MUD1 (referred to as MUD1, to distinguish from its successor, MUD2) is the oldest virtual world in existence. It was created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw at Essex University on a DEC PDP-10 in the UK, using the MACRO-10 assembly language. He named the game Multi-User Dungeon, in tribute to the Dungeon variant of Zork, which Trubshaw had greatly enjoyed playing.[1][2] Zork in turn was inspired by an older text-adventure game known as Colossal Cave Adventure or ADVENT.[3]
The article is pretty bad. :-(
In multiple ways.
Johnny
On 20/03/2026 18.52, Paul Koning via groups.io wrote:
Oh. The article gave the meaning of MUD as "multi-user game", I missedthe mismatch.
Multi-user dungeon games were among the most popular multi-user games on PLATO at least as far back as 1976 and probably earlier. They still are, in fact.
paul
On Mar 20, 2026, at 1:42 PM, Johnny Billquist via groups.io <bqt=softjar.se@groups.io> wrote:
Well, to be nit-picky - MUD = Multi User Dungeon. :-)
For sure it was nowhere near the first multi-user game in general. Notsure I head of any earlier MUDs though...
Johnny
On 20/03/2026 18.38, Paul Koning via groups.io wrote:
On Mar 20, 2026, at 1:16 PM, Jon Morgan via groups.io <jmorgan6=gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:Interesting. I see "wrote the first online multi-user game (MUD) on Essex University's DECSystem-10 in 1978".
(Apologies for the cross-posting.)
I very good friend of mine has been doing some digital archaeology.
https://infosec.exchange/@lorry/116257448642523972
I think a lot of folks here would like what he’s done.
-jon.
That can be parsed several ways. I assume it means "first on a DEC-10". It certainly isn't the first MUD; there were probably a dozen different ones before then on the PLATO system. In 1976 I remember airfight (multiuser flight / air combat simulator), empire (multiuser SF game in a Star Trek theme universe), spasim (SF game with 3d graphics), at least oneand possibly several DND games, and I'm sure there were several more I never knew or forgot about. And all those were graphical games, not just text.
paul