Dart MUD - History and Ancestry

History and Ancestry

  • 1991: DartMUD is started on a Motorola 68030-based NeXT computer owned by a Dartmouth College graduate student, hence the name.
  • 1994: Due to the original site host's departure from Dartmouth, DartMUD moves to an Intel-architecture Linux system hosted at a commercial ISP, Hawaii On Line. The change from a college-based project run by volunteers to a commercially-promoted service with a part-time overseer resulted in significant staff turnover. At the same time, Hawaii On Line's promotion drew a large number of Hawaiian residents as new players. Several architecture-specific optimizations in the LPMud driver and DartMUD mudlib had to be removed or re-coded, and DartMUD has been running on commodity Intel Architecture systems ever since.
  • 1995: When Hawaii On Line stopped funding its local games, DartMUD moved to the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
  • 1996: When the Rose-Hulman staff member hosting DartMUD left the Institute, DartMUD moved to a UCLA graduate student's office. At this point Accursed Lands was created by five DartMUD creators and one long-term player, and initially shared the same server. Accursed Lands was informally referred to initially as "DartMUD II" during its development phase, but creative differences led to the dissolution of the initial Accursed Lands startup team, and development continues to this day on both DartMUD and Accursed Lands.
  • 1997: DartMUD moved to another company where a staff member worked.
  • 2003: DartMUD moved to the home broadband of another staff member.

DartMUD is maintained by donations from staff and players alike — since 2004, more than half of operating expenses have been covered by player contributions using PayPal. Unlike many other MUDs which encourage player donations, DartMUD never has conveyed any in-game reward or recognition to players who donate.

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