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The first time I had ever heard of
LambdaMOO,
a friend of mine showed it to me on her computer. Apparently
she had been spending 4 to 5 hours a day on the Moo
if not more, for months.
LambdaMOO
can, perhaps, be compared to a
chat room but that would be
like saying the Sistine Chapel is a chapel. The
Moo, which is a text-based virtual community, has literally thousands of
members from all over the world and thousands of rooms created
by these members. You can navigate endlessly from room to
room, walking north,
south, and so on, snooping around and meeting people to interact with.
Some rooms are
indoor rooms, like a living room, a deck, or even a
helicopter that can fly. Some rooms
are outdoor rooms, like a beach or a hot tub, all depending on
how they are described. Okay, bear with me for a
sec...
Now like I said, LambdaMOO is a text-only
world so you wont find any elaborate graphical avatars or
3-dimensional space warriors. That's what your Xbox is
for. Instead you're following along with things as fast as
you can read. The Moo can really suck you in, and before you know it, as you drift
around from room to
room and building relationships, you begin to
visualize all the things
around you, like being immersed in a really good book.
You use an program similar to a command prompt called
Telnet
to connect to the Moo. Basically it's just a separate text
window that opens up; it's not in your Internet browser. Your computer most likely has
a Telnet application but
some users prefer an enhanced version.
Then you Telnet to
telnet://lambda.moo.mud.org:8888/.
You can try
the Lambda
button at the top of this page to see if all goes well. If so, a window
should open and you'll
be on your way.
The first time you enter the Moo, you start as a
guest character, but when you get the hang of it you can create
a permanent one; a persona of your choosing who has a name, a
physical description, and who can be seen by all whom meet you.
This is where your imagination kicks in. Be yourself |
or be whatever you've always wanted to be and that's how they'll
see you. As you move around from room to room you're given
a description of the room and a list of contents (including the
people).
You
can
look at each person
to get a more detailed description of them. They, in turn, see a
message stating that you just checked them out. This
really begins to cultivate the real world feeling. You can talk to
people and your words are shown to them in quotes, like spoken
words in a book. (Bob says, "Hey, how's it going?")
Despite being able to describe yourself as whatever you want,
you soon learn that this is one of the few places where your
description has very little bearing on how people see you. Get
ready to be able to hold a conversation! On top of everything else, you
can also emote, or communicate with body
language. You use gestures like a smile or a nod of the head.
(Sue smiles at you warmly).
In time you'll learn to create your own rooms
and other interactive objects,
which are limited only by your imagination (and your building
quota).
You'll find
many people to meet up with and build cyber-friendships with
(parental warning and all), and some even use the Moo
for pretty complex RPG's (role-playing games). Like the
real world, you take the good with the bad. There's an infamous story
about the misgivings of the Moo,
A Rape
in Cyberspace (1993) by
Julian Dibbell,
and there have apparently been many marriages sprung.
Whatever the Moo
brings you, don't say I didn't warn you about it's addictive
qualities. Get ready for many- many hours of your life
consumed by it. But don't forget, the real world is
almost as real.
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Felis~Rex
is a citizen of LambdaMOO, but in the real world
is Rob
Richards, a writer and an IT Change
Management Specialist & Educator in Washington
DC.
MOO Statistics:
Status: Programmer/108/34%Fogy/PCP
Parent: Psychotic Class of Players
Seniority: 1061/3167, (34%)
MOO-age: - months. (Member since 1995 January 28) |
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