MUDs have an incredible holding power (WIRED 1.3, page 68). The force of networked virtual realities is something to be reckoned with. Soon enough, bandwidth won't be enough of an excuse to kill MUDs. Like other mind-altering things, MUDs will become contraband in the eyes of the uninitiated. The most dangerous is probably Netrek (see Net.Surf, page 94). This game is insidiously complex and has immense holding power. The biggest problem that faced us this spring was kicking Netrek players off workstations so other students could type in their theses. They had to be physically stripped from their color DECstations. Cyrus "Brainfired" Shaoul

Your MUDs article mentioned that computer centers were being crippled by the network traffic from these online communities. The typical MUD generates no more than 1Kbps of network traffic per connected player. So a busy MUD with 50 players online would generate about 50 Kbps of network traffic. For a site connected with only a 56 Kbps line, this would indeed be a crippling level of traffic. But for a site with a T1 line (1.5 Mbps), this would be barely 3 percent of available bandwidth. Many users connect with 1,200- or 2,400-baud modems. If MUDs generated more than 1 Kbps of traffic per user, they would generate more traffic than these modems could carry. I have a 9.6-Kbps modem, with which I can sustain three or four simultaneous MUD sessions, plus an e-mail window, plus a Net News window, plus a BBS window with plenty of time to read the traffic in all the windows. I just finished reading your article on MUDs. The snippet on the front of the article seemed to address the subject with a cautionary tone. But when I read the article, I found a soft and fluffy coverage of the various types of MUDs and how nifty and creative and self-adapting they are. You make passing mention of people spending "four or five hours a day" hooked into these multi-user environments, but nothing more. I have watched my brother MUD his way into failing out of an engineering degree. He didn't study, he MUDded. I am watching my fiancee, a 28-year-old, fourth-year astrophysics student, begin to squeak by and then withdraw from courses because of her increasing online time. What used to be a few hours after homework grew into six, then into all-nighters, then into single connections of twelve hours, and to the current average of sixteen to eighteen hours a day online for the past four months. I look at the connect logs and I see 350 to 500 hours logged a month. Don't systems administrators see this? Can't they see the accumulated time that students log and check into what is taking up so much computer time? I'm not talking about intrusive searching of files, but it doesn't take much to see where someone is telnetting to. I don't have anything against MUDs and I would hate to see them made unavailable to students. They are interesting experiments in interactive communication. I play in MUDs myself. I just fail to see why something that your magazine obviously sees, and sees as a problem, did not get the coverage that it needs. People are getting addicted and destroying their academic careers, jobs, and lives. I know at least one professional who was a MUDoholic and lost his job. This needs to be looked at for what it is - an addiction. I wish you would take a look at this problem in a more serious manner. Scott Moir smoir@world.std.com

RANTS & RAVES

MUDs

Wired Women

That Human-Machine Thang

Digital Highway

Copywrong

Dosin' Rays

Musical Privacy

Teens and Green - Online

Microsoft

Wassup?

Raves

Raves