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DIKU defined, the old formula for an MMO.
Hardcore Casual — ... Raph Koster has an amazing write-up of what defines a DIKU mud, and how some of the bigger MMOs (EQ, WoW) are direct descendents. My first limited experience with an MMO was Neverwinter Nights on AOL, and my first true MMO was Ultima Online. I also skipped EQ1, going from UO to Asheron’s Call, but I finally caught up to the traditional DIKU MMO with WoW, and I have to say reading Raph’s piece was a bit eye-opening. I mean I knew roughly what DIKU was about before, but his write-up makes it painfully clear how little has changed with that formula. It’s also ...

Answering Tom Chick: Five Easy Pieces And One Snide One
Broken Toys — ... that to date every DikuMUD (muds descending from Diku code bases, as Raph Koster’s magisterial analysis describes), and the core combat mechanic hasn’t really changed that much in the intervening decades. You takes the beats, you heals the beats, you mitigate the beats, you spread the beats around. It’s all about the beats. Unless, you know, you fight other players, since other players are usually immune to taunting unless it takes place on message boards. Even in DikuCombat, PvP breaks the whole aggro paradigm. And there *are* other combat systems that have ...