You are a hobbit. You are four feet tall, you have hairy feet with no shoes and your idea of a good time is contemplating when you are going to eat next. No, this is not a dream. No, you did not see “Fellowship of the Rings” one too many times. You are a character on Elendor, a text based Internet role-playing game set in the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Elendor is a MUSH, or a Multi-user Shared Hallucination. It is the largest and oldest Tolkien-themed MUSH in existence.
And it is free — it subsists on donations, and the people who maintain the game are all volunteers.
Founded in 1991, Elendor runs on a machine located at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz. The game will soon move to another machine at the same location, with hardware that is completely player-donated.
When you connect to the game, you see a textual description of your surroundings, directions you can travel and the objects or other players nearby. What you do next is up to you.
Part writer, part adventurer, you interact with other characters, behaving however you believe the persona you create would act.
You can be an elven archer, a mining dwarf or even a warlike orc – all of the races depicted in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy are available to play.
“We’ve tried very hard to create an environment that is feature-rich, easy to use and captures the magic and majesty of Tolkien’s universe,” said Edward Malinowski, one of the original founders of Elendor.
When he is not helping to keep Elendor in working order, Malinowski, 27, is an information security professional who lives in Chicago.
The hard work Malinowski and the rest of the staff puts into creating the game apparently pays off. Elendor won awards for best overall game, best fantasy game and best combat system at this year’s awards for the community.
At any given moment, there are over 100 players connected to Elendor, but the player database is far larger. Elendor has maintained a consistent 2,500 to 3,000 active players over the past few years, said Malinowski, who cites the loyalty of the fans as the key to their success.
“Our players connect once, and keep coming back … Elendor becomes as much a part of their lives as they become a part of Elendor’s. Over time, they invite others, and our family expands thanks to that word-of-mouth,” said Malinowski.
The scope of the created world is astounding considering it is textual. With over 5000 locations, it would be difficult for one player to ever visit them all. Elendor boasts languages, weather systems, seasons, distinct times of day and even lighting, not to mention a functional economy with commodities and “money.”
Elendor, since it is on the Internet, reaches people all over the world.
Maurits Pruysen, a player on Elendor from the Netherlands, said that he had participated in role-playing games on Internet message boards before a friend introduced him to MUSHing.
“It is more direct than a message board,” said Pruysen. “It feels like true role-playing. This is a world on its own and offers creative minds to interact with.”
As an added benefit, Pruysen also said that MUSHing has improved his use of the English language.
In spite of its large following, Elendor is a small part of a larger Internet culture. In addition to MUSHes, there are a number of other similar games online. To name a few, there are MUDs, commonly known as Multi-user Dungeons, and MUX, short for Multi-user Experience.
A MUD is a more combat-oriented “hack-and-slash” game where a player kills enemies to accumulate experience points. A MUX goes a step further and attempts to enhance the combat with an interesting virtual world. The MUSH is the fulfillment of the complete role-playing concept. Combat is not the main priority. Instead, a player concentrates on character development.
MUSHes, MUDs, the MUX and all similar games are referred to as MU*, pronounced “m-you.” The Mud Connector, a popular MU* resource on the Internet, currently has 1698 games listed.
The themes are as broad as the number of games, ranging from “Star Wars” to “Star Trek,” “X-Men” to “X-Files.” If “Pokémon” or “Transformers” are your thing, there are even places for that. There are games that concentrate strictly on killing other human players, as well as sexually-oriented adult-themed games.
Whatever the theme, a MU* is a way to escape the trappings of daily life and become someone else, if only for a little while. For some, it is easy to be swept away by this — the game world becomes dominant over RL, or “real life” in MU* terms.
“For some people, this can become a problem. Grades can slip, real life relationships can suffer, simple things like proper food and rest can be forgotten,” said Malinowski. “Like everything else, it must be taken in moderation. Because of the temptation to exist in a world where you have ‘total control,’ or can be ‘whomever you want,’ MU*s are an extremely potent distraction; they become an obsession when they’re given priority over real life.”
As an adminstrator in control of the game, the dangers increase, said Malinowkski.
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s a fine line they have to walk, and not one which everyone can handle,” said Malinowski.
But for most, role-playing online is just an entertaining diversion.
“The fun is in setting up a character and guiding him through his life and his world, which can make him quite different from the person you are in real life,” said Pruysen.
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