Newbie's Perspective I had never heard of MUD, MOO, and MUSH until I joined the course 1514F at OISE. The followings are some comments on my first experiences of some MUDs and MOOs I have tried. =========================================================================== (1) logos.daedlaus.com 7777 LambdaMoo Not so many people were there (6 including me) at night. For beginners, I think we need someone to go there together because we need at least 2 persons in the same location to interact. If I go a MUDs or MOO alone, there is nothing to do except solving problems individually like math. (2) dds.hacktic.nl (Dutch) It is interesting to look at other language which I do not understand totally. (Some of them are predictable from English words like 'welkom', 'universiteit'.) The response was very slow. (3) cheshire.oxy.edu 7777 (Zen Moo) This is my favorite MOO. It does not allow me to do anything except to do mediation. It is really fun. I like to keep quiet. (4) ctdnet.acns.nwu.edu 8888 (Music MOO) CTDMOO It was very difficult to read the text. (5) hero.village.virginia.edu 7777 PMC-MOO. It is a virtual space designed to promote the exploration of postmodern theory and practice ?? What is postmodernism? (6) Microworld.media.mit.edu 8888 MediaMOO. This is a professional community, where people come to explore the future of media technology. It does not allow teachers to bring their students there. (7) gopher cyberion.bbn.com WindsMARE - Travel adventure, role playing epic, famous for fight system. Once I entered, it was difficult to leave from it because I am not familiar with commands in there. Moreover, I could not leave help menu. ============================================================================= In general, I am afraid that MUDs, MOO, and MUSH are very difficult to use as an educational tool for beginners. First of all, there are too many commands to learn. Second, it is very hard to read texts on MUDs, MOO, and MUSH since the texts input by more than two users at the same time are mixed together on the screen. Third, as I mentioned above, beginners should go to MUDs, MOO, and MUSH with his/her company to try some commands which require interaction with other users. Forth, it is hard to find appropriate one which meets my interest among existing MUDs, MOO, and MUSH. Last, I think that I MUST like computes very much to learn this kind of stuff :-) However, if I mastered the use of MUDs, MOO, and MUSH, I believe that they would be very interesting tools for education since they create any kind of virtual environment which provides us a lot of chances to explore many experiences. If you have any comments about this document, please contact me at mhayashi@oise.on.ca. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ftp://ftp.game.org/pub/mud FTP.GAME.ORG http://www.game.org/ftpsite/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This document came from FTP.GAME.ORG, the ultimate source for MUD resources. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------