Practicum - Brandy Cummings

I find myself getting more interested in learning the history of BatMUD and MUDs in general rather than playing the game itself! So before I resumed the game I decided to do some more research on BatMUD. I learned that BatMUD has been around for twenty years! In fact, BatMUD just had its twenty year anniversay this past March. However, the online game version of it has only been in existence since April 14, 1990. 150,000 players have played BatMUD over the past 21 years. At first I thought that number was shocking and outrageous. 150,000 is a lot of people. This is over a 21 year period though, not just over 1 year. So, I would say that it is a decent amount of people but not an outrageous amount as I first thought it was. I also realized that BatMUD online came into existence during the beginning stages of the World Wide Web. Since most people did not know much about the internet at the time, a lot of people probably did not know what a MUD was or even how to play one. I still haven't gotten the hang of BatMUD so I cannot imagine how confused people must have been back then. I also learned that BatMUD managed to stay popular when MMOs came out. Unfortunately, I feel that MMOs have overshadowed MUDs and are the new online multiplayer game to play these days. Now I am going to talk about my progress in the game. Like I have said many times before, I always read what the newbies have been chatting about in the newbie channel. I was even able to answer one of the newbies questions and help strategize. So am I still a newbie? Even though I have been playing the game for quite some time now I still consider myself a newbie because I definitely do not know all the text commands like the experienced members do. In fact, I still have to ask questions in the newbie channel. I feel comfortable asking questions now because I am able to answer questions as well. I think the experienced members get annoyed when a newbie just constantly asks questions without nothing to offer in return. I found that out the hard way when I first started playing BatMUD.. nobody answered my questions! I have not moved to a different location since my last blog post. I did, however, unlock more magical spells. Unfortunately, I still do not know how to use the spells on other characters in the game. Maybe that will be my next question I ask in the newbie channel.