I am currently an Immortal (member of staff) on a new MUD, IahMUD. It is not entirely open to the public yet, but hopefully it will be soon. We have a number of good coders and builders so it should turn out well.
If you are interested you should check out the website: www.iahmel.com
A great MUD in the making...

the site is coming soon???...

i also play a MUD called mirkwood, its my favourite one that i have ever player, head over to www.mirkwoodmud.org to see what its all about

I havn't played a MUD in a long time.. I was never able to stay really into them as I just couldn't get used to the feel of any of them. Are the newer ones better in gameplay wise? I'll have to check out your muds. Can you guys explain generally how they play out now (before I test them myself).

Achaea is one great MUD. Superb role-play by the players if i should say. Its a good mix of good and bad people, bad as in the "devils" of the game where they destroy whole cities and stuff (YES! Cities CAN be destroyed here). Of course you get the occasional jerks who surf into Achaea and start shouting obscense language which is automatically kicked out by a 24-hour staff (immortal).

Ultimategamers, modern MUDs now i guess are pretty similar to ones long ago. I don't know much but I've been playing MUDs for 3 years now and besides changes WITHIN the MUD itself, like new cities and areas discovered, the commands and system is still similar. Basically, SAYing, TELLing, or SHOUTing is still about the same. The combat system is different for different MUDs so I can't tell much about that. Except Achaea's combat system rocks! Every part of Achaea really keeps your eyes on the monitor because it doesn't allow you to do stuff automatically and keeps your attention there.

It's realy fun once you get on the MUDs again, I know I did. But sometimes i like to swith to graphic games and hang around with cool spells and skills that have RAM-heavy requirements (heh ). Then i grow bored and I go back to MUDs, which is good because my character in Achaea is saved in there forever and my friends in there (called allies) play it FOREVER. I just don't get why. It get's pretty boring after awhile if you've got nowhere to train and nothing to do except kill rats in the cities.

I got tried out a mux called 3030MUX, is that the same thing as a Mud?

Yes, 3030MUX is a BattleTech based MUD, using the MUX codebase. There are probably more than a hundred codebases and derivatives out there. And probably more than a couple of thousand MUDs running off those different bases. I know there about 1810 MUDs just listed on the MUD Connector alone.

But for the topic at hand, my current favorite MUD is CoffeeMUD, mostly because I am using its codebase as the foundation for my own creation. CM is mostly used by its owner, Bo Zimmerman, as a testbed for development. After that, I would probably say that Shadows of Isildur is my next favorite MUD, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Tolkien.

MUDs are definently an aquired taste, you're not gonna pluck someone from playing Counter Strike and get them to enjoy typing in a little console while watching pages of text scroll by. I sure can't handle playing a MUD all day long, but I do enjoy them...ALOT! I actually was helping make on called LoA (Land of Aern), but it flopped before much happened. My favorite one I have played so far though would have to be Materia Magica...but MUDs are not at the top of my list of all-time favorite things to do.

I was first introduced to muds in general in 2000, the first and only mud I've played since then is DartMud. Oh sure I've tried plenty of other muds but none are as realistic, complex and detail-oriented as DartMud! The world is constantly changing and almost completely player-run (as far as what goes on in social/political aspects).

It does take a little while to get used to the daily life and the way things work but once you get the hang of it you will find yourself hopelessly addicted. It's great that I've been playing for 6 years and still learn new things and go new places all the time! Soon there will even be a whole new continent complete with it's own culture, languages, native foods and crops, races, etc.

I feel as if I must mention the crafting system as it is incredibly complex but not aggravating (unlike muds where you sit in one spot and work on carving one piece of wood for 10 minutes just to mess it up). No, instead if you wanted to carve a piece of wood you would first need to find a woodaxe and a hand saw, then go out in the woods (minding the wild animals), find a tree and chop it down (and hope it doesn't fall on you), chop it into board, take the board to a smithy that has appropriate tools and THEN you are ready to carve the wood into whatever you want...if you have the skill. Once you get to that point that you're ready to make the wood into what you want it's instant. No sitting around waiting to see if 10 lines of "You continue carving the wood" succeeds or not. That's just one example. There are tons of crafts. My favorites are sewing and leather working.

Finally, WAR. Just like in the real world people don't always get along in DartMud. We do have a number of castles and guilds that don't always agree. We also have quite a few independant people that don't always agree with the castles/guilds. It is not a constant occurrence but every now and again someone will go too far and the world will be torn apart by war. Once my character's husband, a noble of a castle as well, was murdered by another group. My character had revenge on her mind and took out some members from the rival group, and in turn some of the people she lived with lost their lives. After many peace talks and bargaining for each others members held for ransom things eventually went back to normal. To me these are the times in DartMud that are key to building friendships and history for your character. Great fun too! When you log on and your hands are shaking because you don't know if someone is hiding next to your character's bed ready to kill them...you know it's an awesome game.

Over the years DartMud has made me laugh, cry and sometimes even punch things! There is no experience quite like it and I won't be happy until I've tried to convince everyone in the world to play!!

My favorite MUD, and the only one I play nowadays, is The Two Towers, http://t2tmud.org. It's an excellent game for anyone who likes Tolkien. Newbs have more support than in any other game I know of, but PKers get their playgrounds too.