The purpose of this study is to describe MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), its users, and to investigate their use patterns, gratification levels, and feelings of telepresence.
One hundred and forty five samples were collected through the E-mail survey method. The statistics results indicated that most MUD players were male students, aged from 21 to 25, spent an average of 4 hours in MUD per day, about 7 days per week. The role they played in MUD was player. The activities they had in MUD were fighting and chatting.
The results indicated that the major four motivations of using MUD were self-identification, anonymous accompany, social learning, escape and belonging. The results also revealed three major constructs of telepresence: social presence, vividness, and interactivity.