Fun story and commentary on gaming addiction!

I don't recall playing MUD's in particular, but in the early aughts (the 2000's), I got seriously addicted to "Armagetron" (3D version of the grid-cycle game from the original TRON movie), and then "Gunbound," which was like a super-deluxe version of the old "Scorched Earth" artillery game. I'm kind of a late-bloomer in life, and those were sort of like a beer-filled, addictive multiplayer game that I otherwise would have been playing in college, more or less. So, good to get those out of my system, I guess.

I love this story. Here is one of mine.

SCENE: The year is 1993, the hottest BBS door game is Usurper and the players on the local BBS are very, very competitive. How can I possibly do better? Well, the answer is obvious, I need to setup my own BBS with Usurper and figure out the exact perfect methodology within the game to become the stronger. So I do so, and I then write some text macros to handle some of the more tedious tasks I would do every single day when the turns reset. Eventually my character far outpaces everyone on the server with a wider gap every day and our group dominates the server. My team mates don't like that I am so much stronger and decide to boot me from the team, but fail to kill me. I then make a team of one and wipe them and every one else out every day for two weeks until they decide to reset the game. I have become the usurper.

So if I understand correctly, Shades was inspired by MUD1, but not actually an MMO by definition, i.e. "Massively Multiplayer Online."