Unless you’re Mark, you’re probably looking at the title of this post and thinking… huh?
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. They’ve been around for a while, evolving along with the technology, expanding the horizons of generations of young geeks, many of whom are now old geeks. Basically, it’s like your old Dungeons and Dragons, but played online, with thousands, even millions of other people joining in, from all over the globe.
It began with text only MUDDs (like Zork), then came seminal games (with graphics!) like Ultima Online, Everquest, and now there is World of Warcraft and Everquest 2, each of which has millions of players. I’m not kidding… millions. I even got into the action by making a superhero in the game City of Heroes. I have to say, I spent probably as much time customizing my costume as I did all day at work.
Slashdot had a link to an interesting “it will happen in your lifetime” article about the path that MMORPGs are taking. It’s pretty interesting and I would wager that a fair number of the points will become reality.
Until then, I’m not quitting my day job. But all you ahve to do is ask Mark how much his Eve account is worth and you’ll have an idea of why this is going to stick around.
6 Comments
mark · August 15, 2005 at 3:11 pm
Zork was single player actually. A good example of a MUD would be arctic (mud.arctic.org). As for the article, I gotta say, I disagree with a whole crappton of it. If you want a really great article from that particular website, look at this:
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifesto.html
mark · August 15, 2005 at 3:12 pm
Jesus I should start updating my blog more often.
Brian · August 16, 2005 at 12:12 am
You are such a dork. At least I got the term MUDD right. I am only a half-dork, but I hope with your guidance, I may one day reach the true heights of dorkdom. Sensei.
(Please don’t take down my site. Master.)
Brian · August 16, 2005 at 12:38 am
I read that article. Besides being ashamed that I understood every single point, the damned thing was HILARIOUS. Thanks Mark!
mochasteak.com » Dutch License · August 16, 2005 at 12:49 am
[…] I forget things. I forget where I’m going. I’ll be deep in the middle of a deep thought about the nature of man, or the future or Iraq, or whether I should get a cape for my superhero character in the MMORPG game I play, or any number of equally important things, and suddenly I’ll realize that I have not been paying attention to where I am going at all. Sometimes, these revelations have to be followed by immediate and drastic course corrections. […]
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