2 posts tagged “mmorpg”

I spent the last couple of days (mostly) offline, enjoying a break from the digital world for a while.  The same cannot be said for today, however.

Kelli bought me a copy of World of Warcraft for my 30th birthday.  It's everything they say it is, which means that I got absolutely nothing done after I installed it this morning.  (Unless of course you count getting my Night Elf Rogue up to level 9 as progress.)

Tomorrow doesn't look good, either.

Maybe Saturday.  We'll see.

One of the reasons I enjoy my Dreamhost account so much is that I have unlimited databases and might-as-well-be-unlimited server space.  If I want to install anything on a whim, I probably can.  For the most part I've limited myself to blogs and the occasional wiki, but almost anything that can use a MySQL database is fair game.

So I've been thinking about Second Life a bit.  I've been saying for a while that everything of educational in SL can be done elsewhere for less bandwidth and system resources. so I've decided to try putting my money where my mouth is.

Or rather, my bandwidth where my mouth is.

Now a lot of the social elements in SL can easily be duplicated with forums, chat rooms, blogs, podcasts, video and audio chats, ... you get the idea.  But there's some aspects that aren't covered by those things.

Long story short(er): I'm looking into MUDs and MOOs.  I messed around with those a bit when I was in college, and I know how fun they can be even if you're not that tech-savvy.  (Believe it or not, I was rather naive when it came to hardware and software back then.

A quick search on SourceForge.net found me a lot of free possibilities that may or may not work, we'll see.  I'm posting them here, and I'll come back and edit this list as I rule out (or rule in) various options.

• Ajax RPG - runs as a part of Joomla, which made it very easy to install.  Unfortunately, I can't save my preferences. :(
  
• The Bucket Project
• DotK - The working test server is feature light, but it looks nice.
  
• enCore - looks promising, but I don't know how to run a C compiler to install it on a shared server.
• Heroes RPG - added this too soon, as they have no downloadable files.
• i-Mage
  
• Full Immersion RPG
  
• Key - Can't find any information on how to install it on their site, and search attepts for instructions on how to install a program called "key" ... well, you can guess how those go.
  
• Moop
• PHP MMORPG (Acetone RPG) - No longer under active development, which is a shame shame because I had to modify and rename files (in some cases adding suffixes and changing urls to sites that no longer existed) just to get the registration page to load.
  
• The PHP MMORPG Project - A little clunky, but the most functional engine I've managed to install so far.  I'll have to change the artwork, though ... much of it is copyrighted.
  
• Rakon - Can't open the compressed file (tried changing the suffix, too...), or find much documentation.
• Rpg-web
  
• Vermilion
• Vyger Online RPG
  
• WolfMUD - Can't seem to run.jar files from the command line.  Most people would never need to do that, but it seems I would have to if I wanted to install this.
  

Anyone else have suggestions for free, web-based MOOs or MUDs?