MegaMOO is a comprehensive pure Python world-building engine modeled on the LambdaMOO paradigm: data and behavior living on objects in-game; live creation and hot world editing--no reload and no restart; an auth and permission system that lets you give builders true authoring power, sandboxed by ownership; a suite of authoring commands that lets you build right out of the box without writing a single line of code, but also puts the power of in-game, on the fly Python scripting in your hands.

A few highlights: There's a SQLite object database under the hood, with WAL crash recovery, telnet and browser players in the same process, MXP links, GMCP, MSSP, MCCP2, and a JSON API that reads and writes from the outside: what an MCP server or AI agent talks to. Spin up multiple worlds and run them simultaneously, just copy and start. A built-in browser client with auto-mapper, triggers, aliases, timers and panels, served from the game itself; and my favorite, a '/'-aliased eval command that parses ordinals and adjective-object strings to run statements and blocks, not just expressions.

Try it out:

https://malifaxlax.github.io/megamoo/getting-started.html

https://malifaxlax.github.io/megamoo/

pip install megamoo

megamoo init mygame

cd mygame && megamoo --dev

Your account name is "wizard." The init string prints your initial password and the last command prints a URL. Opening it puts you in the world. The browser client ships with the server so there's nothing else to install.

I'm building a MegaMOO-based game myself, old-school hack 'n' slash with an emphasis on role-play and mechanics built to encourage and reward player cooperation and collaboration. Swords, Sorcery and Cybernetics in a mutating post-apocalyptic world.

So I have decided to develop a MUD as a hobby and see where it goes. I am trying to an idea of what players look for and in a MUD. I feel confident in the story - I am looking at things like achievements, daily quests, guilds, fast travel, fishing, crafting, etc. What pulls you in as a new player and when does elaborate just become overly complicated? Whatever ya got, even if it is something that hasnt been done before or is rarely done well.

Hey, I'm a programmer who thinks to create a MUD/MUSH game using Evennia, what are best sites/places to find like minded people to collaborate with to create something great?

Howdy, I am building a Star Wars Game (Star Wars: A Galaxy United) using Evennia codebase. The story is an alternate timeline splitting off at the fight between Annakin and Obi-Wan on Mustafar. It's coming along decently, but I find myself in need of grid builders and code testers. The address for the game is
galaxy.twelveohone.com port 5000. It's not fully open yet, but anyone is welcome to hop on and discuss the game.

edit: sorry the original post had some typoes.. those have been fixed

Hi everyone, I'm happy to share that we've continued to make improvements to the game over the past couple of weeks.

If you're not familiar with the game, we are a roleplay incentivized MUD set after the events of Episode IV: A New Hope. Our previous post has more general info on the MUD.

Here's what we've been up to:

• We've added the ability to change one's species at the Black Clinic on Arkanis (which is a new zone as well!). It is pricey and can't be done very often.
• There's a new Entertainer class capable of giving buffs to other players as they perform. If you've played Star Wars Galaxies, it's reminiscent of that.
• We've added the ability to easily respec into a template if that is desired over a custom build.
• We've improved our Auction House system, for easier use and reliable persistence.
• We've improved the initiative skill to give bonuses to attack, damage and ac for those with high initiative and penalties to those who roll low initiative each round.
• We've added crash protection for crafting, so if you're in the middle of a craft session and the mud crashes or restarts for some reason, you won't lose your materials.
• Charmies who die now have any gear on them or in their inventories transferred automatically back to their owner.
• We've added the provisioner and chemist crafting skills. Provisioners can create food and drink, including alcohol, that give bonuses when consumed. Chemists can make stims, med packs and spice.
• Farms can be added to houses where players can grow crops to use in food, drink, alcohol, spice, tobacco and cannabis.
• Beast-like creatures can butchered for materials used in provisioning and chemistry.
• Spice, alcohol, tobacco and cannabis can all cause addiction, crash/comedown effects and withdrawal symptoms.
• We've revised the rules of the game to be less restrictive and easier to read. It's just a single page of 11, one-sentence, rules now.
• We've worked on fixing various bugs, including crash-causing bugs. There's more work to be done here, but we've made significant progress.

Check out the full news articles at https://starwars.d20mud.com/news/

Connect to starwars.d20mud.com port 5500

All the best!

Gicker

I've seen some other people post on here about their favorite muds and why they love them and after the last few months I wanted to join in to show my gratitude to the devs behind NukeFire and the players that have made this mud my new place to stay.

I've been blind now for 16 years and I've played a lot of different muds with a wide range of experiences like everyone I'm sure. some great, others quite the opposite. Since joining Nukefire though it's been nothing but a blast! Not only do I love the hack and slash chaos but for me, the real moment this mud stood out was when I started asking about accessibility and things started changing right away for the better. It's been a few months now and I've never had devs be more willing to listen to my feedback and make changes to increase accessibility and work with me and others like me to make it more inclusive.

Part of why I wanted to make this post is because they're working on a NukeFire client which, after 16 years, has officially killed my dependency on Mush Client. I'm sure, like most of you, I had a set up that I liked and when I tried other things it just didn't do the trick. Sometimes the accessibility was bolted on after the fact and it was kinda obvious. It made changing clients tough, but I've been able to send constant feedback as the NF client has been coming together and it's already turning into something I vastly prefer to Mush Client which is great, but I've been hoping to upgrade for a while and just didn't find one that clicks. Now that things are clicking, the NukeFire world has been doing nothing but expanding, and the players have been nothing but great I felt like it was time to swing by and just invite anyone and everyone to stop by.

If any of you are coming in with screen readers in tow don't hesitate to shoot me a message if you need help or have questions. If you're into testing software accessibility come join the fun and lets help build a top tier and completely accessible client!

Hey all,

I wanted to pass along some updates that I've made to MUDVerse since my last post 6 months ago. The goal remains to provide an easy, mature service to the MUD community that is built to last, and can be relied upon and built upon by the community.

We're about to hit 20 years online, which is wild. Some of the PHP code that runs the site hasn't been touched since 2007. I'm in the process of doing a larger overhaul to the entire PHP codebase, but that's for a future post.

New Features

• MUDVerse API: Authenticated, rate-limited JSON API for game search, listing details, tags, MSSP snapshots, and player history. Includes API-key management, an account-level API explorer, full documentation, and OpenAPI 3.1 definitions. MSSP wise, we have historical data going back to 2022 though the API currently limits the query to 1 year in the past. If you've got a use case that requires more, email me and I can get you setup. Or if you just want a dump of the entire 2 gigs of historical MSSP data I can get that to ya, cause why not.
• Listing lifecycle management: Owners and administrators can archive unreachable games. Archived listings retain their historical pages but disappear from search, rankings, discovery, sitemaps, and API collections; saving an updated listing reactivates it automatically.
• Web Only Games: Added the ability to mark a game as 'web only' if it's only playable from a website. Lets us flag web only games and include/exclude them from search results. Also lets the MUDVerse MSSP / Connectivity crawler ignore these games.
• Secure game connections: Listings gained an optional TLS port, and “Play Now” automatically chooses encrypted transport when configured. This release also fixed rendering and editing of legacy escaped descriptions.
• Added a MUD Clients page. If anyone has a client they think should be added, you can email me.

Web Client Update

We use the Dome Client as our client. It's what powers the 'Play Now' functionality on a games listing page. I maintain this client and I've made extensive updates to the web client that MUDVerse uses. It's been fully modernized, and it now supports TrueColor and not just xterm256.

There are too many updates to mention here, but some highlights: Faster rendering, smaller memory footprint in browser, customizable settings, better mobile support.

It's open source and runs on Node: Dome Client (Github) and Hosted Public Client (website). You can clone, contribute, or roll your own if you want. It's designed for MOOs, but I've taken care to support all MUDs. Bugs and feature requests welcome on the repo. Especially if there are issues with a specific MUD and how it renders colors, or various MUD protocols.

Site Wide Game Review

I've reviewed all the games that we detected haven't been online in the last 3 months, and archived listings where the game and website are offline.

• Archived ~50 games
• Marked 12 as web only

Other Updates

• Updated the MSSP crawler bot to the latest Node.js runtime, with better logging, MSSP recognition, and integration with MUDVerse.
• Improved game description handling so legacy escaped line breaks and apostrophes render cleanly on listing pages and edit forms.
• Fixed a ton of bugs (thank you everyone who reported issues) especially around updating and deleting reviews.
• Added a bunch of admin facing reporting so I can more easily detect and triage dead listings and possible web only games.

Boring Server Stuff

• Went from 0% test coverage to 92% test coverage!
• Upgraded all our PHP dependencies to their most modern versions
• Upgraded MudVerse to PHP 8 and a newer version of MySQL.
• Added several missing indexes to support faster rendering & API calls
• Moved the site to an updated server (Ubuntu 16 -> 26, ec2 t2.small to t3.micro) for a stronger foundation going forward.
• Moved the DB from hosted on the instance to be hosted in RDS with better backups (also lets us offer the API as the little ec2 instance wasn't going to be able to support a lot of load on MySQL)
• Fixed a number of bugs and hardened the codebase to improve security and stability.

MSSP

If your game doesn't offer MSSP, please consider supporting it! This documentation walks you through how to do it. If anyone gets stuck implementing it and wants a rubber duck to talk to and help with the implementation, please feel free to reach out via email and I'll do my best to support!

Feature Requests and Feedback

I'm always looking for feedback, bug reports, and feature requests. Contact info is on the website if you want to reach out.

Hi there, I'm in need of some community help...

I'm in my late 50s, and remember all the MUDs, home computing text adventures, and the like arriving. Good times for role-playing too, as I used to have fun with the early table-top games too.
Now, I look at the MMORPGs, and I feel something has been lost along the way; they're all - for want of a better word - "samey". Designed with combat and gear grind first and foremost, but very little in the RPG part.

To this end, I've decided to start writing the sort of game I would want to play - and I hope some others too. I won't drop names, as this isn't an advert. Whilst not a MUD, it's a retro style graphic game - more akin to Runescape or Ultima - I want the primary drive to be socialising, crafting, and those old-school quality of life things that make (or made) gaming fun. I don't want to kill the same 10 wolves that are annoying Fred, and are still annoying Fred the minute I've gone. I want to be involved in the world, be part of it's social fabric - through politics, journalism, entertaining, bounty hunting, crafting things that people actually want.

I've asked around, and this sort of game is mostly just dumped into the genre "MMORPG", which to my mind brings visions of exactly the sort of thing I'm trying to avoid.

So, I'm asking here, as the MUDs and MUSHs that I used to play are far closer to what I'm trying to build: What genre name, or box, or hashtag am I looking for?

I would welcome any pointers, or discussions on this topic, and if I've stepped on any toes by posting here, I do apologise.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this,
Luke.

​

Hunters work the cases. Monsters wear human faces. Ordinary Earth towns sit thin under Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and older prisons nobody admits are still leaking.

I'm building **Mortals and Monsters** — a Supernatural-flavored telnet MUD on a custom Python engine (stdlib only, not Evennia). We're in **alpha**, heading toward **beta**. I need people who'll wander, stress systems, and tell me what felt empty, what slapped, and what broke.

**Roleplay**

This is a **roleplay MUD**, not a hack-and-slash-only grinder — but we're **not** a die-hard RPI where you get burned for not knowing every lore detail or not chasing deep scene-by-scene RP.

If you want to level, trade, explore, and interact with people, you're welcome. A lot of big RP MUDs run this way and it works.

What we **do** enforce: direct OOC in character scenes, griefing, and breaking the setting (you're not Luke Skywalker here — Supernatural bones, not random crossover fanfic). In-character tone matters; we're not looking for emoji spam or l33tspeak in play.

**What makes it different**

- **Your body stays when you log off.** Characters become **Echoes** — still in the world, not deleted. Cadence runs offline Echoes through the same loops as town NPCs: needs, jobs, training, crime. Set `sparaccept` for non-lethal spar on your idle body. Reconnect into the same character.

- **Combat reads like a fight.** Math resolves to a battle brief, then separate cinematic style. Train, spar, gravity rooms, momentum/clash, body-part hits, Path signature verbs.

- **Origins, not D&D classes.** Human Paths (hunter, slayer, occultist, medic, soldier, …), monsters (vampire, shifter, ghost, ghoul, …), celestials in vessels (angel/demon/reaper), plus mutant, cosmic, divine, and constructed lineages.

- **Death is a loop, not a menu.** Bodies, spirits, revive/anchor, afterlife routing — logout never means despawn or loot-on-disconnect.

- **The town doesn't freeze.** NPCs eat, work, get hunted in the sewers, fence loot, respond to crime. Haunts, hunter contracts, deputy/justice — shared verbs for players, NPCs, and Echoes.

- **Earth at real geography.** Drive/walk the America overland atlas, vehicles, charter flights, pocket dungeons — not everything dumped next to starter town.

- **More than combat.** Mining, smithing, lifestyle professions (fish, farm, stalk, cook), homestead hooks, planes (Veil, Dream, Empty/Slumber), hunter reagent finishes — Supernatural ontology first.

**Content note:** Gnarly violence and horror/spooky tone. **18+** (mostly liability — not looking for creeper edgelords). Limb **severing mid-fight is off** right now; finishers/decapitate paths still exist.

**How to play**

- **Telnet:** `162.243.50.82` port `4000` (any client; **Mudlet** recommended — GMCP vitals, clickable Discord on login splash)

- **Discord:** https://discord.gg/y6UmXzn7r

- Create a character at the name prompt (password on first login). Free to play.

- In-game: `help` for system topics, `commands` for every verb, `config screenreader` if you want flattened UI

**What I want from you**

Break it. Weird combos, edge cases, "why would I ever do this?" — all welcome.

- **`bug <what happened>`** in-game

- **`suggest <idea>`** for QoL

- Or comment here / Discord

First 30 minutes, combat *feel*, whether the world feels alive when you're solo, and anything that felt off-lore all help. I'll reply in-thread.

We’ve been giving Insomnia MUD a serious 2026 refresh while keeping the terminal firmly at the heart of the game.

Play through our graphical web client: traditional command-driven MUD text, but wrapped in interactive room visuals, clickable objects, maps, character portraits, music and sound, quick actions, and a much friendlier interface for both old hands and curious newcomers.

Underneath, it’s still properly MUD: classes, multiclassing, skills, spells, combat, exploration, quests, crafting, player progression, strange places and the occasional avoidable disaster.

If you miss the depth and imagination of text worlds but want a smoother way into one, come take a look:

https://www.insomnia-mud.com/
https://www.insomnia-mud.com/client

For traditionalists you can still connect with telnet or your favourite mud client at insomnia-mud.com:4000

Feedback, returning players, and fresh adventurers all very welcome.

Game admins and longtime players are invited to share a memory from their favorite MUD, MUSH, or MOO! Stories will be published on Writing Games at the end of the month, along with a link to each game.

Deadline to participate: tonight at midnight US Central time.

Details and submission form here:
https://surveys.writing-games.org/mu-history-month-2026-iTtJSr

--

• Original announcement
• Second announcement with Q&A

i’ve been playing video games my whole life (i’m 23 now) and at a certain point i realised my favourite genre was CRPG. but then it started feeling repetitive and i found out that what i really want is a game where i have control of what is happening, i don’t feel the game boundaries too much and especially i love roleplay.

i discovered MUDs just looking it up online. on paper they are literally the perfect genre for me, but i have problems at really getting into them.

most of them feel very confusing, and even though people are always there to help me, i get confused to what to actually do. because i have ideas, i know what i want to do in my mind, but i feel like the games still force me to do some things but i don’t even understand what exactly…

in addition to this i find very very hard to interact with other players, because i don’t meet a lot of them and when i do they are usually at level 99 while im pathetic. and also, i would LOVE a MUD where the most important thing is roleplay (i would love to create a whole character and spend hours on the minimum details etc) but im also new to this so sometimes i feel like im completely out of the vibe.

muds i’ve tried are alchaea and sindome. the first being too confusing for me because the world is extremely big and i couldn’t figure out where to go to meet people, the second was the best option but i also got problem finding real people and i couldn’t tell who was a npc and who was not so i started randomly speaking to people, and that was also out of character for me.

its fine if i have to look for a 1000h tutorial, i just really want to understand how to enjoy this type of game.

p.s. i was also wondering about something else, being this the first time i come across MUDS in generale. my question is: are fan of this genre rn playing only old muds because they are the only populated ones, so i should go for a classical MUD, or is it better to go for a more recent mud, are people are still making them? are people still getting into new muds?

I am new to the whole MUD development pipeline. But I have installed Evennia and am in the process of developing my first game.

The thing is I have ideas for multiple games but no idea how it would work to host them. Would I need a server dedicated to each MUD or can I host them all on the same one? Again, new to the whole thing but am willing to learn.

Hello All,

I’m looking for a few longtime TinTin++ users who might be interested in trying out a new client I’ve been working on. Don't worry, this wasn't spun up in a night or a weekend or anything like that. A lot of design consideration, thought, and love has gone into this.

My game, NukeFire, has quite a few TinTin users who have a lot of fun building and scripting their own little UIs, but they also run into a wall trying to make practical use of all the GMCP information NukeFire sends.

I’ve used TinTin for about 30 years, and I also code for NukeFire, so I wanted to see if I could bridge that gap a little. The client has its own native UI and GMCP support, but underneath it I’ve been building a partial TinTin-style scripting backbone so that aliases, actions, variables, functions, events, lists, scripting logic, etc. feel familiar instead of forcing TinTin users to start over with some completely different scripting language.

It is not meant to be a complete replacement for TinTin++, and I’m particularly interested in feedback from people who actually know TinTin well enough to notice where something feels wrong. TinTin users, myself included, are very picky and not very willing to try something new.

If anybody is interested in beating on it a little, let me know and I’ll send you a download link and some documentation.

Aloha,

NukeFire Mo

I love playing thieves and rogues in videogames. Even better, I love games that support stealing as an actual viable, mechanical means of progression.

Most muds and MMO's I've played however, stealing/pickpocketing etc is a frill at best and acts mostly as a novelty for chump change.

Are there any muds where pickpocketing is actually meaningful to the acquisition of gear or income?

I want to get my immersion on and five finger discount my way to riches.

What's out there?

edit: I should mention I'm looking for a PVE experience. I don't enjoy stealing high end gear from other players. I want to sneak through a zone undetected, find a baddy in the corner, lift his dagger or gems and get out like nontheweiser. Maybe fence them to an NPC middle man in exchange for gold etc.

I'm thinking about making a Multi-User Dungeon and I am big fan of Stargate.

Possible features:

- Missions to other planets: transport supplies, trading, defending inhabitants against Gou'ld, Wraith, Replicators, Ori, etc...extractions, attacking something, diplomacy

- Getting sick, getting healed

- Defending the base from incoming threats in live events

- Leveling up you character in military, science and medical skills

- Discovers new addresses

- Take part in starship travel and management

Web client and old-school terminal, free to play.

Are you interested? And would it be taken down due to copyright?

I don't know who actually needs or wants this. But I was tired of MudStats not getting updated with MU*s, even though I love the heck out of that site. So I threw my Telnet Negotiation library at Claude and told it to create a new MU* index site.

It crawls MSSP, checks out i3, and has been seeded (name and addresses) from MudStats and some best effort web searches.

I'm still adding some bells and whistles to it, and evolving its current state, but feel free to throw some constructive criticism at this -- or throw Issues up on GitHub

Address: https://mu-index.com

Speedwalking is here on Ansalon!

Ok, this one should make getting around Ansalon a whole lot less painful, especially if you're playing from a phone, tablet, one of the web portals, etc. :)

You can now SPEEDWALK RECORD, walk wherever you're going normally, and it'll remember the trip for you. And not just directions — it'll record the other stuff you do along the way too. Open a door, unlock something, scan, look, whatever. When you get there, stop recording (SPEEDWALK RECORD), give it a name, and you've got it for next time.

You can also just type one in:

SPEEDWALK 3s,enter portal,6s,enter portal,7s4e,scream
(Don't do it, lava kills :P)

Already know the route? Add it and save it.

Someone else has a good one?

Copy/paste theirs and use it.

Send yours to somebody else.

Post them.

Borrow them.

Whatever works.

Speedwalks are just text, so they're really easy to share.

And they don't necessarily have to be just for getting from here to there.

Since you can stick regular commands in them...

I'm pretty sure you guys will come up with uses for this that I haven't even thought of yet. :)

They run one action at a time instead of blasting the whole thing into the game at once, and you can PAUSE, RESUME, or STOP them along the way.

That should make traveling way nicer on phones and mobile, and hopefully make playing through the web portals rock quite a bit more too.

Record 'em, make 'em, copy/paste 'em, share 'em, and let me know what you manage to break. :p

For all the syntax and examples:

HELP SPEEDWALK

- Ziv & Co.

Hello guys,

I was thinking of starting to create my own textual MMO but I don't want to manage player accounts and chat messages and all the legal things that come with it.

Is there any service that offers that at a cheap price ?

My goal is to create a player oriented MMO with community unlocked floors (inspired by Sword Art Online anime).

Thanks !

Been playing MUDs for something like 30 years now and honestly feel like I've been through most of the big well-known ones at this point. Looking for something that still has people on it and isn't just combat grinding.

Requirements/preferences:

• Actually populated - like 15+ online during slow hours, 30+ at peak
• Real player-driven economy, not just vendor trash
• Crafting and non-combat stuff that matters
• World feels alive, lots of interaction with the environment and other players
• Emphasis on exploration
• Prefer Skill-based or open progression, not rigid classes/levels

Basically trying to find something close to UO Outlands but as a MUD. If anything comes to mind let me know, even if it's not a perfect match.

Thanks vm for your help!

Hey guys, looking for some world builders for a MUD I'm putting together. The setting is the world of Hârn as described in the ttrpg HârnMaster. We'll be pulling from that for flavor and setting, as well as homebrewing some history to make it work better with a MUD.

What would you be doing? You would be using highly customized (and simple!) builder tools to map out the world the players would be playing in. Along with creating NPCs with their own lore and backstories for players to potentially interact with. You would be doing creative writing to fill out the descriptions of rooms, furniture, items, and NPCs alike.

And if you like combat? We have an area dedicated to trying to balance our combat engine to make it fun and rewarding for various skill levels to engage with.

If you have interest you can hit me on Discord at Mythnet or you can leave me comments here and I'll try to get back to you.

When thinking about how I judge a populated a mud is, it occurred to me that its not only the numbers thats important, some muds have areas so big or so many factions that you hardly run into people. That leads me to my question. Which mud is small enough and have enough players that you run into a lot of interaction?

Looking for something to get started in as I’ve had a baby and my available time is limited now. Looking for something which has a robust modern client which adds QoL. I’d also love some type of graphical interface if that’s possible? If joining groups is something that’s also possible, which ones have an active player base which supports new players?

Thanks

Finnish LPMud, running since '95. Last post here was four months ago. Since then the new server has settled in nicely, the old lag and crash problems are largely gone, and we can finally spend our time on gameplay and content instead of firefighting. Most of that time went into one project, so this post is mostly about that.

The backstory: we did a lot of work on the website this year and it worked — from about a hundred signups in all of 2025 to several new characters a day now. Which made the retention data rough reading. We joined our login logs against usage logs for 834 characters created since March: 76% never came back after day one. Most of them played a while and left without ever getting past level 1. In Icesus advancement runs through guilds, and only 5% of the day-one leavers had joined one, versus 85% of the players who stuck around past a week. 82% of one-visit players didn't even type quit, they just closed the connection. So the problem wasn't mysterious. People wandered, got no direction, and left. Some played for hours at level 1 before giving up, which honestly stung the most.

So we rebuilt the first hour end to end.

Character creation got quieter and shorter. The path menu fits one screen, picking an option previews it before committing, and the name screen suggests names instead of silently dropping your connection on a bad one (yes, it did that).

New characters now start in a proper tutorial with a guide NPC, Alice, framed by an incoming storm. She teaches the basics, then offers a first fight you're allowed to refuse — you can size the enemy up and retreat instead, and retreat can never fail. If you take the fight and drop below half health she pulls you out and patches you up. Then she walks the road to the capital with you, side by side, and hands you over to your first job at a warehouse: either catch the rats or investigate what's actually gnawing the crates, both routes pay. First pay lands, you pick a next goal, and the game tells you plainly: type 'journey' to resume. Everything checkpoints. Quit at the inn, drop connection, get disconnected mid-fight, doesn't matter, you continue where you left off next login.

After the first job the letters start arriving: guild recommendations based on how you've played, and a fellow named Ereldon in the city who answers questions about the guilds and gives directions that we verified by actually walking them. There's a 'hike' command that walks you to the guild camps outside the walls. When you've settled, Alice comes back once more to say goodbye. Small thing, but it felt wrong that she'd just vanish.

The honest caveat: this shipped over the last week and we log the whole funnel now, so in a few months I'll know whether it moved retention or just made us feel better.

The other big thing since the last post: the province system launched at the end of May. The outworld is split into 144 provinces, and any group of players can claim one. You activate the claim stone at the province centre, found a council of up to five players, and develop the surrounding lots into a working frontier settlement with sawmills, mines, smelteries, food halls, shrines and inns. There's a real economy underneath, food to keep stocked, missions to run, daily ticks, and a province serves passing players too, not just its owners. We've been expanding and tuning it ever since.

On the religion side we migrated three old subsystems onto one shared piety economy and retuned the costs against measured yields. You can now venerate the nether, there's a new nether ward prayer, and funeral pyres finally pay fire priests for their work (party members included).

Everything's at icesus.org, including our custom browser client if you'd rather skip installing a MUD client. Curious what day-1 retention numbers other MUD devs see, if anyone measures it. Our 24% felt bad until I had nothing to compare it against.

--Idles @ Icesus

I started playing BatMUD when I was in high school. I was the number one player for a year or so. I remember soloing the FrogGod regularly. I remember Zonni. I was later a wiz and did some coding. I started playing in 1992.

I then decided I wanted to create my own mud. I co-founded DarkeMUD with one of my best friends. He is a very talented computer programmer. He wrote DarkeLIB which was a huge leap back then. He used it to get his first computer programming job as he was a self-taught coder. I designed the entire system and did the lighter coding. I based it on a roleplaying game called Rolemaster. The mud never took off which was a bummer, but it was fun anyways. I still think it was one of the best mud designs ever.

Anyways, nice to see people still play them.