Terra Nova looks back (and forward) at the Diku legacy

by Samuel Axon Aug 30th 2008 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Game mechanics, Warhammer Online, MUDs

EverQuest, World of Warcraft, The Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and many other MMOs all have one important thing in common. Well, okay; they have a lot of things in common -- like about 85% or more of their gameplay mechanics. But the main thing -- indeed, the reason why they have so much in common -- is that they are all descendants of a kind of text MUD game called Diku.

Acknowledging that, virtual worlds blog Terra Nova published a "State of the Diku" article for the year 2008. The article was written by Timothy Burke. It's mostly a dispassionate look at game design -- serious business. Burke starts out questioning the purpose of "vendor trash" drops (or grey items as they're generally known in many popular contemporary MMOs). Then he analyzes the public quests of Warhammer Online, viewing them as a positive variation on traditional Diku design.

If you're into thnking critically about MMO design, it's worth checking out. We take for granted the fact that most of today's MMOs are based on the Diku formula; maybe that means we're clinging to old ideas that don't make a lot of sense in today's world.

Tags: age-of-conan, design, diku, diku-mud, drops, grey, history, items, junk, lord-of-the-rings-online, mud, public-quests, state-of-the-diku, terra-nova, theory, timothy-burke, vendor-trash, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Brian! said on 12:18PM 8-30-2008

Funny, I wonder if Ultima Online would be considered a child of Diku. It is a multiplayer game, so in that sense they are related, but UO only had speech over one's head and you had no ability to far-reaching-talking. So if you wanted to say hello, you walked to the person you wanted to talk to.

That encouraged lots of natural role play and it also encouraged strangers to interact. In some ways, the MUD chat window we are all now used to distances us from the actual players in our area. So many times I see a huge group of people not even acknowledging one another's existence yet they are all probably chatting away in guild/party/etc... chat.

Makes me wonder. Of course Diku you generally go to a zone to talk and although you can whisper across the zones, the players tend to stick to their role play world and follow a lot of conventions we that are throw away in graphical muds (our current MMOS)

Greeen said on 1:06PM 8-30-2008

I found the comment on trash drops interesting. Not sure what is wrong with that - I find it more "natural" if a beast drops anything but money or a weapon. And what can one do with a paw, or some fur?
I always thought it odd, even more the reasoning that a spider probably ate an adventurer carrying money or an axe. Same goes for the foes one battles, they have tons of armor or weapons, yet one can not pick up anything. At least a (trashy) weapon is sort of "realistic". One can't use it? Well, then you sell it if you can, no?

recursive said on 1:17PM 8-30-2008

Most misleading title ever unless it's a series. Comments get closer to the mark, but the rest of it is just a comparison between the drop vs the quest reward. Public quests are a different approach to the latter, but what does this tell us about the state of Diku? Who knows.

Brede Armozel said on 7:07PM 8-30-2008

"Funny, I wonder if Ultima Online would be considered a child of Diku." -- Brian!

Actually, it would be more akin to the LP code base as it lacked the class structure that was hardcoded in Diku. And a few LP drivers actually went classless like Lost Souls (it's quasi-classless as you can learn spells, but guilds offer both social and skill bonuses as well as spell bonuses in a few cases).