This is why MUDs need to lift their game ...

I was logging into a MUD a few minutes ago to help with a problem. Now, with all the games and other things I am doing right now I don't always remember the syntax for how to do stuff on a particular codebase, so I reach for the help. But this is what I saw:



Not a good start. If you have just started a new MUD - maybe because you are bored with MMO games right now - you expect to do some simple things. Like chat, talk, tell, yell. But apparently not on this MUD.

So I type "look" to look around and see Moe in the room. Now watch what happens:



I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of Moe here. He is holding a sign which isn't here apparently. It talks about games, which aren't here. The concept "games" isn't one the MUD understands.

I don't know what else to say ... if you want MUDs to be a closed world, where only existing players know what they are doing, well fine, you are doing a good job. If you want to welcome newbies, and grow and have more people online, you have to do better than this.

This is a great discussion and something I've always worked on since starting a MUD.

In the old days, people grew up with Linux/DOS or at least familiar with command prompts. They understood what "look <target>" meant and that the brackets didn't mean to type those in too. Nowadays you get most new players trying "look <rabbit>" which is wrong, but the problem stems from the MUD and not the player.

MUDs need to adapt and they are failing to so. We need to explain more of the basics than ever before and introduce the MUD as to why it's worth playing even though it's text.

My newbie area needs a refinement for example. A lot of it is straight forward and built for players who haven't played a MUD, but we missed a few key things. One thing is players have to say "I'm ready" to progress to the next lesson. The issue? A lot of players say "im ready". We should have just used something like "nod" to move on.

A lot of the MOOs/MUCKs were like your example though. I still have no idea how to chat in them, but it's something like "@chat hello" and not a single helpfile explained it in a way I could understand.

Was it just the help files that were missing, or the commands as well?

Some muds have 'gossip' instead of 'chat' - in fact I believe 'chat' was introduced by the Merc branch of Diku, so if you're playing (for example) a Circle you'll probably need to 'gossip' instead. Then there are the RP muds that call their public channel 'OOC' - and others that have no public channels at all (or else block them until you reach a certain level, which is pretty tough on newbies).

Not sure I've ever played a mud with a 'talk' command, but in this day and age I think it makes sense to at least cover both 'chat' and 'gossip' - either as separate channels, or automatically redirecting to a different channel. Even just giving a message like "There is no 'chat' channel here, use the 'OOC' channel instead" would be better than nothing.


Yeah that's the age old problem of people putting things into descriptions that aren't actually there. Room descriptions are the usual offenders, but you can get it on mobs as well.

There's also the problem that even if Moe had actually been holding the sign, it would be inside him rather than the room, so in most muds you wouldn't be able to view it directly (any more than you could look at a sword someone was wielding).

Perhaps he's a shopkeeper, or has a mobprog attached to him. Or maybe he'd fled or wandered from his spawn room, which had extra descriptions for 'sign' and/or 'games'. Either way, it's sloppy building, but hardly uncommon.


Your observations are certainly valid, but did you actually share them with the staff, or just post them here?

It's very common for newbies to quit shortly after connecting to a mud, but unless they explain their reasons the staff can only speculate. If the staff are from a different mud background to you, they may take certain things for granted that you don't (and vice versa). Perhaps they've always used 'gossip' and never even played a mud that used 'chat', for example.

I've often wondered whether it would be worth logging the first 10-20 commands a newbie types after connecting.



I think this is the sort of situation where the various mud protocols can really help - clickable links in the text, graphical icons and buttons, etc. As you said, in the old days people grew up with command-line interfaces like DOS - but the modern newbie is more used to graphical user interfaces like Windows, where they have buttons and icons, multiple windows, and can navigate with their mouse. So in that respect I think we are seeing an increasing number of muds adapt to the modern newbie, by modernising their interface to provide something that newbies find more familiar and intuitive. I guess you could even offer a Windows-style Office Assistant (although preferably not as intrusive and annoying as Clippy).

However I noticed that you've chosen not to go this route, Zeno, so I'd be interested to hear your reasons. I know some people strongly prefer command-line interfaces, but you seem to recognise that most modern newbies aren't so familiar with them, and clearly feel that muds need to adapt.

I do plan to go that route, but the core of my MUD still lacks various things and I'm still focusing on that (such as content). Then I'd work on refining the game (to make sure any type of player can be shown how to play). Eventually the plan is to release a version of MUSHclient that is custom made for my MUD, so non-mudders think the download (MUSHclient) is the actual game. Then I can push various protocols like MXP without worrying their client won't support it.

I did not share them (for one thing, I would have to work out *how* to share them <grin>). I didn't name them as this isn't a "name and shame" exercise. Also I think my remarks apply to many MUDs, not just this one.

My experience on the MUD Standards forum leads me to think that some MUDs, at least, resist change. After all, they argue, they like it their way, or they don't want fancy graphics, or clickable links, or people telling them what to do.

I've been fascinated by the way Minecraft has gone viral, so to speak. A game that I hadn't heard of a couple of years ago is so popular now there are web sites offering commercial Minecraft web hosting. A Google search for "minecraft site:youtube.com" gives "about" 124,000,000 results. That can't be right, but obviously there are a lot of Minecraft videos. My own son is hosting a Minecraft server, and there appear to be a lot of those.

And strangely enough, the graphics are quite simple, and there are only about a dozen commands you can enter. But somehow the ease-of-use, simple command structure, ability to build and modify the world, and I don't know for sure what else, has made it extremely popular.



That doesn't surprise me. What I suggest to all MUD admins is to make a new character from time to time and go through your own newbie introduction. I discovered for example, a while back, that a popular MUD had bugs in their starter area. You were supposed to pick something up that wasn't there, and it was all quite confusing. When I wrote to them they admitted they don't often log on with new characters to check everything works.

Even the default SMAUGfuss for example, I think had a new character placed in a room that was dark (or one of the rooms in the Academy was) and you couldn't see where the exit was.