Talk:Multi-User Dungeon

Link to Zork?

Some sources would have MUD1 inspired by Zork, and the historical context in 1978 would seem to suggest this. But actual accounts by Richard Bartle say MUD was developed separately, or at least without the involved people having played Zork. Given the networking conditions around 1978-79, it seems likely few UK people would have access to ARPANET in those days. Apparently the MUD programmers sent an email to the Zork mailing list in 1980 to invite players to try their game, so at that point the two communities have been aware of each other. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 16:14, 10 January 2019 (CET)

I'm pretty sure that only UCL had ARPANET access in '78-'79; consulting a 1979 HOSTS.TXT it shows:

HOST LONDON, 0/42,SERVER,OS-MVT,370,[UKICS-370]

HOST LONDON-GATEWAY, 3/42,USER,ELF,PDP11,[SATNET,LON-SAT-GATE]

HOST LONDON-TIP, 2/42,USER,TIP,H316

HOST LONDON-VDH, 1/42,SERVER,GATEWAY,PDP9,[LON-EPS-GATE]

and was some early Internet work there in the same time period (see the SATNET gateway machine, above), but I don't think people at other UK institutions would have had access via that - although see the 'EPS-Gate' machine; IIRC, EPS was an early experimental packet-switching network in the UK. Jnc (talk) 17:31, 10 January 2019 (CET)