Blast from the past

December 10, 2000 4:09 PM

Blast from the past
Oh, those halcyon days of text-based real-time chat, before there was a Web. (I'm catching up on my link quotient....)
posted by rschram (11 comments total)

You just want to see a MetaMud here, don't you?

btw, looks like you can no longer telnet to palmer.sacc.colostate.edu 6250 (well i had to try, didn't I?)
posted by gluechunk at 4:22 PM on December 10, 2000

I haven't been inside a MUD and never been in the MOO. Anyone have favorites that still exist?
posted by Brilliantcrank at 6:30 PM on December 10, 2000

Hey! Some of use still use text-based real-time chat! (See also: bianca.com.) I know it's not a moo, but sometimes it's a moan....
posted by fraying at 10:28 PM on December 10, 2000

Blast from the past? These things are still everywhere, with new ones opening up all the time!
posted by aaron at 10:44 PM on December 10, 2000

Geez, the one I remember was LambdaMOO at Xerox PARC. I used it for a while and then the whole Mr. Bungle Rape debacle happened. Ahh, the good old days. Anyone out there remember SLiMeR?
posted by cheesebot at 7:12 AM on December 11, 2000

I loved the conceptual basis of these and have always wanted to experiment with a MOO for business use. Unfortunately, using a MOO requires a fair degree of imagination - you have to be able to "see" the world that the MOO embodies. Business users, not overly imaginative as a cultural group, see only endless text scrolling by... There were a couple of graphical incarnations - The Palace, which is now seems to be a commercial venture called "Communities.com", and the Pueblo client software - but nothing that really caught on. I admit to not having looked much, but anybody aware of any web-based solutions similar in nature?
posted by m.polo at 8:04 AM on December 11, 2000

Julian Dibbell wrote the book My Tiny Life about his experiences in LambdaMOO. It's very self-centered (I do not mean that as a criticism necessarily). It starts out with the Mr. Bungle rape which he wrote about in the Village Voice (linked to above by cheesebot), but then moves on to his own experiences living in the MOO while dealing with his girlfriend IRL. It's an interesting read if you want to know more about MOOs but for a MOO insider is probably better read with the perspective of "this is how an outsider sees a MOO".
posted by girlhacker at 10:54 AM on December 11, 2000

Two pk muds I used to hang out on are still alive - Mayhem (never outta beta) at mayhem.imaginary.com 3333 and Rogue (some of the oldies gather for wars on Saturday nights these days, I hear) at fics2.freechess.org 2222. Er. I could be wrong on those addresses (neither responds now, hmmm), but that's what sticks in my head. I am/was/will be Marble @ both of those.
posted by beth at 2:43 PM on December 11, 2000

Beth, reading about your experience reminds me of what some WELL users went through in the late 80's.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 3:34 PM on December 11, 2000

PMC-MOO, hero.village.virginia.edu 7777 was where I got my start on the Internet. The project was a joint venture of Postmodern Culture, the oldest continuing e-journal, and The UV Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH).

There was the tumultuous split from PMC, then the purge of users and programmed interactive objects that were deemed not to fit within the theme of "exploring postmodern culture online." Later a burned-out old-timer told me anonymously that all the "wizards" ('staff', please) were "fucking IRL" and that they "reproduced all the most humiliating aspects of grad school." All I really remember are discussions about whether the "metaphor of space" was really condusuive to creating online community. What a bore.
posted by rschram at 8:17 PM on December 11, 2000