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MUD

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I'd like to move this article toward GA status, and am requesting peer review with an eye toward that goal. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:25, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Interesting subject. I plan to do a full review of the article, but, for now, here's what I thought of the lead:
  • "Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language." -- Confusing. I recommend simplifying it down to "Players typically interact with each other and the world through a text user interface," or somesuch. I understand the sentence's goal, but, to me, it seems obvious enough that players do not interact with each other using Python or some other coding language. I don't think that the average reader would assume that, either.
  • "Traditional MUDs implement a computer role-playing game set in a fantasy world populated by fictional races and monsters, with players being able to choose from a number of classes in order to gain specific skills or powers." -- "Traditional MUDs are computer role-playing games, set in fantasy worlds inhabited by fictional races and monsters. Players are able to choose from a number of classes with specific skills or powers."
  • "Many MUDs were fashioned around the dice-rolling rules of the Dungeons & Dragons series of games.
  • Such fantasy settings for MUDs are common, while many others have science fiction settings or are based on popular books, movies, animations, history, and so on." -- I recommend removing the line break, and editing the second sentence; instead, make it read, "Many MUDs were fashioned around the dice-rolling rules of the Dungeons & Dragons series of games. However, numerous other MUDs feature science fiction settings, or those based on popular books, films, animations, history, and so on." Something like that. It allows the next paragraph to change subjects more clearly.
  • References in the lead are generally discouraged.
  • "Most MUDs are run as hobbies and are free to players; some may accept donations or allow players to purchase virtual items, while others charge a monthly subscription fee." -- "Most MUDs are run as hobbies and are free to players, but some may accept donations, allow players to purchase virtual items, or charge a monthly subscription fee."
  • Fourth paragraph is a little stubby. Perhaps it could be merged into another one?
  • "Indeed, before the invention of the term MMORPG, games of this style were simply called graphical MUDs." -- "Indeed" is a fine word to use in a thesis, scholarly work or other such writing, but it doesn't mesh well with Wikipedia—it makes the article sound like someone is making a point. Cutting it, but leaving the rest of the sentence intact, should do no harm.
  • Beyond those issues, it seems solid thus far. My knowledge of MUDs is just about nil, so I should be a good test case for the article's understandability by the general public. I'll give the article further inspection in the coming days. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 04:14, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, I'm back. I will now look over the Origins section:
  • The relevance of the subject matter needs to be described in the first paragraph, or even in the first sentence. To the average reader, the sudden topic change to the history of text-based adventure games will be a non sequitur. Something that indicates that MUDs originated with Colossal Cave should be added to that first paragraph.
  • I recommend removing the line break between the first two paragraphs. They're pretty stubby, and could be put together without any problem.
  • "The game revolved around gaining points till one achieved the wizard rank, giving the player immortality and certain powers over mortals." - I can't really grasp the meaning here. I recommend clarifying this sentence for the uninitiated.
  • "The game became more widely accessible when a guest account was set up that allowed users on JANET (a British academic X.25 computer network) to connect on weekends and between the hours of 2 AM and 8 AM on weekdays." - Again, I don't really understand, and I recommend clarifying this sentence.
  • "A scandal on SHADES led to the closure of Micronet, as described in Indra Sinha's net-memoir, The Cybergypsies." - Recommend specifying a least something about this scandal. Without any knowledge beyond this sentence of the referenced events, it doesn't seem like relevant information. I assume that it is relevant, however, so I again recommend specification.
  • The stubby paragraphs need to be merged. I'll leave it up to you how best to do this, given the chronology.
  • "In 1985 CompuNet started a project named Multi-User Galaxy Game as a Science Fiction alternative to MUD1 which ran on their system at the time." - "In 1985, CompuNet started a project named Multi-User Galaxy Game as a science fiction alternative to MUD1, which ran on their system at the time".
  • The paragraph beginning, "In 1978, around the same time Roy Trubshaw...", should be moved up to sit beneath the paragraph ending, "MIST ran until the machine that hosted it, a PDP-10...".
  • In addition, merge the paragraph beginning, "In 1984, Mark Peterson wrote The Realm of Angmar...", into the the one beginning, "In 1978, around the same time Roy Trubshaw...".
  • If you want GA status, you're going to have to deal with the citation needed tag. Either remove the information, or find a proper citation.
  • America Online or AOL; not both. Needs to be standardized.
  • The paragraph beginning, "In the summer of 1980 University of Virginia classmates John Taylor...", needs to be moved up for chronological coherency.
  • The final paragraph also needs to be moved up, again for chronological coherency.
  • That's all for today. In a day or two, I'll return and analyze the next section. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 23:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm really enthused about your work on this. I've had a brain-frying couple of days and haven't had the spare CPU to start incorporating your feedback yet, but I can tell already it's going to be invaluable. Thanks bunches! —chaos5023 (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    No problem at all. By the way, there's something I thought to mention after I posted my second review. I don't know if you're aware of this, but there is a standardized structure for video game genre articles; it may be seen in first-person shooter, stealth game, survival horror and many other game genre GAs. Obviously, not all articles must conform to this, but I thought you might want to examine these for ideas on article structure and formatting. As an example, "Origins" could be renamed "History", with "Origin" and "Spread" as subcategories. "Style" could become "Game design". Obviously, you shouldn't limit the range of the article's content based on preconceived structures. However, you should also consider that—as part of the "Video game genres" topic, as seen in the template at the bottom of the article—readers will be very likely to examine more than one genre-related article in one reading. There's no need to confuse them with widely varying formatting and/or structure. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 00:49, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, yeah, good thought. I've been less than satisfied with the article structure for a while now, and drawing from an established model looks like a good way forward. ——chaos5023 (talk) 20:21, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I apologize for my recent lack of updates; I'll get back to reviewing it tomorrow. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 02:53, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Back again. This time, I'll be covering Spread:
  • Rather than a list of games, I suggest that this be converted into continuous prose, similar to what you did in Origins. Rework it to be in chronological order; for example, the Simutronics stuff would come first. Also, it'd probably be for the best if you cut down as much as possible on stuff like the following:
  • "UberMUD, UnterMUD, and MOO were inspired by TinyMUD but are not direct descendants." - It's just too much for the standard reader to understand.
  • Finally, I recommend moving "Graphical MUD" up to this proposed rewrite of "Spread"—in the future, probably called "History". It seems to have more historical value than it does game design value. All of this is going to be a lot of work, but the article will be much better for it.
  • Now, since I went through Spread so quickly, I'll also cover Style:
  • The MOS has a rule in it, somewhere, that you shouldn't reuse the name of the article in a subsection. In this case, stuff like "Hack and Slash MUDs" should be changed to "Hack and Slash".
  • There's a lot of unsourced information in here. Stuff like, "Perhaps the most common approach to game design in MUDs is to loosely emulate the structure of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign focused more on fighting and advancement than role-playing," comes off as WP:OR without citations.
  • Also, as with Origins, I believe this section would benefit from being converted into prose. For a model, use something like Beat 'em up, 4X or one of the other genre articles I mentioned before. It'll be a ton of work, but a clearer, broader definition of MUD gameplay would greatly improve the article.
  • Even if you choose to keep the listing, however, you should remove the bold genre titles from the prose. That's generally used only to announce the title of an article; it's distracting to readers when placed throughout the article.

I'll get to the final sections of the article in the next day or two. I'm a bit busy with other Wikipedia projects at the moment, but I'll have this review done soon. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Psychology and engagement is interesting, but it could use some beefing up. Surely, there's more from those sources to include?
  • Grammatical usage and derived terms should be axed completely. The first part of it belongs more on Wiktionary than here, and the rest is more-or-less original research.
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