", meaning some kind of distinctive game type or game play (I assume). What do people mean when they say Diku, versus LP versua Aber versus.. what ever else types there are?
And man it's hard to type with a conure who thinks the keys are small shelled seeds...
Posted by: Tim | Mar 08, 2008 at 12:24
@Tim, my expectations for the terms:
DIKU = "syntactiv variation"
LP = "semantic variation"
Or more verbose:
Diku = Precanned implementation with D&D taste to it. I'd expect adjustments rather than wholesale customization.
LP =
1. I know many expect something Genesis-like with heavy customization due to the very flexible engine. Thus if others use the term I interpret the term that way depending on the context.
2. I personally associate "LP" with the LPC language and the reset-encouraging engine and standard mudlibs. Which doesn't say a lot about the content.
@Richard, I'm not convinced that you are objective on this matter... No, I am not wrong. True, there are more instances of "text MUD" in 1996 of which a portion are mine, but still rather few compared to the overall volume. When I talked or intereviewed players of graphical worlds from 1996 and onwards they never claimed that they were using MUDs (IIRC, M59 inclusive). When they used the term MUD I probed (like asking if the graphical world they were using was a MUD) and they came up with explanations like "a MUD is a textbased...". From 1997 and onwards rec.games.mud.admin etc are heavily influenced by mud-dev though, as mud-dev recruited from r.g.m.a.
If you were right about "MUD" not being primarily used for referencing text-only systems then participants wouldn't have used explanations in their exchanges: "MUD-like" or "I don't only mean textbased". SO, the fact is, the term "MUD" was most commonly used to reference text MUDs and their likes. I personally used it in a more generic way, though. But that's not the point. Dead horse.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Mar 09, 2008 at 13:11
Tim>What do people mean when they say Diku, versus LP versua Aber versus.. what ever else types there are?
Here's a FAQ on this subject from the late 1990s. It's probably a bit over-technical for your purposes, and is unordered (you should probably read this if you want to see how things fit together).
VERY briefly, though, MUD1 sparked many imitators, one of which was AberMUD. AberMUD was Unix-friendly and spread very quickly. It emphasised the game aspects at the expense of the social aspects, which alienated the social-style players. Around 1989 there was a schism, from which three main family trees emerged:
1) The TinyMUD tree. This further split into MOOs (social worlds with no gameplay, much like today's Second Life but in text) and MUSHes (used for seriously heavy role-playing worlds).
2) LPMUDs. These were game worlds that were very adaptable, often with social elements to them.
3) The DikuMUD tree. With the socialisers all heading off to TinyMUD derivatives, the gamers were able to make their worlds even more gamey. DikuMUD gameplay is what drives today's game worlds such as EQ and WoW.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Mar 10, 2008 at 05:08
If we are going by actual usage, rather than what the words should mean in someone's opinion, I will contribute how I use terms, on the basis that these are how I understand that they will be interpreted.
We are switching to MMO from MMORPG, maybe with some idea that we are not really playing RPGs, but mostly because (1) people hate typing extra letters and (2) games keep trying to be hybrids and call themselves MMORTSFPSRPG or something like that. Upon reflection, there are definitely games that are MMO but do not merit the RPG at the end, at that is back-spreading to orthodox MMORPGs.
MUD is always text. A MUD is an MMO with no graphics, the Model T of EQ/WoW. MUDs are old things that people seem to keep playing, but your WoW core audience is not familiar with them. It is entirely plausible to me that text MUD players outnumber graphical MMO players, but if it is not on Sir Bruce's list it does not exist.
"Diku" is the standard game model instantiated with graphics by EQ, DAoC, WoW, and other games. Usually in a fantasy environment, you have classes, monsters, quests, levels, loot, and the assorted treadmills and grinds that we know. If you log on and slay hundreds of goblins one at a time, collecting loot and xp until you ding and do it again with a new shade of goblin, that is a Diku game. Diku is to EQ as MUD is to MMO. (No, this does not need to be fair or accurate at all. Most of your modern MMO players never saw DikuMUD.) No actual roleplaying is necessary, just the roughly D&D mechanics of classes, monsters, loot, and leveling.
That's from my part of the gaming blogosphere. Your local usage may vary.
Posted by: Zubon | Mar 10, 2008 at 10:57
Ren, Don't forget about MMOFPS, Massively Multiplayer First Person Shooters. Games like The Agency, Huxley, and PlanetSide have been considered as such.
Posted by: Jason T Clark | Mar 13, 2008 at 12:57
of Battle the puebla
Posted by: puebla Battle in of | May 06, 2008 at 14:20