After reading this I wonder if ifMud has survived 29 years because we use a modified perlMud that has an IRC-like channel communication system.
We’re not beholden to any commercial service and the mud is self-hosted by the community (generally the IFTF - IF Technology Foundation).
No one could disrupt our community the way Discord or Reddit might.
many muds have/had those. there is intermud too. i guess ifmud just had the critical mass to keep people interested in communicating even though they stopped playing.
Chatting in the "Lounge" was always the starting point. The mud-building was what a few people did for kicks. ifMUD never had any systemic game play. The IF community has always had a strong core of people that interact daily. Some are on intfiction.org, some are elsewhere.
First time hearing about ifMud despite being someone who spent a lot of time on MUDs and MUSHs in the past, hacking on various ones. Seems like a neat community and would love to hear more about it.
Head on over to http://ifmud.port4000.com/.
Create a user, login, find the Adventurer's Lounge and hang out. We don't actually build or play in the mud anymore. We use the channel system to talk about "stuff and things" and really not a ton about IF anymore. A lot of politics these days.
The most recent discussions were on:
#sci/med/health/health #alt/conspiracy #misc/politics/gayrights #alt/animals/chickens #misc/cars #misc/AI #tech/.../programming