SlothMUD

SlothMUD III is a DIKU based Role-playing_game with heavy code modifications. It was founded in January 1992 by a handful of college students, then changed to SlothMUD II when it changed hands from the original band of creators to the current owner, Jake. It then went through a slew of changes throughout the world and simultaneously adopted an informal set of quality standards for area creation. Thus was born SlothMUD III. Since 1995, as a group of newer administrators has reinvigorated the development of the game, the playerbase has expanded from its American origins to encompass people from Russia, Singapore, Australia, Canada, and points beyond. Several of the immortal and administrative staff hail from England and Spain. One of the creators, Frobisher, is also the writer of the MUD client Wintin 95, as well as its successor, Wintin.net.  Skills and spells are added to the game on a regular but unscheduled basis, as ideas occur to the coders. New immortals are brought into the ranks periodically, when newer players have the interest and the ability to write areas. Eventually some of these newer immortals work their way through the ranks to become administrators, and like in any society, sometimes people leave.  Past immortals and administrators remembered with fondness by the players of SlothMUD include Vom, Geddy, Nia, Ming, Wilde, Tony, Tower, Alana, Kalmak, Spoof, Zarc, Jaendal and Ratkiller. Although the staff of the mud does not normally recognize the contributions of immortals who retired or disappeared before achieving level 42 (and thus having written all the rooms for at least one area), special consideration is given to Roland, AKA Zera, for the dedication he gave to building and maintaining the website for several years before becoming an immortal.  The current website is maintained by Clink, one of the active administrators and coders. A section of the site known as the EqList was written over a period of months by Enea, another of the active administrators and part-time coder. The EqList is also integrally linked to the the Maproom.  A few important changes in SlothMUD's recent history: In 2003 and 2004, Tower spent an enormous chunk of time converting the character selection from one in which the players simply selected the order in which four classes would be played, to one in which the player could select any four of a list of eight classes, and the order in which they are played. The original class list included mage, cleric, warrior, and thief (the original Dungeons & Dragons classes). The new list also includes druid, bard, necromancer and monk. Although the new classes share names with D&D classes, SlothMUD's interpretation is unique. In 2005 and 2006, with the advent of MXP (computing) and MCCP, Splork decided to integrate their functionality into the MUD. This has led to decreased lagtime as bandwidth has been reduced, and to the ability to hyperlink directly from the MUD's internals. Isabo helped greatly with the implentation of this code.</LI> </UL>