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| A.V.A.T.A.R. MUD | |
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 One of AVATAR's login screens | |
| Developer(s) | Volunteer staff and community |
| Engine | Heavily modified Merc 2.2 |
| Platform(s) | Platform independent |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | hack and slash, role-playing, interactive fiction, social gaming |
| Mode(s) | single-player/multiplayer |
A.V.A.T.A.R. MUD is a free, online, massively multiplayer, fantasy, text-based role-playing game[1] (or MUD), set in a real-time virtual environment. It combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games, adventure games and social gaming.[2]
It began as an LPMUD called Farside MUD[3] at Newcastle University, in the summer of 1991, before ultimately relocating to the United States.[4] It suffered catastrophic loss of data in August 1994,[5] which led to a switch to the Merc code base. On 8 August 1995, its name was changed to A.V.A.T.A.R. MUD.[6]
Over two decades, the game's environment has grown into a fictional world spanning 327 areas[7] across 20 planes, comprising 20,000 unique rooms with gameplay and features that significantly deviate from the original Merc codebase.
- ^ Epperson, Kraettli L. (10 December 1994). Patterns of Social Behavior in Computer-Mediated Communications. Rice University Sociology Department.
The idea of role-playing is that one can become, temporarily at least, what one is not, and the Farside MUD designers created a world in which anyone could become anything they desired, while logged-in.
- ^ http://www.oocities.org/rpgsig/articles/ar43mk01.html Re:Quests!, issue No. 43, November 1997, pp. 28–29; Mary H Kelly, editor. Updated 11/12/99 by MHK.
- ^ Ito, Mizuko. Cybernetic Fantasies: Extended Selfhood in a Virtual Community.
Farside was established in the summer of 1991 by three PhD students at Newcastle University on their free time. Since then, it has been moved to Swansea University.
- ^ Ito, Mizuko (3 December 1994). Cybernetic Fantasies: Extensions of Selfhood in a Multi-User Dungeon.
When I first started playing Farside, the primary mud that I have been studying, it resided on a machine at an English university, where it had been set up by some computer science doctoral students in their free time. Since then, it has changed sites to a couple of different machines in the US.
- ^ http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/papers/cyberfantasies.html Ito "In August, the machine that Farside was living in experienced a system failure, and all player files and interface elements were lost." Mizuko Ito, Stanford University, 3/December/1994 "Cybernetic Fantasies: Extensions of Selfhood in a Multi-User Dungeon"
- ^ http://www.outland.org/infusions/adv_articles/adv_articles.php?art_id=96 10 August 1995 Gazette article confirming the continuity of player characters and areas despite the name change.
- ^ Various. "List of areas on Avatar MUD". Retrieved 12 February 2014.