Post by Morreion on Jan 26, 2015 22:25:55 GMT -5
The Game Archaeologist: How DikuMUD shaped modern MMOs (Massively)
Describing how DikuMUD plays is eerily similar to describing most current MMOs (hence the point of this article). It was a D&D-derived text-based game that primarily focused on combat and power progression as its key elements. According to the DikuMUD FAQ, "While some muds are based on pure social interaction and some based on pure fighting, DikuMUDs have evolved into an intelligent compromise between the two."
Indeed, DikuMUD did have social features, including a robust chat system, guilds (or clans, as they were called back then), and strong incentives to party with other players. However, this "social interaction" was in subservience to the combat model and not the other way around. Dikus focused on the advancement and persistence of the character over the game world itself.
"[DikuMUD] was heavily based on the combat portion of Dungeons and Dragons," Raph Koster summarized. "Advancement [was] handled by earning experience points through combat, reaching a set amount of points, returning to town and 'leveling up,' which unlocked new abilities."
The central focus on hack-and-slash combat, statistical progression, and the slot machine lotto known as "looting" proved to be a compelling design that hit it big with gamers. "There are three interrelated reasons why DikuMUD proved to be genetically superior to other MUDs, and why it became the progenitor for nearly all modern graphical MMORPGs: It emphasized easy-to-understand and action-oriented combat over other forms of interaction; it simplified interactions down to easily-trackable, table-driven statistics; and it was designed to be easy to modify and install by gameworld creators," posted Theory by Flatfingers.
Four classes -- Cleric, Thief, Warrior, and Magic-User -- were all the initial character customization DikuMUD needed. Players grouped up to form parties that roamed the world's "rooms" (mini-zones on a grid) and fought an endless stream of mobs (which stood for "mobile units"). Many design choices that DikuMUD inherited from older MUDs and created on the spot became staples of the field, including respawning mobs, the conning ("considering") system, corpse runs, pets, public quests, world PvP, proceedural ares, and the curse of rare spawns and drops.
Initially, DikuMUD was as pure of a combat simulator as they get with no quests of which to speak. However, successive derivatives did expand the codebase to include missions and scripting, both of which greatly benefited the formerly restrictive design.
...Other concepts from DikuMUD infiltrated the wider industry, including the holy trinity. Dr. Richard Bartle explained how DikuMUD was more or less responsible for the rise of the trinity of game classes, which started with the development of threat aggro in Diku: "The solution, which was popularised (and possibly invented) in DikuMUD, was to have taunting commands act to cause the opponent to attack one character in preference to others. Threat-management became a substitute for access-containment. This worked well enough under the circumstances, and added a lot to the gameplay especially for boss fights, but it was a bit of a hack. Nevertheless, so it was that the tank was born. With the tank came the trinity. When the DikuMUD gameplay was adopted by EverQuest, the trinity came with it."
Describing how DikuMUD plays is eerily similar to describing most current MMOs (hence the point of this article). It was a D&D-derived text-based game that primarily focused on combat and power progression as its key elements. According to the DikuMUD FAQ, "While some muds are based on pure social interaction and some based on pure fighting, DikuMUDs have evolved into an intelligent compromise between the two."
Indeed, DikuMUD did have social features, including a robust chat system, guilds (or clans, as they were called back then), and strong incentives to party with other players. However, this "social interaction" was in subservience to the combat model and not the other way around. Dikus focused on the advancement and persistence of the character over the game world itself.
"[DikuMUD] was heavily based on the combat portion of Dungeons and Dragons," Raph Koster summarized. "Advancement [was] handled by earning experience points through combat, reaching a set amount of points, returning to town and 'leveling up,' which unlocked new abilities."
The central focus on hack-and-slash combat, statistical progression, and the slot machine lotto known as "looting" proved to be a compelling design that hit it big with gamers. "There are three interrelated reasons why DikuMUD proved to be genetically superior to other MUDs, and why it became the progenitor for nearly all modern graphical MMORPGs: It emphasized easy-to-understand and action-oriented combat over other forms of interaction; it simplified interactions down to easily-trackable, table-driven statistics; and it was designed to be easy to modify and install by gameworld creators," posted Theory by Flatfingers.
Four classes -- Cleric, Thief, Warrior, and Magic-User -- were all the initial character customization DikuMUD needed. Players grouped up to form parties that roamed the world's "rooms" (mini-zones on a grid) and fought an endless stream of mobs (which stood for "mobile units"). Many design choices that DikuMUD inherited from older MUDs and created on the spot became staples of the field, including respawning mobs, the conning ("considering") system, corpse runs, pets, public quests, world PvP, proceedural ares, and the curse of rare spawns and drops.
Initially, DikuMUD was as pure of a combat simulator as they get with no quests of which to speak. However, successive derivatives did expand the codebase to include missions and scripting, both of which greatly benefited the formerly restrictive design.
...Other concepts from DikuMUD infiltrated the wider industry, including the holy trinity. Dr. Richard Bartle explained how DikuMUD was more or less responsible for the rise of the trinity of game classes, which started with the development of threat aggro in Diku: "The solution, which was popularised (and possibly invented) in DikuMUD, was to have taunting commands act to cause the opponent to attack one character in preference to others. Threat-management became a substitute for access-containment. This worked well enough under the circumstances, and added a lot to the gameplay especially for boss fights, but it was a bit of a hack. Nevertheless, so it was that the tank was born. With the tank came the trinity. When the DikuMUD gameplay was adopted by EverQuest, the trinity came with it."
