My practicum assignment is to join a Social MOO. I did not realize how difficult it would be to find a simple MUD game that would be compatible with my computer. I had an idea of what Social MOO I wanted to join so I searched for LamdaMOO on google. Unfortunately, LamdaMOO was far too complicated for me to figure out. I could not even get the MOO downloaded onto my computer. So, I found what I thought would be a simple MUD called BatMUD. To my surprise, I was able to download BatMUD without any problems. After the download was complete, I had to set up an account and create an avatar. I decided to create a non-human avatar so I choose to be a duck. The duck seemed like a pretty cool character to be and according to the BatMUD website, there are not many ducks in the game world. The game has a lot of text to it and members are constantly typing updates on their progress to other members. Sometimes they even tell other members what to do. I felt very overwhelmed by this because I was the newbie and I had no idea what I was doing. I still do not have the hang of the game and sometimes if my avatar is idle, experienced members will tell me that I need to take a tutorial. What I found really helpful in the game was a text box called a "newbie channel" where other newbies post questions and an experienced member will answer. This would have been very helpful for me if I could have figured out how to use the channel. It was not letting me type in the text box so I asked another member for help but all I got for a response was to take a tutorial. I feel that some of the members are so into playing the game that they could care less if another member is struggling. I hope that once I figure out how to play the game I will actually enjoy it and become more involved like the other members are.
Discussion question: Do you consider Social MOO's immersive activities since they are heavily text based?
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