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Comment by acconrad | Hacker News Reader

When I was young I played a game like this called Modus Operandi by Simutronics and it was some of the most fun I'd ever had. Apparently there is a resurgence[1] of this type of gaming and a community behind it. I think there is still room for MUDs in the age of hyper-realistic, COD-style games. It just requires a different set of user experiences, much like how books are still engaging in spite of TV and movies.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/4d2qid/anyone_remember...

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I played that too, back when it was on AOL! But my favorite was another Simutronics game, Gemstone III (which later became Gemstone IV). To this day, it was the most interesting online community I've ever been a part of, in part because the majority of the 2,000-odd people who played it at any given time were legitimately trying to be in character, and in part because the experience of an emergent virtual world was still so new back in 95/96. I wrote an essay about it here, if anyone is interested:

http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/10/dont-cry-for-me-elanth...

Gemstone III was my after school haven for the latter half of the 90s. I'd get off of the school bus and rush to log in. I would curse family members when they had to use the phone and I had to log off. I taught myself to touch type to keep up with what was going on. I took hours to roll new characters, and leveling up in that game was the single biggest video game high I've ever experienced (Dark Souls boss victories coming in second). I remember so much, so vividly: the virtual selflessness of healers taking on my wounds, fighting rats in the sewers, taking on jobs in the city to earn money, memorizing strings of map directions to move between hunting grounds, running to the safety of guards around city gates, and especially, especially, the friendliness of the people.

Exactly the same here. Getting to "lord" (level 20 as I recall) was an amazing feeling. Also exploring the newly-opened areas, like the icy town to the north. And when the Juggernaut came and there was a GM-played merchant who did alterations! So many things about that game continue to fascinate me.

What an amazing game. I played for almost a decade as Ascious Alturas and Lyleris Bowstorm. I still remember shooting a friend who was statistically inclined hundreds of times to figure out the damage factors for bows when they were finally introduced. There has never been a game since with such an amazingly interesting player-base.

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