Mob
From Mudpedia
The term mob is commonly used in online roleplaying games to denote a generic computer controlled character.[1] A non generic computer controlled character is typically called an NPC (Non-Player Character).
The term originally comes from the variable name given by Richard Bartle to NPCs when he added "mobiles" to MUD1 in 1980.[2] The word stuck and is also used in the source code of several MUDs, including DikuMUD, which was influential in the creation of Everquest, whose players adopted and further popularized the term.[3]
A popular backronym for mob is "monster or beast".
[edit] References
- ↑ Shah, Rawn; Romine, James (1995). Playing MUDs on the Internet. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. pp. 93. ISBN 0-471-11633-5. "One of the major types of objects that you will encounter on a Mud is the mobile. A mob (pronounced MOHb, not MAWb), or mobile, is a computer controlled creature."
- ↑ Richard Bartle (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds. p. 102. "I called them that because creatures moving in a controlled but unpredictable way are like the kind of "mobiles" that hang from ceilings."
- ↑ Richard Bartle (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds. p. 25. "If ever there was a case of being in the right place at the right time, Everquest (EQ) is it. It was basically a DikuMUD with a graphical client bolted on——the similarities are so close that under legal threat its server programmers were forced to sign sworn statements to the effect that they didn't use any actual DikuMUD code in Everquest."
