@elrainia@lemmy.world describes working on internet infrastructure back in the 1990s. This was on one of those "drive by" AskLemmys where a new user posts a juicy question, then after a couple hours they delete the topic and their account. However, those posts and comments are still visible in Piefed, ex: https://piefed.social/post/1733969#comment_9969293
So if I understand correctly, Shades was inspired by MUD1, but not actually an MMO by definition, i.e. "Massively Multiplayer Online."
It was definitely not a MMO! It was a bit of a joke comment (British humour - sorry). I’d be amazed if it had anything more than 100 consecutive players (that’s a complete guess).
I had no idea of it’s MUD heritage then and it’s only today that the comments above have really made me join those dots up.
Yep. I’m pretty sure the networking and computing tech required for a true MMO didn’t exist until ~1995, and pretty much as soon as it did we got Ultima Online and then EQ.