May 2003
Beginner
648 pages
16h 39m
English
A game, as we defined it earlier, is a contest with rules and a winner. However, a good many online “games” are not really games at all. Asheron's Call, EverQuest, Anarchy Online, and so on are actually persistent worlds: permanent environments that players can play in, retaining the state of their avatar from one session to another. Persistent worlds have a number of special problems and design requirements, which we discuss here.
Persistent worlds have been around for much longer than the graphical MMORPGs that are so popular right now. Since 1978, a small but dedicated community of developers has been building, playing, and studying text-based persistent worlds called MUDs (multi-user ...
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