I wish MUDs were featured more prominently in online gaming history. They basically defined my childhood, and I learned how to code by writing vendor bots on a MUD. Dealing with edge cases (customers trying to buy invisible items without being able to see invisible!) and people trying to scam my bots taught me some valuable programming lessons that stick with me to this day.
Everyone forgets about MUDs. God I put so many hours into them, even was a coder on one for a little while before college and other things got in the way.
I can tell you that most of us who coded Meridian 59 knew what MUDs were =)
In retrospect, there were a lot of things that Meridian wanted to claim we were first at, but there were people who beat us on almost everything: graphics in a MUD, 3D controls to a virtual world, etc. The one exception MAY be that we were the first MMO/MUD to have a box product and a subscription fee (most online games before us used daily or hourly charges, but we came out right around when AOL changed the billing model, and everyone else rearranged their billing models to match).
My thoughts exactly. I think people don't realize that MUDs can have much more extensive interfaces than just "Adventure> " prompts, and that they have for a very very long time!
that should say "first graphical" because at the time it was pitched as the first 3D online MUD. They had to stress that internet was required because at the time even networked games didn't require internet.