While I haven't played on LambdaMOO specifically, I have played a number of it's descendants. When I discovered them, it gave me the sense of discovering an entirely different world. And while I...
While I haven't played on LambdaMOO specifically, I have played a number of it's descendants. When I discovered them, it gave me the sense of discovering an entirely different world. And while I can say that, as a young person, I could also get that feeling from films and video games, the experience you get from playing in one of these MOOs/MUSH/MUCKs is on a completely different level. When you experience a film or a video game, you are set in place by the rules of the people who designed them. But in MU*s, the sky is the limit. You don't even have to obey physics. There is no Cartesian plane; rooms can exit to literally anywhere.
As a result, it was very common for the more established systems to have their own unique games within them with their own rules and goals. Some of them would become 'official' features, others would just be fun diversions. And with so many people building the world, they would often grow to become very vast, but most of the world would be abandoned.
With that being said, the thing that makes them so fun and addicting is the people you experience it with. While there are always rules about consent, most of the players I have come across tend to have very accepting and open attitudes. I credit my experience playing them to being able to admit to myself that I was gay. That's also why most of the world tends to be abandoned; you want to spend your time with people, so most people gather around set meeting spots. Often it's in some sort of center-point, usually the point where new characters first get placed or somewhere nearby.
While I haven't played on LambdaMOO specifically, I have played a number of it's descendants. When I discovered them, it gave me the sense of discovering an entirely different world. And while I can say that, as a young person, I could also get that feeling from films and video games, the experience you get from playing in one of these MOOs/MUSH/MUCKs is on a completely different level. When you experience a film or a video game, you are set in place by the rules of the people who designed them. But in MU*s, the sky is the limit. You don't even have to obey physics. There is no Cartesian plane; rooms can exit to literally anywhere.
As a result, it was very common for the more established systems to have their own unique games within them with their own rules and goals. Some of them would become 'official' features, others would just be fun diversions. And with so many people building the world, they would often grow to become very vast, but most of the world would be abandoned.
With that being said, the thing that makes them so fun and addicting is the people you experience it with. While there are always rules about consent, most of the players I have come across tend to have very accepting and open attitudes. I credit my experience playing them to being able to admit to myself that I was gay. That's also why most of the world tends to be abandoned; you want to spend your time with people, so most people gather around set meeting spots. Often it's in some sort of center-point, usually the point where new characters first get placed or somewhere nearby.