Imagine if Zork had other players running around in it with you, and that is essentially what a MUD is.
Even larger MUDs are often small and tight-knit compared to the huge graphical MMOs around today. So most of the weird stuff that happens seems to involve either interpersonal drama, glitches in programming, or both. But sometimes itās the āsmallā nature of the games that generates weird situations. If you join a MUD not long after it opens, everything is a āfirst.ā And firsts make you famous.
I was an early player in a large MUD, and happened to be the āfirstā player to commit high treason against a city. This resulted in the following series of events:
An immediate lifetime ban from entering the city (automated systems would kill me if I tried).
Thrown out of my guild.
Banned from every guild in the game except for one, which had to take everyone. I stubbornly refused to join it for months, during which time I literally had no fighting skill except ākick.ā
I was recruited as being essentially second-in-command in a major in-game mafia.
I played for over a year, and during that time, a ton of people committed treason. Since it became commonplace, most people would be banned from a city or guild for a few RL days, a few weeks at worst, and then let back in.
But nobody would unban me from my original city until well over a RL year had passed.
The crazy part was what the specific act of treason was that earned me this game-wide notoriety. All I did was read a confidential log entry to another player about why he had been banned, which was, āNeed I state the reasons?ā
Those five words took me from being a complete nobody newb to being a notorious criminal =D