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Medievia
(telnet link) |
Created in 1991, Medievia is the largest example of a successful DIKU MUD. It has been heavily modified from its original form over the past 9 years to include an astonishing amount of features. These include wars, dragon fights, an economy, weather, player built guild cities, randomly generated dungeons, formation combat, mounted combat, tracking, and a gigantic wilderness that contains hundreds of thousands of rooms to hide from your pursuers. The MUD is evenly appealing to achievers, explorers, killers, and socializers, making it a good introduction to MUDs in general. In general, there are over 200-300 people online in Medievia at peak hours. |
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3 Kingdoms
(telnet link) |
Originating as a simple LPMUD running the Amylaar driver program, 3 Kingdoms is perhaps the largest LPMUD in existance. Its modifications are quite well done, and it has a tremendous richness of features in its rooms and quests (two things Medievia lacks). However, 3 Kingdoms does not have many of the global features Medievia possesses, such as an economy, dragon wars, and the wilderness, ironically putting Medievia ahead in terms of sheer size (both in rooms, and population). 3 Kingdoms appeals more to explorers, achievers, and socializers, with fewer killers amongst the population. There are typically around 120 players online in 3 Kingdoms during peak hours. |
| EverQuest | Released on March 16th 1999 after over a year of beta testing, EverQuest was the first game of its kind, a graphical MUD with a tremendous player base. Developed by Verant Interactive under the aegis of the Sony Coporation, EverQuest is a game that pioneered the field of a graphical MUDs. Essentially copying all the classical DIKU MUD features and translating them into a graphical format, EverQuest had both design flaws and some huge improvements over the old text based form. Requiring a Pentium 200 Mhz with a 3D accelerator, and a $9.95 monthly fee, EverQuest currently has over 200,000 active accounts making it the most successful MUD ever. |
| Asheron's Call | Released in November of 1999, Asheron's Call was Turbine Entertainment and Microsoft's answer to Verant and Sony's EverQuest. Using a more advanced graphics engine that does not require a 3D accelerator, Asheron's Call is essentially different but equal to EverQuest. While slightly lacking in the ability create new objects, the combat system in Asheron's Call is more complex. With equivalent subscription costs, Asheron's Call may equal EverQuest in number of players given enough time. Asheron's Call requires Pentium 166 Mhz for minimal play. |
| The Mud Connector | The Mud Connector is a tremendous database of MUDs, listing their code bases, how long they have been up, as well as their features and what kind of players they cater to. Also within is a large selection of telnet and other specialized clients that some MUDs support. Lastly, there is a wanted section for programmers, as well as links to other informational sites. Be warned, the server is undergoing an overload of traffic, this site may be slow to load. |
| Official DIKU MUD homepage | The original creators of the DIKU MUD maintain this page for anyone else interested in learning more about DIKU MUD's origin. Fortunately the page is entirely in english. Unfortunately the creators are busy men, and the page is rather sparse. On March 17th 2000, the DIKU MUD group resolved their threats of a lawsuit towards Sony's EverQuest for copyright infringement, exactly one year and one day after EverQuest's release. |
| LPMUD timeline | Written by George Reese, creator of the popular Nightmare and Dead Souls mud libraries for LPMUD drivers. He has also authored the basic and intermediate manuals for programming in LPC. This timeline contains the history and development of LPMUDs in general. |
| Bartle-Quotient survey | Richard Bartle wrote a very important paper detailing his concept of the four basic functions MUDs serve. This site contains an online randomized survey with random and placebo questions designed to find out what type of player you are under Bartle's categorization system. Written in April of 1996, this article has become an almost de facto standard by which MUDs advertise which player groups they cater to. |
| Imaginary Realities Online magazine | Started in 1995, Imaginary Realities is one of the few online magazines remaining that cover MUD development. The rest have withered up due to lack of funding. It is regarded as the most significant source of articles and papers covering all aspects of play on MUDs. |
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Zuggsoft
ZMud client v3.62 (536 kb) |
Zuggsoft has created what is perhaps the most popular pure telnet client ever. Although it supports some extraneous features, such as automapping by pasing text input, as well as sound cues, it is a client based purely upon text input. Some other clients that use some visual components (such as Pueblo, or Portal) have yet to have the same universal appeal as a pure text client. ZMud has support for aliases, scripting, local variable and array storage, sounds, plugins, and built in language to create mini-programs to help automate some play within a MUDYou can download a 30 day trial client from this site, or simply get the free older version locally. |
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Mud-Master site
Mud-Master client v2.52 (208 kb) |
Mud-Master is ZMud's rival in terms of popularity. Possessing almost identical features, Mud-Master is superior to ZMud in that it is both free, and native Win32 (unlike the free older version of ZMud). Like ZMud, Mud-Master has support for aliases, scripting, local variable and array storage, sounds, plugins, and built in language to create mini-programs to help automate some play within a MUD. Whichever client is better is most probably a point of personal preference. |