State of the Diku 2008

It is well understood that the game structures and mechanics that undergird most commercial virtual worlds today draw their underlying DNA from Diku-style text-based MUDs, though many contemporary players have only experienced the latest iterations or forms of those game mechanics.  Many of these features are now so familiar and expected, so much a part of the grammar of play activity, that developers seem to implement them without asking what purpose or role they will serve in a particular gameworld. Moreover, precisely because these features have become so foundational, it seems difficult to think of new approaches or game mechanics, even those that offer only a mild twist. But even a single such innovation can do a lot to spark new interest among players.

By way of illustration, a look at two such mechanics in two fairly new commercial virtual worlds, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. (The latter is approaching open beta, with a release later in September 2008, but the NDA has been lifted .)

 

The Drop

The drop, objects or money taken from dead or defeated enemies (usually but not universally computer controlled),  is the central economic engine of all Diku-descended virtual worlds. Even resource extraction from the topography of the gameworld itself (mining or picking herbs, for example) usually follows the structure of the drop, only without the preceding combat.

Value is contained within the corpse or object, revealed by player interaction.  Most enemies (aka “mobs”) yield a direct currency payment that in theory should be appropriate to the challenge that the enemy represents.

In many Diku-styled games, relatively ordinary or simple opponents may randomly yield an occasional item of high value, where that value is either realized directly through personal use or indirectly through exchanging the item with another player. Some of these are items which can be directly used by players to improve their ability to battle computer-controlled enemies and other players. Some of these are components or parts of a useful item that can be assembled later by someone who has acquired all the ingredients or pieces.  Some components require possession of a particular trade skill in order for the player to be eligible to acquire them. A World of Warcraft character with skinning can convert some corpses into pieces of leather, while a Warhammer character with scavenging can acquire additional items, some of them components needed in other trade skills.

Many quests also create special drops such as particular body parts or objects which the player can find for the duration of the quest, but once the quest is completed, such drops are no longer found.

More routinely, drops are items with no special additional value (often known as “grey” drops after the WoW convention) but can be sold to computer-controlled vendors for a currency payment (hence the term “vendor trash”). In more than a few Diku-styled games, such drops have been only marginally tied to the fictional context in which they were obtained. Early on in World of Warcraft, for example, many enemies dropped a startling array of objects and body parts, many of which had no plausible connection to the mob itself. Over time many of these games tend toward mild rationalization of such drops so that enemies drop currency-equivalent items that have some marginal connection to their nature.

Such rationalization also tends to reduce the variety of such drops so that they can be stacked within a single inventory slot.  This opens up the key question around the routine currency-equivalent drop, namely, “Why have it at all?” High-value item or component drops drive the overall economy of these worlds, and provide a tremendous amount of the motivation for continued play over time. NCSoft’s City of Heroes/City of Villains notably lacked drops for much of its early existence, and many players complained about the absence. The routine drop, on the other hand, is really nothing more than currency in another form. Why not just give players the gold, silver, copper, etc. instead of grue spleens and ghoul toenails?

A limited argument could be made that the routine drop enhances the gameworld fiction by populating it with objects that are appropriate to the setting and mythology. But these are transient objects, not trophies. Most are visually represented only by a small icon that exists entirely within the player’s inventory and cannot be shown to other players or manipulated as visible objects in the world itself. A few such objects are witty or unusual enough that players may retain them for a while for amusement: vendor trash in World of Warcraft includes weapons like The Stoppable Force or novelty items like A Gnome Effigy.

The game-mechanical reason for the routine drop is essentially to put additional weight on the mini-game of inventory management that is a major part of day-to-day activity in most virtual worlds. Players have to decide how much vendor trash to pick up given limited space in their inventories, which vendor trash is worth picking up, and when they should return from adventuring to the location of a vendor in order to covert these items to currency.

But as such, the routine drop needs the same kind of calibrated attention to balancing cost and benefit that goes into every other aspect of a Diku-style game, and here is where problems sometimes arise. When something like the routine drop becomes, well, routine, something which is a part of gameplay simply because it’s expected that it should be, it paradoxically becomes a game-mechanic which disrupts the activity of gameplay because it is so nonsensical. Funcom’s Age of Conan provides a good example of this problem. Even in the more tightly-designed initial experience of the game, virtually every enemy drops a great deal of vendor trash. There is little differential in value between routine trash drops and so very little reason to make careful discretionary decisions about which to pick up and which not to pick up. (As opposed to World of Warcraft, for example, where grey weapons often have a much higher currency value and some grey items stack within a single inventory slot, making it possible to pick up many of them without crowding out other items.)  Moreover, early player inventory in Age of Conan is relatively small, meaning that a player who picks up all routine drops will quickly fill the inventory within the time it takes to complete a single quest. An Age of Conan player who returned to a vendor every time their inventory was full would spend much of their time simply going back and forth from vendor to quest and back again. As a result, the landscape of Age of Conan is often densely cluttered with routine drops abandoned by players. The collective cost/benefit judgment of players renders the entire game-mechanic of the routine drop a pointless nuisance, which in turn suggests in one fashion just how much the whole design reproduces an industrial standard without really thinking about its purpose.

 

The Public Quest

Thinking carefully about the purpose of a Diku-style feature obviously helps a virtual world to function better, but it doesn’t guarantee an escape from some of the contradictions and tensions inherent in the genre as a whole. A good example of this is the mechanism of the public quest in the forthcoming Warhammer Online.

Warhammer’s public quests remind me a bit of the grouping mechanism used in the game Toontown. In Toontown, in part to make social collaboration easier for the target audience of children, joining a group is simple and automatic. A character merely walks up to players who are engaged with enemies and is added to the group up to a limit of four characters, for as long as a particular battle or instanced series of battles lasts.

In Warhammer, many locations within the gameworld contain public quests. Any player entering these areas is automatically counted as a participant in the quest. Such quests are typically divided into three stages, each progressively more difficult and usually requiring larger numbers or more coordinated effort as it progresses, though many work perfectly well when players carry out independent actions towards the declared objective or goal.

If the third stage of the public quest is completed, the relative contribution of individual players is calculated, and this value then is added as a weighting onto a roll for loot. The weight of contribution is relatively small, however, in order to give all players a reason to participate. If contribution were much more highly weighted, most players would likely refuse to participate unless they believed they were near the top of the scale as the quest progressed.

The design goals for the public quest as a mechanism are fairly clear. First, to create a relatively spontaneous, enjoyable pretext for social collaboration that requires very little prior arrangement or negotiation, and to do so in the visible and public spaces of the virtual world. Second, to provide a novel incentive for repeating the same content multiple times which carries less risk than the conventional “pick-up group” (pug) in a game like World of Warcraft. A typical pug may take several hours to complete, if it is completed at all, and leaves players vulnerable to misconduct or incompetence on the part of other players. A public quest in Warhammer, on the other hand, takes less time, requires no negotiation, carries little risk, and a player can participate in a relatively diffident manner while still having some hope of reward. Repetition of content is important from a designer’s standpoint simply because there is no hope of providing inexhaustible amounts of novel content within the current design paradigm.

Still, the architecture of the public quest does produce some strange anomalies that are likely to be an ongoing source of sharp disagreement between Warhammer players. In my own experience, I have twice won loot from a public quest merely by traversing the area in which the public quest was transpiring, without making any actual contribution. It’s pretty easy to guess what might follow if that was a common enough outcome and the loot were sufficiently attractive: some players might well “park” an idle character at the outskirts of a public quest, or otherwise exploit the mechanism to the frustration of those players who really are throwing a lot of effort into the adventure. If the loot is trivialized to discourage exploiters, then this also discourages legitimate contributions. If more weight is given to contribution, then spontaneous participation by lower-level players is punished, which takes away a good deal of the fun and very public character of the system.

Nevertheless, I was really struck by the public quest system, and the extent to which it demonstrated that it is readily possible even within the highly defined structure of a Diku-style world to come up with lively twists to the established game mechanics which can then have a larger impact on the social experience of the players as a whole. That requires thoughtfulness about the purpose, character and consequences of the underlying genetics that come with the Diku blueprint.

 

Comments

[Pete S]

1.

I'm not sure what the point of the first half of this article was. And what percentage of your readers do you think learned something from such a long discussion of a very basic aspect of most MMORPGs?

I gripe because the second part was a good look at a fresh new twist, and one that not a lot of readers have experienced before. I wish you'd spent more time on the topic and skipped the fluffy first part.

One minor note. Repeating Public Quests (without leaving the area) builds a temporary bonus to your roll for loot. So persistence is rewarded, as well as contribution (the bonus dissipates if you log off or leave the area). Also the Influence Factor, which you didn't touch on, helps keep players moving along after they've won some loot and maxed out their Influence for that area.

For those who haven't played, participating in Public Quests earns you Influence which can also be turned in for some pretty nice rewards. But you don't actually "spend" Influence. Once you fill up the Influence "Meter" for a given Public Quest, and get your rewards, you can never get those rewards again, so for the purpose of Influence there is no real reason to repeat a PQ more than 3 or 4 times (the number of times it takes to max influence, at least at the low levels I tested at).

[Timothy Burke]

2.

Right, influence is also an important incentive for participation, though I think it's a more familiar one--it more or less follows the template visible in World of Warcraft's battlegrounds, for example (earn honor, convert honor into gear).

I do think it's important to constantly examine the underlying mechanics to ask whether they produce interesting play or interesting sociality or something that makes a virtual world distinctive. Mythic seems to me to have thought a lot about what kinds of grouping they want to see, and what works, and how a particular game mechanic helps with that. Funcom in a lot of Age of Conan seems to me to have just said, "A game like this has to have these kinds of drops, so let's have these kinds of drops". It's as important to note the strange and noxious effects that familiar mechanics can have as to note beneficial effects that novel or innovative mechanics can have, to step back from what we think we know and what we tend to take for granted about these worlds.

[Pete S]

3.

Thanks for the reply, and OK, I can see your point re: AoC and drops. I just don't know that you needed all the explanation, but then I also don't know your intended audience, so maybe I should just hush. :)

My point about Influence and how it differs from my understanding of WoW's Battlegrounds is that you can only get 1 reward/category/area based on Influence, no matter how much time you spend 'farming' the PQ. Without the game running in front of me I can't recall if there are 3 or 4 categories/area. The first category of prizes seems to always be a consumable (potions or something) and the highest offers a pretty decent piece of gear for 'appropriate level' characters.

Essentially you have a non-repeatable quest to fill up your Infuence meter in order to win a quest reward. And now that I look at it that way, it doesn't really seem all that unique. :)

Any plans for a post about Open Grouping? I'm finding Warhammer to be a polarizing topic between people who see it as a failure for being "more of the same" and people who think that it brings some really nice 'evolutionary' improvements to the Diku-based MMORPG genre.

[Tim]

4.

Can someone point me to a definitive list of "Diku" game features? This phrase gets tossed around so much but never defined except in the vaguest of terms.

[Matt Mihaly]

5.

Well, you could actually just download the DIKU codebase and look, at a place like this: http://www.mudmagic.com/codes/download/diku

DIKU is just a game-in-a-box. You can build pretty much whatever type of text MUD you wish with DIKU, but most developers don't stray all that far from the game-in-a-box that is the stock DIKU code.

It really boils down to kill a monster to get loot to kill a bigger monster to get loot to kill a bigger monster, etc etc.

Interesting note though: None of the most popular text MUDs are DIKUs, though one of them used to be a DIKU (Aardwolf).

--matt

[greglas]

6.

Matt --

What are the most popular MUDs? And how does one figure that out (other by asking people what they like?) Is there a MUD Nielsen Ratings?

I really am curious -- I don't a good handle on the current popularity of text MUDs (social & RP & game) vs. what used to be the case 10 years ago.

(Sorry if this is a minor derail -- I do like Tim's OP.)

[greglas]

7.

Matt --

What are the most popular MUDs? And how does one figure that out (other by asking people what they like?) Is there a MUD Nielsen Ratings?

I really am curious -- I don't a good handle on the current popularity of text MUDs (social & RP & game) vs. what used to be the case 10 years ago.

(Sorry if this is a minor derail -- I do like Tim's OP.)

--
Whoops -- should have used the Google:
http://www.findmud.com/mud-listing-trend-graph

Never mind...

[Tim]

8.

Come on Matt, all you've done is toss out yet another vague definition of what "diku" is.

Wouldn't it be far, far, FAR more clear to choose WoW for example as the "standard"? A lot of people know what WoW is, but they don't know what Diku is. It's like throwing out big words with lots of syllables to seem smart. It's like talking about 5 1/4" disks. It's meaningless. It's something that makes us nod our heads while really we don't know what it exactly means.

Isn't it a bit like using horses as a transportation standard in an age of hybrid cars?

[Tim]

9.

OK maybe better analogy. Isn't it a lot like sitting around talking about Gopher, and discussing whether a website is just gopher-like in structure?

By the way... Just to be a smart ass :^)... Gopher was characterized by a hierarchical menu based interface to the internet, and was designed for a text-only interface. It was effective when the amount of content available was limited and did not make extensive use of hyperlinks. Being text only it also did not use any graphical displays.

Gopher is very similar in some ways to using text-only internet cellphone systems, which I would categorize as "gopher based" systems

[Timothy Burke]

10.

By that standard, if I want to talk about George Bush's foreign policy, the only precedent you'd recommend I refer to is Bill Clinton's second term.

History matters, and this is why I use the analogy to genetics. Your genes don't just draw from your parents, but from your evolution as an organism. If I want to talk about human bipedalism, maybe I can focus just on human evolution. If I want to talk about the human immune system, on the other hand, it's built on much deeper evolutionary precedents that give it some of its characteristic strengths and points of weakness.

World of Warcraft very much drew upon Everquest, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call, which in turn drew upon Meridian 59 and the original Neverwinter Nights, which in turn drew upon text-based MUDs, some of which were built on the Diku model. I think Matt underplays the number of MUDs which once *were* built on Diku, but it's right to say that Diku was only one of a number of "game-in-a-box" models. For some features and game mechanics of contemporary virtual worlds, precedent doesn't matter altogether that much. For some it matters a lot, and I'm especially interested in those cases where I think there is some automatic or unreflective passing along of previous features, structures and game mechanics.

[Tim]

11.

Yes, but what's the definition of diku?

It's code yes, but this obviously isn't the context people are using. I've heard it described as "hack and slash" but hell, even "hack and slash" has a Wikipedia entry.

Not that Wikipedia is the measure, but how about if someone takes a stab at adding a definition of "diku" as a game type to Wikipedia's page on it? Right now it's about history (code base), "Everquest controversy", DikuMUD license and external references.

Or is "diku" one of those "I know it when I see it" things?

[Timothy Burke]

12.

There's two possible ways to answer that. The first is more technical, to say that a DIKUMud is a MUD that uses the DIKU source code. I know that sounds tautological, but basically that's it: there's a source code and some MUDs used it (and added to it or changed it in various ways). In this sense, no commercial 3d world is actually a DIKUMud, because they're not using the source code. (The Wikipedia entry on DIKU references a discussion from a while back about whether Everquest actually had DIKU code in it or not; the answer is 'not').

The way I'm using DIKU here is as a description of a genre. If I say about a novel that it is science fiction, and you ask me for a definition, I'm going to struggle a bit. It's not quite going to be a "know it when you see it" thing, but on the other hand, you can have endless arguments about the boundaries and parameters of a definition of a genre of fiction. That's because a genre is really defined by usage and by history: a book is first science fiction because it is labeled, marketed, conceived of as such, and because its author and publisher and audience see it in relationship to a historically defined collection of other books that have some similar features.

So think of Diku as a genre of MMOGs or virtual worlds. Just as with science fiction, we could debate a bit about what separates a Diku-derived game from other derivations. As Matt suggests, maybe the core game mechanic identified with Diku is "kill a monster, gain experience (and often but not invariably loot & items), level up, kill more difficult monsters, repeat." And you can see some of the debates that can follow on that. Someone could get persnickety and say, "Well, that's not Diku, that's Dungeons & Dragons, it precedes computer games altogether". Ok, sure, but we're talking about computer games, so what we mean is the way that idea (experience, level up, etc.) was turned into code. We could debate just how much other common features of Diku-style games (classes, races, quests, scripted boss encounters, etc.) are really derived from the genre's roots. Certainly there are features which are now common to what the genre has become that weren't there early on: markers above the head of quest-givers, for example. Genre definition is always a contentious business, and yet, I think most people would agree there is a thing called "science fiction" (or speculative fiction or SF and fantasy or whatever label you prefer). Similarly, most people would agree that there's a "Diku style"--the Everquest developers agreed at one point that EQ followed that style, for example.

[SusanC]

13.

Someone could get persnickety and say, "Well, that's not Diku, that's Dungeons & Dragons, it precedes computer games altogether".

That was my though when I read your article. Some of these game mechanics came from pencil and paper RPG's. Still, it's a valid question to ask whether these venerable rules still make sense when transplanted to new games. ("Of course wizards can't wear armour. The metal interfers with the thaumatalurgic fields used in the casting of the spell. Or something like that.")

[Timothy Burke]

14.

You know, on drops, maybe this is really a better way to put it succinctly.

[Matt Mihaly]

15.

Greglas wrote:

What are the most popular MUDs? And how does one figure that out (other by asking people what they like?) Is there a MUD Nielsen Ratings?

There are no meaningful ratings, no. I just know because I'm pretty heavily involved in the space.

Most popular I believe, in no particular order, are Aardwolf (former DIKU), Achaea (custom), Gemstone (custom), Batmud (LP), Dragonrealms (custom). It's worth noting that all of these games were launched over 10 years ago (Gemstone was launched in 1987 and is the longest continuously-operating MUD/MMO/virtual world.

Tim wrote:

Or is "diku" one of those "I know it when I see it" things?

As Tim Burke pointed out, it depends on the context. If you were in a text MUD discussion and referred to a DIKU, people would assume that you are specifically referring to the DIKU codebase (or one of its derivatives like Merc or Circle). In the context of all types of MUDs/MMOs, DIKU is usually used to refer to the style of gameplay exemplified by games like Everquest or WoW.
--matt

[Tim]

16.

Is there any kind of "Family Tree of MUD/MMO/Role Playing Games" around? Something like those "Family Tree of Rock & Roll" diagrams ones sees around?

[Timothy Burke]

17.

Sounds like a good idea. But part of the problem is that when it comes to contemporary virtual worlds, to some extent what has happened is almost like a great extinction: there were more models and code bases with early MUDs than there are now: most of what we see divides sharply into social worlds that draw significantly from MUSHs and MOOs (Second Life) and gameworlds that draw from DIKUs.

[greglas]

18.

Again, I think this is a great topic.

I wonder to what extent drops & quests are kind of like the QUERTY keyboard at this point -- path dependent phenomenon, in the sense that the early design of Diku-MUD was a self-reinforcing mode of play. As budgets for major MMOGs swell to millions of dollars, publishers are risk averse to trying anything outside the box? Kind of like PC makers don't try to improve on the QUERTY keyboard? The complaints about a lack of drops in CoH points in that direction.

If the only way to evolve the form is to improve it at the margins, that seems unfortunate to me.

Maybe that is what Lum is saying here?

[Daniel Speed]

19.

If you're going to start throwing comparisons to Diku-MUDs around, please go and contribute to wikipedia in so far as defining what Diku gameplay is.

The page is here and it sucks, and there's an ever decreasing proportion of people who remember it, to make the statement meaningful.

[greglas]

20.

[ahem -- QWERTY, not QUERTY]

[Thomas Malaby]

21.

Yes, Greg, I think that is exactly what Tim B is pointing at -- how rife with unintended consequences the history of technology and social phenomena is. "Path dependent" is another way to say contingent, after all (as is "shit happens," for that matter). We're constantly at risk of forgetting it because we tend to attribute too much to either intentional human agency or imagined law-like natural processes.

[Nomenous]

22.

Please check out http://www.mume.org, its been out there for almost 18 year now, it's a legend among muds. However its not a pure DIKU mud but has been adapted, settings Tolkien, the Third Age.

[Richard Bartle]

23.

Tim>Nevertheless, I was really struck by the public quest system

Just to refresh my old curmudgeon status, I feel compelled to mention that forms of "public quest" have been available for at least a couple of decades in non-Diku text MUDs (and for all I know, in some modified Dikus, too). My own MUD2, for example, has an event called a mobile bash, the aim of which is for the players to kill all the mobs in the game world within a single reset (ie. a fixed time period). The main problem with such co-operative quests lie in fairly rewarding participation. They're a heck of a lot of fun, though!

A potential issue I can see with having public quests in a modern MMO is the usual one involving people who play outside the "bulge" that comes when a server first opens. If you start 6 months behind everyone else, you're going to have fewer people in areas when a public quest starts, which may compromise players' ability to complete them. In other words, these things are great fun when there are lots of people running around joining in, but frustrating when there are too few people to complete them. I don't know whether WAR has a system to deal with this, or whether people will be calling on higher-level guildies to help them finish things off.

I agree that putting public quests into a DikuMUD format, which has no tradition of them, is a good idea, though.

Richard

[Timothy Burke]

24.

Yeah, it strikes me as adding a nice social mechanic to a somewhat asocial form. Perhaps a bit of what was intended with the dancer/musician healing in Star Wars: Galaxies, but in this case, a much less "forced" kind of sociality.

I think the first Tier I public quests near the starting areas will never lack for enough people to finish them as there will be a steady flow of people with alt characters. The later Tier I quests, at least so far in Beta, have been much more hit or miss, especially the ones further away from active quest hubs. But I did notice an interesting aspect of this that's a smart way to encourage public quests to spontaneously start up. When you enter a public quest area, you get a big informational notice that tells you about the current progress of the public quest in that area, tracking how many kills or goals have been accomplished in that stage. You might have other quests in that area. As you carry out your regular, private quests, you might notice suddenly that someone is slowly racking up kills that are advancing the first, easy stage. Many public quest areas are big enough that you might not actually be able to see who is doing it. So maybe you try a few kills yourself, and then you suddenly see that the rate of completion accelerates even more, as more and more people in the quest area start to participate. The second stage in the quest typically concentrates the questers, so now maybe everyone comes together, and you find you have enough. This is kind of low-level emergent gameplay: individuals doing something in response to generalized information, coming together in coordination relatively spontaneously, without a commanding or leading agent.

[Michael Hartman]

25.

>> Tim wrote:
>>
>> Isn't it a bit like using horses as a transportation
>> standard in an age of hybrid cars?

You mean kinda like horsepower?

DIKU (and to a lesser extend LPMud) is the standard for the loot-monster-loot circle because it can readily be credited with popularizing and advancing that style of gameplay. WoW being newer and more popular doesn't change that.

As many others have noted, DIKU can be a general genre of games or a specific code tree of games depending on the context and community in which you are discussing it. I think the analogy to "science fiction" was quite apt.

[Aaron]

26.

This has been an intriguing thread. If one were interested in taking fifteen (responsible) college students into a DIKU-style MUD for a few hours of thoughtful exploration, what would be a good, free MUD to start with?

[Matt Mihaly]

27.

Aaron: Go try Aardwolf (www.aardwolf.com). It's the most popular of the DIKU-type text MUDs. Although it no longer uses the DIKU codebase, it's very much a DIKU in the more generic sense (and until recently was a DIKU in the technical sense).

--matt

[Aaron]

28.

Thanks for the advice, Matt!

[Raph]

29.

Timothy, your derivation tree isn't really accurate -- EQ, UO, AC, and M59 were developed simultaneously though they shipped at different times -- there was some cross-pollination, but not direct inspiration. UO at least was not influenced by NWN.

And yes, there is a mud family tree already -- Martin Keegan did one http://journal.pennmush.org/v2n2/keegan.html
, Lorry did another http://lorry.org/arch-wizard/mudbase.txt, and there's even one on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_trees

[Tim]

30.

Raph posts : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_trees

Nice. Now it would be cool to see the same thing for MMOs - er I mean dikus that aren't the diku code base or MUDs really, but are dikus but... Oh never mind.

Of course http://www.massively.com/2008/09/04/massively-interview-multiverse-explains-the-buffy-mmo-firefly/>here's someone that thinks that a game being 2D instead of 3D means it's not potentially a diku. Last question, first page.

[NewssyLee]

31.

Thanks to you

[Tim]

32.

Matt Mihaly says:

Well, you could actually just download the DIKU codebase and look, at a place like this: http://www.mudmagic.com/codes/download/diku

I did download and spend some time going through the code of several MUDs, including Diku Alpha and Gamma, Silly and Dale (a Silly variant). I also installed and have been spending quite a bit of time running CoffeeMUD (Java based) on my linux box.

What I've found interesting is not only what is NOT in Diku that is so common in modern day MMOs but also what IS in Diku that modern MMOs don't have. But in general, DIKU is so very clearly based on Dungeons & Dragons, down to reference to THAC0, savings rolls and d6.

So below I made a list of features in the Diku code (gamma). Bear with me on this list, and if I'm wrong about something here let me know. Some determinations I made with copious use of "grep".

Questing
Diku Gamma has no questing. There is no mechanism for "NPC X asks you to do Y and you will get Z for a reward" at all. It's purely hack and slash.

Crafting
There is no crafting or ability to make new items. The closest Diku comes to crafting is to allow enchanting of weapons. This also means that there are no drops that are just "stuff" designed to be used for crafting.

Abilities
Abilities are limited to your basic strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom and constitution.

Races
There are no races (for players) in Diku. You are simply "humanoid".

Classes
Magic User, Cleric, Theif, Warrior. Nice and simple with no endless variations on a theme or multiclass.

Hitpoints and Mana
Your basic two part system for how much damage you can take and how many spells you can cast.

No Ranged Weapons
Diku has no ranged weapons.

Experience Points and Levels
Straight out of Dungeons and Dragons, Diku is built on the concept of experience points gained from killing monsters. Gaining sufficient experience points allows you to level up. Note that you CAN get experience points for killing other players, as can you for just damaging a monster. Also, there is no experience point for gaining gold.

Consider
Allows a player to compare their own abilites with a monster, and get a general sense of how well they are matched for combat.

Groups
Diku allows players to form groups. Grouped players share experience points, but only if the players are in the same location at the time of the monster's death.

Emotes
Diku has tons of typical emotes we've all come to love or hate.

Say, Tell, Whisper and Shout
Your typical player to player communication methods we all are used to.

Rescue
An interesting Fighter-only ability that essentially can pull a monster off someone else. "Rescue" another player in a fight and their opponent will attack you instead.

Shops
Diku has shops - places you can buy and sell things. Note that not all shopkeepers will buy everything - some only buy certain types of things.

Bug, Typo and Idea Reporting
These three commands allow players to report a bug, typo or idea while in-game. Server owners can view a list of reports submitted by players.

Semi Persistence, Saving, Loading and Inns
(I think I have this part right). If you quit the game without saving first, you will lose all your carried gear. However you may visit inns and pay money to have the inn store your equipment while you are logged out. As long as you have enough gold to pay the rent, your equipment is saved. If you run out of gold, you lose your equipment. In other words, the Diku world is not fully persistent

Reading and Writing
A unique Diku concept that I personally haven't seen in the relatively small number of MMOs I've played before. Essentially, if you can get a piece of paper and a pen, you can write anything you want on the paper. Other players can Read what you've written.

Player State
Diku distinguishes between sleeping, waking, resting, sitting and standing. Some envents can knock you down (to sitting) requiring you to stand up.

Follow
Lets the player follow an NPC or other player.

Flee
Allows the player to flee a fight if there is an exit available.

Guilds and Guild Houses
Guilds in Diku are not at all like the Guild concept in MMOs. Instead, guilds are oriented around classes. Magic Users can go to the Magic Users guild to hang out, learn and practice for example.

Practice
An interesting Diku feature. Practice will allow you to improve some skills, however you must perform it at your Guild House. Practice is required to acquire new skills after leveling up.

Scavenger Behavior
Diku monsters with Scavenger behavior will pick up stuff lying on the ground.

Wimpy Behavior
Diku monsters with Wimpy behavior will flee if they get weak. Wimpy and Agressive monsters only attack sleeping players.

Alignment
Diku has the concept of Good - Neutral - Evil alignment as in Dungeons and Dragons. This isn't really something you see much in MMOs execpt in a more complex Faction type system.

Changing Weather
Weather changes over time in a Diku world. If it's raining Magic Users can actually call lightning.

Day and Night Cycles
The sun rises and sets in Diku muds. Note that Diku also has the concept of accelerated time. By default, one Diku Hour is 75 seconds of real time.

Darkness
Diku muds have darkness. REAL darkness. When the sun sets and you have no light source, it's dark - and you can't see a thing unless you are in a lit room or have a torch or other light source. Being stuck in the dark without a light source is a BIG pain, and there's not much to do but wait out the night. Wurm Online is an example of an MMO that does this, though not very many really put the player fully in the dark.

Hunger and Thirst
You get hungry and thirsty in Diku, and if you don't eat or drink something you will have problems. Wurm Online is again one of the few MMOs to actually force the player to eat and drink.

Inebriation
Diku players can get drunk if they drink enough booze.

Players as Gods
Diku and other Muds allow players to essentially become "gods" if they rise up high enough in power. This gives them powers to move, modify and otherwise override objects. They in a sense become super users or GMs only by rising to sufficient level.

By the way, a good download site is http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=files - it has a large number of MUD sources. The world of download links to MUD sources is riddled with 404 not founds and vanished sites.

[Tim]

33.

Part 2 of Diku evaluation

There are some truly interesting things in Diku that I think have been lost as the Diku concept (I'm warming up to that term) was applied to the development of MMOs. Here are a few...

Players as Gods
With the commercialization of the MUD concept into MMOs, players have lost the ability to be gods and have unique "super user like" powers. Commercial games of course can't be having non-employees potentially griefing other players, nor can commercial companies be allowing players to modify the game world.

MUDs were (basically) Free
Because the source code for MUDs was so easily acquired, there were many free to play MUDs available. Of course with commercialization of MMOs, the free part went away.

MUDs Were Small and Don't Scale
Because MUDs were most common back in the days when internet access was rare, the number of people playing them was small. That meant MUD server managers didn't need to worry much about load balancing, player count and so forth. They didn't have to worry about quest and gameplay designs falling apart because too many people were playing.

In fact, MUD gameplay sort of falls apart in some ways when there are too many players - mainly due to the amount of text scrolling by. Imagine 20 people in the same room doing different things. The volume of text scrolling by would be overwhelming and make basic play very difficult.

Normal People Running Worlds
MUDs were things that people could run themselves, assuming they had some knowledge of compiling and running applications on shared machines. Since MUD sources were available, there was a lot of evolution, cross breeding and growth in MUDs. But with the shift to commercial worlds, the source code and the idea of evolution of the game ended.

Normal People Building and Modifying Worlds
Though not a Diku thing, some later MUDs allow players to modify the world by adding new rooms and exits, setting descriptions and activities. Wizards (high level players) had the ability to create large and extensive new areas for play, whereas lower level players could create simpler new constructs.

Because most of what defined a construct is the text, the diversity and potential for player creations was HUGE in MUDs. If you could write good descriptive and evocative text, you could create fantastic things. Commercialization of MMOs took that creative potential away from the masses for various reasons. Modding is one thing that puts creation back in the hands of the players, but basically modding is not a concept that can be applied to MMOs.

[Tim]

34.

Part 3 of Diku evaluation

OK last post I swear! Ah for an edit command...

Mining and Resource Gathering
Diku has no mining or other resource gathering features. The only way to gather "loot" is by killing monsters or finding things on the ground. As there is no crafting, the only use of "loot" is to gain new gear that can be used, or things that can be sold for gold.

Hidden Commands
An interesting concept that's unique to text and command line based games such as MUDs is that players can't necessarily see all commands or options available. Because they have to type in every command, the potential is for there to be hidden or obscure commands that players must learn via word of mouth or experimentation. Modern graphical MMOs on the other hand essentially give the player everything. There are few if any hidden commands.

Of course the disadvantage of MUDs (or advantage some might say) is that you can view the source and determine all commands available.

MUDs

[Timothy Burke]

35.

Very interesting, Tim. What's intriguing as I consider the list is that some of the features were in early commercial MMOs and have since dropped out. For example, in Asheron's Call, you could write short books and leave them for other players to read. I can guess why no one's done it since: porn, intellectual property violations, etc. But you're right that the most important thing that's dropped out that was basic to many MUDs is a greater capacity for players to be authors of the environment, and a more permeable distinction between players and wizards as well.

[Tim]

36.

To cross post from Nerfbat...

Diku Haiku...

Though not a clear term
But often used to compare
The diku abides

[Matt Mihaly]

37.

Tim wrote:

With the commercialization of the MUD concept into MMOs, players have lost the ability to be gods and have unique "super user like" powers. Commercial games of course can't be having non-employees potentially griefing other players, nor can commercial companies be allowing players to modify the game world.

That's not actually true. For instance, one of my my companies - Iron Realms - is most certainly commercial and has non-employees becoming and playing Gods.

It's not about commercial or not - it's about scale and trust. You can't effectively do this to the same degree in most MMOs because the scale is so much larger than in text MUDs and you lose any reasonable possibility of trusting the volunteers enough to give them that kind of power. In our case, many of our volunteers and employees take yearly vacations together, have become friends, and so on. It's a small enough community where that's possible.

--matt

[Andy]

38.

What I find remarkable is how similar pre-mud multiplayer dungeon games (eg PLATO's Avatar) are, even without direct influence. It goes to show just how much is in fact directly lifted from the shared source material, ie D&D, rather then having been innovative in any measurable way.