¶ MajorMUD
MajorMUD is a fantasy game played by people all over the world on the WorldGroup and Major BBS platforms. The original "Onscreen" game, MUD stands for "Multi-User Dungeons."
The game takes place in a World or Realm, in which monsters, creatures and other heinous beings abound. Players try to navigate through this world, finding ways to become more powerful and able to do more heroic actions as they go on adventures and quests.
MajorMUD is the most popular of the MUD games, which are continuous text adventure games. MUDs let you to play the same game with different people at the same time.
Unique in the MUD world, MajorMUD has been touted by players and BBS Sysops alike as the best MUD available. The reason? Because the designers have taken special care to create a realm that gives each player an equal footing with their rival players in a world filled with dragons, monsters and thieves.
This unparalleled balance and fairness keeps many players glued to their computer screens, traveling through a world that is neither too hard nor too easy to navigate - even though treachery and intrigue awaits around each corner.
Players especially enjoy MajorMUD because the Realm enlarges with each Module that is released. As the world enlarges, new adventures and quests are introduced, and new powers are granted to player's characters.
Start the game by choosing the character you want to become ... and this is where you get to be creative. You can choose the kind of "being" you want to be (an Elf or Dwarf or Gnome ... there are a number of "Races") and what kind of powers he or she can possess (Warrior, Mage, Witchhunter, etc.). The abilities and traits are unique to each character; consequently, as you grow stronger and gain knowledge, these abilities grow.
Once you have a character, you enter the realm. The text that appears on your screen allows you to choose what you want to do next. MajorMUD is like reading a book, but you get to decide where the character goes next, what he does and whom he talks with.
Don't worry, because there are plenty of helpful people online with you to help you through the game. At first, you may need all the help you can get. But you'll catch on quickly.
You can talk to other players and develop a sense of community, all while playing the game. By talking with the other players, you can decide if you want to become friends and go in a group, or you can join a "guild." Or you might want to remain independent as you go on adventures to fight battles, follow quests and slay dragons.
¶ History
MajorMUD was created by Lance & Cathy "Dog" Neumann, Michael "Cat" Skupa, Craig "Morukai" Young, and Geoffrey "Orfeo" Rosen in the early 1990s. Collectively they were known as West Coast Creations, or WCC. Based in Canada, WCC ran a BBS called Dreamscape Online Entertainment Services (DSOE) that players and potential customers could use to try out their software. It was also one of the few places that players could go to ask questions directly of the designers. Prior to being called DreamScape it was called Nightline BBS, and from playing TeleArena and Lance not able to get reliable updates, Lance, Dog, Cat, and Orfeo decided to make their own game, along with all the users on Nightline for beta testers.
MajorMUD itself was initially offered as a separate game module for the MajorBBS. Despite its significant price tag (nearly $1000 USD for a 256 user version), MajorMUD was noted by Logicom to be one of the most wildly popular packages to MajorBBS sysops. A total of 9 expansion modules, or "mods", were released over a period of several years, each in kind for an additional fee to the system owner.
MajorMUD went into Alpha testing on Nightline BBS on April 16, 1994. Then on June 4 MajorMUD was released to twenty other MajorBBS Systems for Beta testing. MajorMUD was officially released on November 4, 1994.
The game itself was written in C and compiled with Borland C++ as with all modules for Major BBS and Worldgroup.
¶ Sale to Metropolis
On May 25, 1999, WCC sold MajorMUD to Metropolis Gameport, a company based in Kansas. Metropolis promised to continue the work done by WCC in an e-mail that was sent to owners and others on the mailing list maintained by WCC.
On April 10, 2008 Metropolis Gameport shut down and sold all 7 of their Worldgroup BBS Game Servers. As of March, 2011, the future of MajorMUD is still uncertain.
¶ Expansion modules
On November 11, 1996, WCC released their first mod for MajorMUD — Dragon's Teeth Hills. Over the years, a total of 9 content modules were released (WCC released the first 6, while Metropolis released the last 3). These expansion modules added many new monsters, weapons, items, and places to explore to the base MajorMUD install. Module 1 also introduced the Reputation based "Quest Lines" — with quests for "Good", "Neutral", and "Evil" players.
¶ Module List
- Module 1: Dragon's Teeth - Released November 11, 1996
- Module 2: The Cursed Ruins — Released June 21, 1997
- Module 3: Strangers in the Night — Released October 4, 1997
- Module 4: Terror from Below — Released January 2, 1998
- Module 5: The Rising Dawn — Released May 6, 1998
- Module 6: The Sands of Time — Released September 13, 1998
- Module 7: Savage Lands
- Module 8: A Call to Arms!
- Module 9: Prophecy of Plague
- Module 10: For some time the MajorMUD website still listed Module 10 as a future update, but as of 2011 this is not more the case. On March 19, 2007, Metropolis announced that their current programmer had resigned to move on to another company.
¶ MajorMUD Plus — Entertainment Edition
The MajorMUD Plus series is an ongoing line of add-ons that will allow each sysop to customize his game of MajorMUD to set it apart from the competition. In addition to providing fresh new additions to liven up your Realm, the sysop has the option to apply a credit/gold surchage, which gives them the opportunity to recoup the cost of each module within a matter of weeks.
The first module in this line is the Entertainment Edition. This add-on will not change the way the game is played, but its features will add atmosphere and personality to your game and characters, which increases the role-playing aspect of your Realm.
Features include:
- The ability to allow users to edit the description of their character. Are you tired of having the same appearance of every other dwarven cleric in the Realm? Now you can create a detailed description of your character that will set you apart from your fellow adventurers.
- The character registry, which allows the player to create a custom registry for all to see. Now your users can check out the general information and personality traits of each user without them having to be online. The registry entries are sysop customizeable, so you can create your own detailed questionnaires.
- Purchasing of lives. Do you find the game too challenging for some of your users? This feature allows the option of selling lives to your users based on gold or credits. This option can be disabled if you wish.
¶ Races
There are a total of 13 races available to choose from when a player creates a character in MajorMUD. The original release included 11 races, with the Nekojin and Gaunt One added in later modules. Each race has six base stats: strength, agility, intelligence, wisdom, health, and charm. These stats are increased manually as levels are gained through skill points which are accrued as the character levels up. Each race has its own attributes and special racial abilities, such as nightvision, stealth, and increased resistances. Some races are better than others, having higher starting stats and more special abilities. This can come with a cost however, with a sharp increase in the experience modifier. At higher levels a racial modifier on experience can mean hundreds of millions of experience points.
¶ Credits
The majority of the content available here is shamelessly copy/pasted from various sites around the internet in my attempt to organize all this info into a wiki format. In no particular order, I'd like to thank the following people whom I've never met for contributing content and resources for this old dying game we all love so dearly.
¶ Kyau - https://kyau.net/wiki/Category:MajorMUD
Lots of the edits, and Worldgroup / MajorMUD editing information in a nice clean wiki format. Not to mention his hosting of various WG addons/scripts at http[s]
/voidbbs[.]com (linked that way because it triggers AV warnings).
¶ MajorMUD Discord - https://discord.gg/4qYCaJhP
Various WG addons and files/scripts such as the non-sga-client script (who actually wrote this? Doesn't matter, rewrote in python, much better now)