I found this interview of the person who created the MUD system (of which our MUCK is a cousin), and thought it was interesting enough to at least share. He talks a lot about how online worlds are put together (both MUDs and MMORPGs) and how social and game worlds began to develop.

Hello rodents, long time no see ;)

First of all, I want to apologize for disappear these last months, there was a reason to though.
Well, I finally got to live for my own now (yay XD) and have rented a tiny yet feisty apt with a couple of friends of mine, and so on I've been quite busy during these months with the moving, the university and all that made impossible for me to log in. And of course is not so easy to get used to live by the anarchy of a place with no responsible and mature person around XD but we're learning on the way =P