Richard Bartle, one of the pioneers of virtual worlds interactive, was in charge of closing a whole week of conferences (And I think it couldnāt have had a better ending).
Bartle begins by saying what the main characteristics of a virtual world are. First, the individual must be represented as an individual, not as a group of individuals. Second, everything has to happen in real time. And third, the world must be persistent. This means that the world must continue its course even if you are not in it.
Mud (which would later be followed chronologically by ABERMUD, DIKUMUD, Everquest, WOW and Lord of the Rings Online) was the first virtual world, and, of course, one of its creators was Richard Bartle. It was a virtual world in text mode. However, MUD was not the only way forward for virtual world developers, as, for example, Dark Age of Camelot comes from Aradath.
The first version of MUD (V.1) came out in 1978 and was a prototype. The second version (V.2) was written in assembler, and in it objects could be created dynamically, but as it was very tedious to maintain, it was rewritten in BCPL (which is a previous version of C). Version 3 (V.3) was released in 1980, and was already built with the concept of being a game. It was called MUD1 because most people liked the version it played, despite it not being the first version.
MUD had many successors, but they took two different paths: That of socialization (TinyMUD, TinyMuck, TinyMoo and TinyMushes) and that of gaming (DikuMUD). From these games, multiple variations emerged, but all very similar, which would lead to later online games such as Ultima Online, Neverwinter Nights, WOW, Lineage, etc.
In a few years, anyone will be able to create a 3D virtual world like today anyone can make one in text mode, and, although not all of them will be good, there will be some that stand out from the rest, like todayās blogs. Mainly, what people are looking for in these virtual worlds is acceptance from others, since they allow them to express themselves without limitations and without fear of rejection. And in my opinion, virtual worlds could be considered like chat 2,3,4 or 10.0.
And thus concludes a week of conferences: Ah! I forgot to say that a TPA ājournalistā called all of us who were there fucking geeks! Itās a shame not to have recorded the momentā¦ but thatās another story ;)