Many people don't know what a MOO is, so I've included an article I wrote that may give you some insight into MOOing, as well as related . If you want to learn more, an excellent beginner's tutorial can be found here.
For a while I MOOed a lot. The MOO can be compared to a chat room-- only even better! What I liked about MOOs is that you can create a character as well as objects and rooms, which you can describe and program to do things. You can also interact with others in any way you choose, including "emoting", which includes things like smiling, hugging, and so on. Some chat rooms now have these capabilities, however I always felt that the MOO was more creative and interesting, more like a textual (that's text-based) version of the world. Article:
You can teleport from America to Australia, hang out on Mars, put anything in your pocket, be anything from a tapeworm to Trent Reznor (if you prefer,) from Adonis to Medusa. You're probably on a MOO. Some call a MOO text-based virtual reality. Others call the MOO a game.
MOO stands for MUD, Object Oriented. MUD stands for Multiple User Dungeon. Put together, you get an object-oriented, multi-user dungeon. But this dungeon is not a dank, foreboding stone room, but rather refers to the internet itself, a vast room waiting to be filled by characters and objects. Although the objects are not tangible, they are things you define by describing them and programming them to do things (much like you would program a robot to do a task.)
A MOO is a network defined by the people who are playing. Basically, it is a place for people to interact. It can be a place for people to converse, roleplay, or play games (even scrabble-- after all, it is a game of words.) A typical conversation on a MOO can be as ordinary or as outrageous as any in real life, the main difference being that the people are sitting in front of a computer reading what others typed, instead of listening to a voice.
If you are familiar with chat rooms, then you have already seen something similar to the MOO, a place where you can meet people and interact online. As with chat rooms, many people choose to present themself as a character they may not be able to present in everyday life, others choose to be themselves.
Without the ability to see another person's appearance, many people interact without worrying about how others look. Some people, however, ask everyone to describe what they actually look like. Of course, the person answering this question can say whatever they want-- they can describe themself as a twenty-one-year-old model lookalike, and many people do so. But how many of them do you think are out there? Many of the people saying things like that are probably really forty-year-old, balding men. Some of them may be ordinary-looking twenty-year-old women. However, most players are honest enough. You should remember, however, that humans are often dishonest, and don't take for granted that everything they tell you is the complete truth.
A recorded interview available on several MOOs (originating from MediaMOO) includes the saga of the beginning of MOOs as they are today. According to Pavel Curtis, the founder of LambdaMOO and creator of the MOO language in use today, his personal adventure began for him when he started reading more news on the Internet than usual and stumbled upon a newsgroup called alt.mud.games. Curtis, a programmer at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, "wondered what this weird newsgroup might be about (mud wrestling?)" He decided to read it until it was clear what it was about: these people were playing a game (MUDs) in a networked environment.
True to their name, most MUDs were dedicated to roleplaying, similar to that in a Dungeons and Dragons(tm) game. Curtis tried out a few different MUDs and came cross a mention of UberMUD, a `fully-programmable' MUD. Curtis says, "With my long background as a programming language junkie, designer, and implementor, this caught my eye."
Around the same time, he heard about the other fully- programmable MUD, called MOO. There was an test MOO running on a site at Berkeley, which Curtis began to work on. Its originator, Stephen White, eventually passed the project on to Curtis. The finished product, in 1990, dubbed LambdaMOO, named after Curtis's character, Lambda, and the greek letter of the same name. The MOO was located at Xerox's PARC.
Of LambdaMOO, Curtis says, "I think the only significant difference was... a simple and powerful programming language general enough to do whatever people wanted to do," he says. On the less technical side, MOOs tend to be more social than most MUDs.
To date, LambdaMOO has more than 6,000 players, a number that increases daily. Other MOOs aren't as large, but growth rates are high. Compare it to the increasingly popular BayMOO, with 1,656 players and a growth rate of over 100%. At BayMOO the amount of characters playing at the same time averages around 50 (at mid-day), as opposed to 200 at LambdaMOO.
Most people are introduced to MOOing when a friend tells them about it, or, like Curtis, when they stumble on one of the newsgroups on the internet devoted to MUDding.
Curtis says that on the newsgroups he first read, they were discussing whether MUD/MOO is a game. This question is still debated by many. In fact, the answer may be different for different players. People spend their time on moos chatting, roleplaying, creating and describing objects and places, or programming objects. The MOO allows for creativity and expressions of individuality through text, which often attracts avid writers and readers. Some people spend their time building relationships of all kinds, including close friendships and romances. Many have even ended in successful marriages in real life. Some people get into MOO politics. LambdaMOO is known for this, as are certain characters there.
"MOO is life," says Gerald P. of Seattle. "Some things that happen on the MOO happen in real life." Carol G., 32, feels similarly. About sharing the MOO with her friends, she writes, "The technophobes recoil in horror, and when introduced to the MOO, interrogate the persons I'm talking with, tell them they aren't real... They don't accept that I can have close friendships or relationships through my computer screen."
Lisa S. says, "Living in a small town, it is not a surprise that MOOs have become the biggest part of my social life." From the other school of thought, Alexandra Popadopolis, 23, says, "Players only see what the other wants them to see, so that you never get to know the real person. There is too much room for deception... I don't let my husband use those things." To those who claim that stable, lasting relationships can't develop over a MOO, supporters hold up the real life marriages of at least a dozen couples who met at LambdaMOO, some celebrating anniversaries (on or off the MOO.)
Amy Bruckman, originator (and head "wizard") of MediaMOO at MIT (an MOO dedicated to education,) says in an online interview, "People of all ages, from all over the world, are working, playing, and learning together as a community." Bruckman, like many proponents of MOOs, says that MOO is the virtual reality of today. "The users direct the course of these media," says Bruckman.
No matter what the theme of the moo, for the most part the wizards (basically, the people who enforce the rules and assist players with problems that arise) can't force users/players to bow to it. Each person brings some of their own ideas, knowledge and personality into the MOO community.
If you have access to the Internet and would like to try a MUD or MOO, they may be listed under a heading such as Games, and often you can get listings of MOOs to which you can telnet. A search on a search engine such as Yahoo! or Lycos will also return many lists. A good place to start learning about it if you have access to newsgroups is to read the FAQ (Frequently asked questions) posted to rec.games.mud.announce. There it will tell you how to telnet to a MOO and what to do once you get there.
Some wonder: will anyone use MOO when the current virtual reality technology comes into our homes, with visual and eventually sensual connections? Or even closer to the present, when video and sound can be added to a MUD, a process which is being considered even now. Bruckman has an answer even for this hard question: "Text-based media will continue to exist when multimodal forms are prevalent. They're different media. TV didn't replace radio or magazines-- it just changed what they're used for."
Note: Statistics were accurate as of 1995.
© 1994-2001 by Kerri K.
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