Infinity LPMud: the History of Infinity

Infinity was created in early 1992 by Django and a few other people at the College of Computer Science at Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts. It was originally designed to be a school project of Django's, but has since ballooned into something just a bit bigger.

Mutara joined forces with Django in February or March of 1992 (the exact month isn't remembered), and together began the layout for an LPmud that was based on the 2.4.5 mudlib, running the 3.1.2 LPmud driver in compatibility mode. Infinity was conceived with the idea of three parallel timelines, which allowed Wizards to code areas from modern factories to medieval lands, to futuristic wastelands.

Infinity opened for players on September 9, 1992. Shortly thereafter, Isenbold, Kragen, and Rhydia were hired as the first archwizards. Mutara was made a co-administrator with Django, and the players started to pour in.

Over the past couple of years, Infinity has been fortunate to have a number of talented individuals work as ArchWizards. These include Arsenal, Bigtoad, Hiero, Huan (Dimwit from the World of Mizar), Isenbold, Juniper, Kragen, Malc, Ned, Qualstar, Rhydia, and Tanzi (also from the World of Mizar). Outside time constraints have taken Amon, Kragen, Rhydia, and Tanzi from us. Django retired in December of 1994, leaving the current administration as Mutara (Administrator), Amon, Hiero, Huan, Juniper, and Qualstar (ArchWizards), and turning over the mud to Mutara.

Isenbold rejoined the ArchWizard staff in early 1996. In 1998, Hiero, Arsenal, and Bigtoad joined the team. In 2004, Malc and Ned were drafted, and in 2009, Mutara retired, leaving Malc and Bigtoad as dual Administrators. Bigtoad handled mostly the hardware and hosting side of things, and Malc the game and player management.

All the archwizards retired around 2009 as well, so only Malc and Bigtoad were left running things until 2022. Sadly, in April of 2022, Bigtoad passed away. Malc continues to run things, with a group of new Archwizards, Devnull, Hiryu, and Jgambit.

In December of 1994, Northeastern University informed Infinity that Infinity's host computer was to be used for other purposes, and would no longer be able to serve as Infinity's server. The administration immediately looked for other sites, and after discussions with various commercial providers across the country, moved to Syracuse University, residing on Ramen's 486 DX2/66, running Linux. A fund-raiser for a new hard drive was started, and we were able to buy a SCSI gigabyte hard drive and a SCSI controller for the game. Infinity reopened for players in February of 1995, after a short hiatus to move operations to Syracuse, clean up the game somewhat, and to let the ArchWizards have a small vacation.

Infinity thrived for well over a year at Syracuse. Infinity then moved to Legacy Creative Ventures, Inc. in Seattle, Washington under the care of the wizard known as Ned. With the generous donations of Infinity's users, we were able to purchase our own P75 box with 32 MB of RAM, well over a gigabyte of drive space, sitting on a fast net.

In March of 1997, we moved from Legacy Creative Ventures to SPITE in Boston, bringing the machine back to the east coast under the care of Dred. We then got our own domain name of infinitymud.com, which should ensure that fewer people lose track of us as we change sites. As we move, our hostname should stay the same.

In the summer of 1997, Hiero joined the ranks of the ArchWizards, bringing his experience to other areas of the game besides his famous Solstice wizquest.

In April of 1998, our globehopping Linux machine headed back for the West Coast, to Tesla Networks Limited, of Shoreline, WA. This marks the second time Ned has been custodian of the machine. Later, in August, Dred redesigned the website to take advantage of emerging web technologies. (Which are now feeling the weight of age)

In November of 1999, Tesla Networks folded. The box was then shipped to Bigtoad in Portland, Oregon. Bigtoad found the hardware that Infinity was running on to be pathetic, and performed a fairly massive upgrade. Infinity was then hosted at Bigtoad's non-mudding brother's house on his DSL line.

In 2009, Qualstar, sadly, passed away. In memory of him and all his excellent work, please see this memorium.

For the past several years, until 2022, Infinity resided in a commerical data center thanks to Bigtoad's generosity.

Sadly, in April 2022, Bigtoad passed away. The domain name infinitymud.com is in limbo at the time of this writing, and Malc has moved hosting to another commercial data center, and acquired the domain infinitymud.net, but with the hopes of getting the original name back after some hoops have been jumped through.

Infinity continues to thrive. We anticipate being on the Internet for quite some time, and are always looking for ways to make the game grow.

PLAYERS || WIZARDS || ADMINISTRATION || FAQ || GUILDS || LORE || HOME