Avalon, the Legend Lives
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Avalon, the Legend Lives, was the first fully commercial MUD in existence.
History
Started in 1989, the original version of Avalon was written in assembler for a ZX81. The code was just barely able to fit (8KB). Its popularity extended throughout England while it was hosted in dedicated server rooms in London and Sheffield and available to play through modem connections. Called 'host play', a server room would typically contain ten to twenty dumb terminals connected to a main computer which ran the Avalon code. During this period of rising popularity, the creator migrated the code to his own programming language, Hourglass, and rapidly expanded the code as far as storage technology would permit. It has not stopped growing since 1989 and it is still active to this day.
Today
To give an impression of the sheer size of Avalon, there have been 1,113,797 words of pure text written for the game, which is roughly equivalent to 11 full-length novels, in addition to 350,659 lines of pure code. With over 5000 rooms, thousands of unique abilities and a consistent, realistic atmosphere, the game shows its age.
So many unexpected additions over the years resulted in a desire to return to the original game design. In 1999, the tenth anniversary of Avalon, the creator decided to make a splinter game which would be, essentially, the realm as it was in 1992. This new game was called 'Avalon, the First Age'.
External links
- Avalon, the Legend Lives (http://www.avalon-rpg.com/)
- Avalon, the First Age (http://www.firstage.net/)