You clicked that link because you know MOO, or because you don’t and are curious what it could mean, or because you’re just being thorough in your browsing. So like MOOs themselves, this might interest you or it could bore you senseless.
MOO is an acronym for “MUD, Object-Oriented”. What it means is something else.
In the Beginning, there was Adventure, a text-based treasure-hunting, kill-the-monsters game with a two-word parser. Go North. Look Book. And so on. Infocom made its name selling like games, such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. But we’ll get to Hitchhiker in a moment. A MUD (or “Multi-User Dungeon”) is a direct descendant, albeit once or twice removed, of Adventure.
A MOO is a more social animal, in the main, where chatting or roleplaying is the norm.
RPG stands for “Role Playing Game”. So what’s the diff? A MUD is invariably an RPG environment, as are its close kin, MUSHes and MUCKes (don’t ask me what those stand for, I haven’t a clue). These environments are built to encourage galactic and fantastic battles.
On MOO, RPG is a choice. Some MOOs are designated RPG, or have an enclosed area that’s so designated, and there’s usually room allowed for ad hoc roleplaying. More commonly, however, a MOO is a labyrinth of social interaction: places to walk, people to meet.
Taking a step back, a MOO consists of a collection of players, rooms, and things. A brand-new MOO has one player and a bunch of things, and optionally one room and a bunch more things. Keep in mind the Adventure parentage: You “go north” or “look book” and text appears, describing what you’ve walked into or are scrutinzing. In MOO, the players control where you walk and what you see by building onto what’s there in the beginning.
More later...
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