In online gaming, what is the term for a multi-user real-time virtual world described in text that combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat that were the forerunners of modern games like World of Warcraft, and social virtual worlds such as Second Life?
Virtual world Dimension and Multi-User Domain. A MUD is a virtual world with many players interacting in real time. The early versions were text-based, offering only limited graphical representation and often using a Command Line Interface. Users interact in role-playing or competitive games by typing commands and can read or view descriptions of the world and other players. Such early worlds began the MUD heritage that eventually led to massively multiplayer online role-playing games, more commonly known as MMORPGs, a genre of role-playing games in which a large number of players interact within a virtual world. Some prototype virtual worlds were "WorldsAway",
Virtual world do require that the world be persistent; in other words, the world must continue to exist even after a user exits the world, and user-made changes to the world should be preserved. While the interaction with other participants is done in real-time, time consistency is not always maintained in online virtual worlds. For example, "EverQuest" time passes faster than real-time despite using the same calendar and time units to present game time. As "virtual world" is a general term, the virtual environment supports varying degrees of play and gaming. Some uses of the term include A virtual economy is the