News

Wed Aug 24 2022

I just wanted to add a quick update just to let everyone know that we are still here but since there aren't a lot of new MOOs to add, it seems like nothing is happening. I have added a new MOO recently and I continue to add old MOOs as I find them - I actually have a list of these that need to be added to the database.

As always, new MOOs, old MOOs, updates to MOOs; please let us know!

Fri Apr 03 2020

I can't believe that this project has been running for over 10 years now. Hopefully someone besides myself is actually using it.

I've gotten a few emails on the editor's inbox asking about the status of this or that MOO so here's my blanket response to those: I have here what I know. If I show something down, the access or contact information is the best that I've been able to find and it's down. I'm not being dismissive - there are a lot of games that I wish were still around - but I don't have any other information than what I have here.

I've also gone through the inbox and updated the items that have been sitting ... my apologies for not getting to them before now. If you have any updates, please send them along. I hope to get to them faster than I did the last batch.

I've run an update and we're down to less than 50 active MOOs that I could find. There might be one or two more out there but I wasn't able to validate that they were running MOO as the game engine.

As always, send in those updates!

Sun Aug 09 2015
"The report of my death was an exaggeration."

It has been a while that I've updated this site ... it seems to go in bursts of activity and now is time for another burst apparently. So I've just completed some updates and changes to the site hoping to improve efficiency and fix some of the bugs but there's still a CSS bug that vexes me greatly. I've also added some of the pending submissions and done some searches for new MOOs. Once I have those updated, I'll run a new check to see who is still active.

If anything isn't working right, please let me know and, as always, keep sending in those updates!

Wed Oct 10 2012
We're still going here at MOOList.com but I'll admit it is going slowly. I have a number of non-active MOOs that I can enter into the database but just haven't done yet and, as mentioned in the last update (two years ago, oops), a check on the servers in the database now show that we're below 100 active MOOs. Of course, that should mean more activity for those still up, yes?

I've just completed quite a number of new tweaks to the routines so, as always, if anything isn't working right, please let me know.

I've also been working on a new web form for submission of servers that will drop new entries right into the database but they will be pending approval. I'm hoping that this will make submission a tiny bit easier. I still have some work to do before it's ready for prime time... as in security tightening.

Keep sending in those updates!

Sun Jul 04 2010

It's crazy to realize that I've had this site up for nearly four years already. I still feel like I've only been doing this for a few months.

A new status check was completed last week and the numbers didn't look very pretty: nearly half of the active MOOs reported back as down. I'm trying to verify that by hand before completing the updates but that would put us below the "100 active MOOs" number ... an arbitrary number but one that I felt was a kind of 'mile-marker' for us.

There have been many changes and bug fixes behind the scenes. One of the things I like to do as I continue to learn a new language is go back and tighten up my code; in the case of a webpage, it only shortens load times so every little bit, etc., etc.

As always, I'm looking for anyone out there to submit information on MOOs, active or not, that I don't already have to keep the database 1. up to date and 2. a respository of MOOs that are down so that people looking for that old MOO know it's gone. Click on the Contact Us link and send them to me!

Keep sending in those updates!

Tue Jan 12 2010
Happy New Year! We're still here and on the lookout for new entries. We have also started gathering more of the non-active MOO information to add to the list so that those looking for information on their old, favorite MOOs can at least know they're not active any more. Like the active MOOs, if you see anything missing, be sure to let us know!

I guess I should be using "I" now instead of "we" - the staff is down to just myself again. I had two other team members looking for sites, proofreading entries and other sundry help here but, as usual, real life has intruded. So I'm solo here again. If there is anyone interested in chasing new entries and other tasks (no major time involved here), please let me know.

I've spent the last few days updating the site, mostly behind the scenes. In addition to some new coding, I've converted everything over to using PHP instead of Mason. I've stated before why I have a love/hate relationship with Mason - while I love the fact that you can use Perl to make dynamic websites, the features of it just leave a lot to be desired. Personally, the built-in caching is too much of a pain to deal with when trying to debug. So now the site is driven by PHP. It's not my strongsuit but I hope to change that over time.

I have implemented the new PHP code and the site up now and working. I've done some pretty thorough testing to make sure that everything is working but if you find anything out of sorts, please let me know.

I know it's been a while since checking MOO statuses - I plan on running a check this week as soon as I can.

Keep sending in those updates!

Sun Oct 25 2009
It's been a while since the last update but we're still here and quasi-active. I actually just added two new MOOs today. Keep the information coming!

Mon Aug 18 2008
For those that are curious, you might have noticed that the extentions on the pages are .mtl. I added this extention to the webserver as a Mason page type so you can see that most of the website is provided to you using Mason. I opted for a new Mason pagetype instead of adding it to the .html type because I didn't want the webserver to parse every single .html file for possible perl content - that's just a waste of resources.

I'd like to extol the use of Mason over something like PHP but unfortunately, when debugging a Mason page takes hours more time than actually writing code, I just can't bring myself to do it. I like some of the features that Mason adds over something like PHP but the last straw for me was when it took me three hours to debug one of the pages and I couldn't find the bug even scouring the logs only to find that because one of the libraries wasn't compiling correctly, Mason was quietly using the cached version of the library instead. Helpful.

Mon Aug 18 2008
Not really any new news but just a quick update to let everyone know that we haven't gone anywhere - we're still here and still adding active MOOs to the database. Keep sending in those updates if you have them! We're working on a web form submission process at the moment and hope to have it completed soon.

Fri Aug 03 2007
We added in a few changes to the details script today. We had the first user request a public email address so we've finally added the supporting code for that. I'm still not comfortable with publishing the email address in plain text so we have a short javascript encoder to prevent spiders from gaining the email from the source text but that still drops a plain-text email into the display. I think that we'll switch to just a descriptive link instead. If anyone has thoughts on this, let us know.

We also added a translation of the database marker for lanaguage. Currently everything is set to English but that will be changing as we re-find those MOOs that are in other languages. If your MOO is not set correctly, let us know.

Fri Apr 20 2007
The new look was finally completed today. We needed to complete the look since it kept getting in the way of working on our other projects so we decided to implement it here as quick as we could so that we could get back to the content of the other projects.

We have an update to make to the list but every single one of them are inactive so we're holding off for now. It continues to look like we managed to find all the MOOs currently active. As always, let us know if we're missing anything.

Thu Jan 11 2007
Happy New Year everyone! MOO List work slowed down during the holidays but we're waking back up. The MOOs we're finding now that we don't already have on our list have all been defunct so it looks like we finally have all the active MOOs out there (with one or two notable exceptions but I'm negotiating on those). I ask again that people submit their MOOs if they're not already listed.

Thu Dec 21 2006
It's coming up on the one month mark and I feel like we've come along nicely. There are currently 202 entries in the database and 110 of those are still active. I was able to add a person to the staff to help with finding servers out there and keep me on my toes and I was able to get rid of that nasty brown website and turn it over to a nice, pleasing white. Finally, just today I added a script to pull the entry details out of the database for perusal. Right now, it's mostly the raw information but we'll refine it over the next few weeks - maybe it'll be something useful.

Fri Dec 15 2006
While searching for MOOs to put on the list, we came across two sites that recently made the claims that there aren't 100 MOOs active any more. Well, as of just now, we can prove them wrong! We just added our 106th active MOO! Now keep in mind that "active" means that the MOO is up and running and you can connect to it - we make no claims for the actual activity within the MOO itself. Admittedly, there were a number of MOOs that didn't have anyone connected to them when they were checked but monitoring for actual activity is beyond the scope of this site; we'll leave that as an exercise for the readers.

Wed Dec 13 2006
Owners: We're now open for submissions of your MOO if it's not already here. If you own a MOO that's marked as "inactive" but it is active, feel free to provide the updated information (MOOs are inactive if we can't connect to them AND can't find newer information that we can use to connect).

Tue Dec 12 2006
Over 140 MOOs (active and non-active) entered into the database. There has also been some preliminary work on the connection checker (it was actually used to validate a whole list of MOO entries).

Mon Dec 04 2006
I've added a link to the Yahoo MOO Discussion list to the menu (after fixing the menu of course) in the hopes that it will avoid confusion for those coming here for that list.

The website design is still coming along slowly while I continue to add MOOs to the database. For each entry, I'm confirming all the information that I can find and then determining whether each MOO is still active or not; there are a lot of other lists out there that are just rabbiting the same information - I would have just made this a page of links to these other lists if that was all I was going to do. I don't know if a list like this is something that is actually needed, especially these days, but after many years in MOO, I wanted to give -something- back.

... by the way, the lists that you currently see here are not all that I have planned for this site. As you can see, I'm still in the first week of construction - I have a long way to go.

Fri Dec 01 2006
Working mostly on getting new entries done. Format on the webpage is screwy, I know. The good news is that it does the same thing in IE and Mozilla.

Thu Nov 30 2006
Mostly back end and CSS changes going on today. I've added a number of new MOOs to the list (the last five will always show up here on the main page).

I'm adding inactive MOOs here as well just to keep track of their status - I haven't seen anyone else doing this.

Tue Nov 28 2006
It's just the first day and I don't really have much here beyond what you see right now. I am working on and off on this so things will probably be constantly changing.

Some of the things that I want to have here are owner editable information, some kind of connection checks, possibly reviews? Plans are still being drawn up so this too will change...