FurryMUCK

11/13/2023

The Furry Fandom is known for being very reliant on online activity and connection. The growth of the community is tied to the growth of the Internet, as can be seen by the furry spaces fostered on UseNet, an iconic platform of the early world wide web. The other primary example to demonstrate this point is the rise of MUDs (multi-user dungeons) and other MU* gameplay systems. This article will be discussing one in particular, and perhaps the most well-known MU* to be associated with furries: FurryMUCK.

To understand FurryMUCK, the general concept and usage of MU* systems in general must be understood first. The first system in this family, MUDs, were among the very earliest online multiplayer games, first created in the late 1970s (Andruid, 2022), though it is argued that MUDs did not gain any significant popularity until the creation of TinyMUD in 1989 (Tina Smith, 2000). They are essentially an online, text-based rendition of games like Dungeons & Dragons, hence the "dungeon" part of the acronym; players can talk to each other, move through different rooms, and interact with the world through text commands. (I describe them in the present-tense because MUDs are still active and playable today!) But while MUDs were often heavy on mechanics and narrative, some players desired a more social and loose virtual environment, in which the priority was player interaction rather than quests and story; thus, other MU* systems were born to fill this, one of which was MUCK (Chipper Wolf, 2023). What this acronym specifically stands for has been long debated, but it is generally agreed that it can mean Multi-User Created Kingdom, Multi-User Chat Kingdom, or Multi-User Construction Kit (WikiFur, 2023).

FurryMUCK was created by Drew Maxwell following the collapse of DisneyMUCK in 1990. It went public in October, and its database was hosted on a MicroVAX (an early computer) at North Carolina State University, despite Maxwell himself living in Pittsburgh; the machine was maintained by Neil, AKA Bluemage, one of the MUCK's original wizards (moderators/coders) and a student at the university (Smith, 2000). Building and running FurryMUCK was far too large of a job for Maxwell on his own, so he contacted others living in Pittsburgh who had worked on a previous popular MU*, Islandia, which had fallen into disrepair shortly beforehand. Along with Drew and Bluemage, the original wizards of FurryMUCK were Ashtoreth, Erych, Abigail, Ryuuko, Shaterri, and Centaur (Smith, 2000).

Above: The FurryMUCK logo, a familiar sight to any regular users. (Via furrymuck.com)

(A cool side note: A few of these individuals lived together in a communal home in Pittsburgh known as the Furry Home at Squirrel Hill, an example of one of the "furry houses" that were more prevalent in the fandom around the turn of the century.)

The game's most iconic location is most likely West Corner of the Park, known to regular players as the "Center of the Furryverse" (WikiFur). The park is lined with streets named after famous figures in the furry community, an example being Cougar Street (for Ken Cougar).

Above: A map of West Central FurryMUCK, featuring the famed park. (Via whales.org.au.)

This is the spawn-in point for the game, and has served as a meeting spot for various community gatherings - even memorials. In Chipper Wolf's interview with Uncle Kage, a member of the fandom since its beginning in the 80s, he stated:

"I can remember the first death on furryMUCK. A character named Shala. When you ask, was this a community, yes it was. When word got around - I don't recall the cause of death - it hit everybody really hard. There was a funeral online, on furryMUCK. Buried the character. There were others that followed (Del-thyuss), shiny snow-leopard, killed in a traffic accident in the mid-90s. It was a few days after my birthday. Last message I had from Del-thyuss was a happy birthday message. The community felt these [losses] because it was a small community back then."

The community was indeed small; FurryMUCK rarely cleared a daily user count of 100 in 1992 and by 1995 averaged a maximum daily user count of 190 to 250, according to the Max Counts page compiled on Tina Smith/Jahangiri's Furry History website from 2000. Compared to some modern MMORPGs, that is a miniscule number! This allowed for a tight-knit social scene where characters, and by extension, their players, could bond and form friendships. Given that the furry community was still incredibly niche, many furries would take any connection they could get, and this new online outlet was an excellent way to do so. These small numbers are further evidenced by the Furry Database, created in 2000 in an attempt to map the U.S. furry population and foster country-wide connection; as of 2001, it counted 1,025 registered users.

Above: a map from around 2000 showing the distribution of furries registered in the database. (Via furbase.net. Accessed through the Internet Archive.)

Another factor fueling this desperation for connection was that, as is the case today, a large number of furries were LGBTQ and ostracized in their "real-life" environments. FurryMUCK had its own hotspot for this community: a nightclub known as the Purple Nurple. This room was a place for users to both chat with like-minded individuals and to explore their own sexual and emotional fantasies that they often did not have the space or ability to dwell upon in their regular lives (Chipper Wolf, 2023).

Above: the description of the Purple Nurple that displays upon entering. (Via Fang, Feather, and Fin.)

One of the primary issues the MUCK faced was maintaining an actual physical location. By 1991, FurryMUCK had outgrown its machine and the bandwidth available at NCSU. This, along with complaints from the university's administrators about resource consumption, caused FurryMUCK to make its first of many moves; the database was transferred to the University of California at Irvine. In November of the same year, it was once again transferred to Carnegie-Mellon University after staff at UCI received a badly-intentioned letter about FurryMUCK, which they had not previously known the existence of; they immediately demanded its removal. However, once Shaterri left his research position at CMU, no one remained at the university to maintain the database, and it was deleted in 1992. Fortunately, a backup database was used to revive the MUCK, this time on a host site at the University of Toronto. It moved once more to a machine at St. Norbert College in 1993 (Smith, 2000). It moved servers several more times spanning the following decade, and found its modern-day machine in 2005 (Wikifur, 2023).

Sources:

Andruid. "What is a MUD?" Writing Games, 4/22/2022. Online article.

Chipper Wolf. "When FurryMUCK Was New." Fang, Feather, and Fin, 6/21/2023. Online article.

Tina Smith/Jahangiri. "The History of FurryMUCK." felis.org, 2000. Accessed through the Internet Archive. Webpage.

FurryMUCK SM Home Page. 10/16/2016. Webpage.

Quill. "FurryMUCK Maps." Furry - An Anthropomorphic Hummock, 1998. Webpage.

Furry Database. 2001. Accessed via the Internet Archive. Webpage.

Max counts of users logging into FurryMUCK per day, spanning September 1992-December 1997. Webpage.

"History of FurryMUCK." Wikifur, last modified 2011. Wiki article.

"West Corner of The Park (location)." Wikifur, last modified 2020. Wiki article.