BatMUD

Last updated
BatMUD
BatMUD logo.png
Developer(s) Project community
Engine LPMud
Platform(s) Platform independent
Release1990
Genre(s) Fantasy MUD
Mode(s) Multiplayer

BatMUD is a medieval fantasy MUD, established in 1990. [1] [2] BatMUD is Finland-based [3] and operated and owned by a non-profit organization, Balanced Alternative Techniques ry ("B.A.T. ry"), officially registered 1994 in Helsinki, Finland. [4]

Contents

By 2006, over 100,000 players had frequented the game, making it one of the largest text-based multiplayer games on the Internet. In the beginning of 2008, it had over 30,000 subscriptions. At the end of 2011, number of subscriptions was similarly over 30,000 giving BatMUD a flat growth (number of new players equal those who no longer frequent the game). It has been called a "very popular and complex game". [5]

A screenshot of one of numerous login screens displayed by BatMUD BatMUD login screenshot.png
A screenshot of one of numerous login screens displayed by BatMUD

BatMUD was one of the first LPMuds [1] [2] [6] and has been online with only a few, if any minor breaks since 14 April 1990. [7] The game was initially set-up by a wizard who named himself Jaf, followed by many volunteer coders, all becoming wizards in the process. The MUD's name comes from the name of the server the game was first hosted on, batman.cs.hut.fi. Since then, BatMUD has relocated several times, at one point residing in Oulu, Finland. Between November 2007 and August 2021, the main BatMUD servers were co-located in the two data centers of Nebula in Helsinki, Finland. BatMUD moved to a new data center, Ficolo's The Air in Vantaa, Finland, in August 2021 and is running on dedicated servers with redundant connectivity.

Despite its phenomenal age as an Internet community, the MUD is constantly evolving which makes it both challenging and entertaining to new and old players alike. Due to the rich set of features, BatMUD may be a bit overwhelming for a newcomer. [8]

Notable (external) events, timeline

In September 1994, the organization Balanced Alternative Techniques ry was officially registered in the "Joint corporate information system of the National Board of Patents and Registration and the Tax Administration" [9] of Finland. The game was also previewed in the gaming magazine Pelit and was highly praised for its rich set of features, scoring over 90/100 points. [10]

In 2004, B.A.T. ry applied for the BatMUD trademark and "BatMUD" was registered as a trademark by the United States Patent and Trademark Office [11] on April 5, 2005. Also, a 91-page Pro graduation thesis emerges from the University of Lapland, themed "Artificial Intelligence in text-based computer games' dramaturgy. Study subjects: Nethack and BatMUD", [12] Audiovisual Mediaculture written by Jussi Huhtala (in Finnish).

In February 2007, a 100-page Pro graduation master's thesis with the topic "Virtual gift - Trading gifts in BatMUD virtual community" [13] in cultural anthropology for the University of Jyväskylä was published, written by a non-player in Finnish.

BatMUD has a wide variety of races. [8] Player killing is lightly moderated. [8]

Virtual community and Playerbase

It is arguable that BatMUD formed one of the earliest virtual communities of gamers on the Internet. What marks the community significant, is the active operation and participation of the individuals within the virtual community. [14] Several conventions and events are being held across the world, with one of the most notable probably being the Indiana, U.S. based Campcon, [15] being held for the 11th consecutive year in June, 2009 — a real life gathering of active participants of the BatMUD community. Similar events are held in Europe and Scandinavia every year.

BatMUD provides a range of interplayer communication methods, allowing the players to talk and chat. Though the majority (about 2/3) of the players reside in Finland, the game itself is wholly in English, enabling it to host a large player base from several countries, including many European countries, the United States, Canada and Australia. Together with roleplay not being strictly enforced, the common language of English allows debates to flourish.

With about one hundred players simultaneously online, [16] it is also one of the largest traditional MUDs. However, with the rise of massively multiplayer online games its popularity has fallen off in recent years with fewer new players joining. Aggressive efforts have been made to make the MUD more newbie friendly [17] but most players continue to be well established players who have invested months or years into the game. As with many other popular online games, addiction is not unknown.

BatMUD employs a virtual economy, [18] with players selling rare items and favours to each other in the game's internal currency. Sale of characters or equipment for real life money is forbidden. [19] If it has occurred, it has not been a major problem.

Influence

BatMUD was the first MUD played by Matt "Sarapis" Mihaly, founder of Iron Realms Entertainment. [20] Mihaly became a wizard on BatMUD, but was banned for making a room that trapped and disabled other wizards. [21]

Related Research Articles

A multi-user dungeon, also known as a multi-user dimension or multi-user domain, is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based or storyboarded. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, and non-player characters, and perform actions in the virtual world that are typically also described. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language, as well as using a character typically called an avatar.

In multiplayer online games, a MUSH is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the same time. MUSHes are often used for online social intercourse and role-playing games, although the first forms of MUSH do not appear to be coded specifically to implement gaming activity. MUSH software was originally derived from MUDs; today's two major MUSH variants are descended from TinyMUD, which was fundamentally a social game. MUSH has forked over the years and there are now different varieties with different features, although most have strong similarities and one who is fluent in coding one variety can switch to coding for the other with only a little effort. The source code for most widely used MUSH servers is open source and available from its current maintainers.

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DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based role-playing game, which is a type of multi-user domain (MUD). It was written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Stærfeldt at DIKU —the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

<i>Ancient Anguish</i> 1992 video game

Ancient Anguish, abbreviated AA, is a fantasy-themed MUD, a text-based online role-playing game. Founded in 1991 by Balz "Zor" Meierhans and Olivier "Drake" Maquelin, it opened to the public on February 2, 1992. It is free-to-play, but has been supported by player donations since 1994.

Player versus player (PvP) is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between human players. This is often compared to player versus environment (PvE), in which the game itself controls its players' opponents. The terms are most often used in games where both activities exist, particularly MMORPGs, MUDs, and other role-playing video games, to distinguish between gamemodes. PvP can be broadly used to describe any game, or aspect of a game, where players compete against each other. PvP is often controversial when used in role-playing games. In most cases, there are vast differences in abilities between players. PvP can even encourage experienced players to immediately attack and kill inexperienced players. PvP is often referred to as player killing in the cases of games which contain, but do not focus on, such interaction.

LPMud, abbreviated LP, is a family of multi-user dungeon (MUD) server software. Its first instance, the original LPMud game driver, was developed in 1989 by Lars Pensjö. LPMud was innovative in its separation of the MUD infrastructure into a virtual machine and a development framework written in the programming language LPC.

An online text-based role playing game is a role-playing game played online using a solely text-based interface. Online text-based role playing games date to 1978, with the creation of MUD1, which began the MUD heritage that culminates in today's MMORPGs. Some online-text based role playing games are video games, but some are organized and played entirely by humans through text-based communication. Over the years, games have used TELNET, internet forums, IRC, email and social networking websites as their media.

A mob, short for mobile or mobile object, is a computer-controlled non-player character (NPC) in a video game such as an MMORPG or MUD. Depending on context, every and any such character in a game may be considered to be a "mob", or usage of the term may be limited to hostile NPCs and/or NPCs vulnerable to attack.

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<i>Lost Souls</i> (MUD) 1990 video game

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<i>3Kingdoms</i> 1992 video game

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References

  1. 1 2 Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 48. ISBN   0-13-101816-7.
  2. 1 2 Mulligan, Jessica; Patrovsky, Bridgette (2003). Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide. New Riders. pp. 452–453. ISBN   1-59273-000-0. 1990 [...] BatMUD opens.
  3. ↑ Shah, Rawn; Romine, James (1995). Playing MUDs on the Internet. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 159. ISBN   0-471-11633-5. For example, BatMud in Finland has peak hours during the middle of the night relative to the U.S.
  4. ↑ The official site of B.A.T. ry , accessed 2008-12-31
  5. ↑ Benedikt, Claire Lisette; Ciskowski, Dave (1995). MUDs: Exploring Virtual Worlds on the Internet. BradyGames. p. 222. ISBN   1-56686-246-9.
  6. ↑ Shah, Rawn; Romine, James (1995). Playing MUDs on the Internet. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 8. ISBN   0-471-11633-5. LPmuds started appearing at the turn of the decade, popularized at first by such sites as Genesis, BatMud, and the first of the popular sites in the United States, known as Fenris.
  7. ↑ Janne Frösen (1991-04-06). "BatMUD flies to another location". Newsgroup:  rec.games.mud. Usenet:   1991Apr5.124746.18640@santra.uucp . Retrieved 2009-01-29.
  8. 1 2 3 Maloni, Kelly; Baker, Derek; Wice, Nathaniel (1994). Net Games . Random House / Michael Wolff & Company, Inc. pp.  91–92. ISBN   0-679-75592-6. BatMUD With dozens of races to choose from (each with different skills) [...] BatMUD is for hard-core MUDders, featuring hundreds of skills and spells! Player killing is common, and the only time a wizard would intervene, explains one player, is "if there's a random mass murdering (i.e., summoning 30 random players into a room without exits and killing them all—for no reason)."
  9. ↑ The Joint corporate information system of the National Board of Patents and Registration and the Tax Administration, Finland Archived 2015-09-08 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ Kaizu, "BatMUD", Pelit, 1994/6
  11. ↑ United States Patent and Trademark Office
  12. ↑ Graduation thesis, "Artificial Intelligence in text-based computer games' dramaturgy. Study subjects: Nethack and BatMUD", Audiovisual Mediaculture, University of Lapland, written by Jussi Huhtala (in Finnish) "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2008-02-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  13. ↑ Masters Thesis, Cultural Anthropology: "Virtual gift - Trading gifts in BatMUD virtual community", University of Jyväskylä, written by Anu Ikonen (in Finnish) [ permanent dead link ]
  14. ↑ BatMUD: back online and still in business by Jonathan Northwood
  15. ↑ "Campcon 11 website, Clay City, Indiana, USA". Archived from the original on 2008-05-17. Retrieved 2008-02-09.
  16. ↑ 'Average online players' user graph on the official web site of BatMUD, checked on 2014-12-27
  17. ↑ Carton, Sean (1995). Internet Virtual Worlds Quick Tour. Ventana Press. pp. 150–151. ISBN   1-56604-222-4. While it may be a tough place to start out, BatMUD is pretty hospitable for newbies, too, because of its great help system and special newbie goodies.
  18. ↑ Masters Thesis about "Virtual gift - Trading gifts in BatMUD virtual community" [ permanent dead link ] (in finnish)
  19. ↑ Official BatMUD help file on 'trading'
  20. ↑ Neely, Kim (1994-12-01). "Caught in the Net". Rolling Stone . No. 696. pp. 61–66.
  21. ↑ Davis, Steven (2006-09-08). "The World of text MMOs / MUDs - An Interview with Matt Mihaly, CEO of Iron Realms Entertainment". PlayNoEvil. Archived from the original on October 2, 2008. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
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