Metaplace, a project lead by Raph Koster of Ultima Online & Star Wars Galaxies fame, is an open-ended platform that allows anyone to create their own virtual world. You want a room for people to play chess? Cool, code up a chess game, board, design and decorate the room, and you’re on. Want a role-playing experience that teaches people about history? You can do it.
Something unique to Metaplace is the idea of the Meep. It’s a small dustbunny like critter that rolls or jumps around. It’s kind of the unofficial MP mascot, and the testing community loves them. So much so, that they created a world purely to protest the potential change of the verb “Meep” to “Nudge.”
Meep, as a verb, was (as I understand it) an idea of Cuppycake, community manager of Metaplace, that got put into the game on their free time. It was intended to be like a Facebook “poke.” There’s a context menu option when you click other players to Meep them.
The problem that prompted the suggested change from Meep to Nudge, and the backlash that ensued, was that new users just didn’t get it. I even suggested myself that people don’t really know what Meep is, and might not feel comfortable doing something they don’t really understand. I suppose I never fully explained my concern there: My problem was that users didn’t understand the idea right away, it wasn’t with the idea of Meeping people.
