Intro to EW-too

This file is intended as a small, possibly amusing, probably half-true at 
best, recount of the development of talkers in general, EW-too talkers
in detail, and Playground 96 in specific.


Talkers have existed for a long time, long before the first EW-too.  The
earliest well-known talkers were called "havens" (after a term in older
MUDS, "the room where player-killing is not allowed") - After this, a
more modern looking talker, NUTS, was developed, and until very recently, 
the number of NUTS talkers far exceeded any other type of talker (NUTS 
still has the edge, numerically, but the difference is no longer great,
and eventually, EW-too varients will outnumber the NUTS varients) 


The following was written by Athanasius after I made a fool of myself 
Getting talker history dead wrong:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  Oh you also have the history of talkers a fair bit wrong. Ask about for
info on 'CheesePlant's House' the fore-runner to ElseWhere. And ElseWhere
was NEVER a mud, I was visiting Warwick Uni the January that Burble started
idlemsg is BUSY coding HIS talker, shhhh...

   Also, Surfers actually came about BEFORE the Ew-Too code was publically
released. I REALLY must write a 'definitive' history of the start of Surfers
sometime. Suffice to say, with some inside help, we effectively 'stole'
the source, and managed to argue Burble into not doing anything about it in
the end *8-).
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

 The code was designed for a load that was already being exceeded: 
approximately 1000 total residents, no more than 100 of them on at any one time.   
Once the source code for a skeleton EW-too talker was released, a few
"Foothills clones" popped up.  Some of them that have survived (and thrived) 
to this day are Resort, Forest, and Vineyards.  These, and a few others,
made up the "second wave" of EW-too talkers.  

In the early going, Surfers had a good edge (see above)
and as time went on, soon after the origonal EW-too release, a code
called "Summink" was released. Summinks main points were a better set of 
shortcut commands (rt, tf, etc..) and several asthetic additions.  

As time went on, and talkers moved, developed, and migrated, they began to
truly diversify.  Some talkers became the "hot spots" -- the most popular
hangouts for any given region (Surfers in the UK, Forest in Austrailia, 
Foothills and Resort in the US) - much of the "big 4"'s popularity was 
actually due to the restrictions that Boston University placed on Foothills:
all the people who used to use FH were forced to go to other talkers, and
this, above all else, sparked Resort's assention.  

Other talkers became more mid-sized, more developed places.  Playground
was designed as one of these.  Another good example of this kind of
talker is Tower, or World.  They tended to cater to smaller, but fiercely
loyal, resident bases, and had more features, and have tended to become
the source of innovation in the talker world.

The other class of talker is micro-talkers.  These tend to be small, and
basic, whether by choice or by lack of maintenance, or simply lack of luck.
They cater to smaller groups, and many of them were founded for little other
reason than "so that so and so can admin, and so and so can be a SU" 

If you're starting a talker just to be a SU/Admin, forget it. There are 
much easier ways to lose your hair.  

To say that any one talker, or even any one code, is better than another, 
is highly subjective.  Each of the large and midsized talkers have unique
characteristics, and unique goals, in their development.  While a large 
talker may have to spend more time trying to streamline code, and optimize
it to the absolute limits, a smaller talker may have the freedom to 
experiment with features that make using a talker easier and friendlier.

Its up to you, as the admins/coders, to make the decision, "do I want to
be a huge megatalker" "do I want to be an innovative, experimentational
chat?" ...

What does the future really hold? Honestly, the days of the EW-too are 
already prematurely numbered, at this point, by the onslaught of the 
World Wide Web.  WWW talkers are growing at a pace much greater than
any other type of chat, and they are more "dummy-proof" -- using a web
chat doesn't require intelligence, using an EW-too talker sometimes does.

But, the death of EW-too is not emminant at this point.  Anyway, its 
dangerous to proclaim a body dead when the heart's still beating: they
have a nasty habit of recovering.

Enjoy, good luck, and may your hair last through the first few weeks...