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Comment by xamuel | Hacker News Reader

When I was growing up, I played on MUD games, which were text-based massively multiplayer games 100% free to play, with no ads or any other kind of monetization, with full staffs of admins, programmers (!!), level designers, and moderators, all 100% volunteers.

Reading that now, it sounds like I'm describing some kind of crazy sci-fi utopia that couldn't even get published because it's too unbelievable.

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Realms Of Despair (http://www.smaug.org/) is still running - last major update 2002, last update at all 2010 :P

`nc realmsofdespair.com 4000`

A CLI interface with no readline support; an MMO where you need to manually save your game to avoid losing progress whenever the network glitches for a second; very nostalgic :D

Ah, that's one of the main MUDs I played. I even built an area there. I did tons of runs there (even participated in successful runs on Hastur and Divine Retribution) until I got balzhur'd for cheating :P (I was just a high school kid back then).

Wonderful experiences still exist (for many transformative), they just have less reach than corporate cash cows unfortunately

It really does sound like a utopia. I was part of that community as well.

Perhaps when things are small and the people can relate to most of the people directly, they're able to act in a more altruistic manner.

When we explore this thought experiment further, it has pretty bad consequences for politicians at a national or global stage.

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