Discussion 7: Textual Worlds

The goal with this preparation is to gain familiarity with one of the oldest, and most influential, forms of persistent online virtual worlds: The MUDs and MOOs! These worlds still exist if you know where to look. Some of them are in fact still thriving quite well.

Make sure you have a program on your computer to open an interactive telnet session with a remote host. On OSX and Linux, the program “telnet” should already be included, which you can then run from a terminal window just like this:

telnet <hostname> <portnumber>

On windows you can download a very simple telnet client called PuTTYtel (direct download link!), run it and supply the host name and port number into a dialog box before connecting.

After you have found or installed your telnet client, connect to these two virtual worlds:

• Asylum MUD - Fantasy RPG (create a character and start questing)
  • HOST: asylum-mud.org
  • PORT: 6715
• Lamda MOO - Social Space (type “co guest” to start as an anonymous guest)
  • HOST: lambda.moo.mud.org
  • PORT: 8888

By Monday class, be ready to discuss the pros and cons of this interactive textual medium. For example, are you able gain a sense of space even though no visual cues are provided?