Generic DIKU Tolkien

Were J.R.R. Tolkien able to see what has been made of his legendarium here, I suspect he would roll over in his grave.

MUME wears the names, geography and peoples of Middle-earth, yet much of what happens bears remarkably little resemblance to Tolkien's world. "Mages" wander around with 2-4 charmed creatures, hurl fireballs and lightning bolts, teleport across the world, and somehow stand toe-to-toe with fully armoured warriors.

Which volume of the legendarium did that come from?

Tolkien's magic was rare, subtle and mysterious. Gandalf wasn't a robe-wearing artillery piece grinding XP by throwing fireballs at wildlife. Aragorn didn't encounter wandering human wizards commanding magically enslaved zoos. Yet MUME forces one of fantasy's most carefully constructed settings into the tired warrior/thief/cleric/mage formula of countless generic MUDs.

That's particularly unfortunate because underneath it is a remarkable game. MUME has a huge world, dangerous travel, tracking, exploration, territorial conflict and fantastic PvP. Those are precisely the things that actually feel at home in Middle-earth.

Then there's development.

Ask why longstanding problems remain untouched for years or decades and the answer is invariably some variation of: "MUME is a volunteer game."

Of course it is, and nobody should expect unpaid developers to treat it like a full-time job. But "we're volunteers" cannot be an all-purpose excuse for 35 years of stagnation.

Successful volunteer projects survive by passing responsibility to people willing and able to do the work. MUME can instead feel like enormously capable people are stuck doing work beneath their abilities. Someone can have three degrees hanging on the wall yet be pointed toward building areas, something teenagers were doing successfully 30 years ago and AI can assist with today, while meaningful code changes and modernization crawl along indefinitely.

The problem isn't that MUME is 35 years old. It's that sometimes it seems determined to remain a product of 35 years ago.

MUME could be an extraordinary simulation of Middle-earth: dangerous steel, wilderness, tracking, horses, exhaustion, pursuit, survival and rare, genuinely mysterious magic. Instead, too often it feels like a generic high-fantasy MUD wearing a Tolkien costume.

There is an extraordinary Middle-earth game buried inside MUME.

Unfortunately, 35 years later, it is still buried.