Best MUDs in 2023

[Absinthe]

Anyone playing MUDs and, if so, do you have any good recommendations?

 

[SerratedBiz]

Shangri-la MUX. It probably takes ~10 minutes to set up a character that can be tentacle raped.

 

[gamerguy]

there used to be a good shadowrun mud project, but it fell apart relatively recently

the grid of city streets worked well with the N S E W movement of a typical mud, and the gameplay systems were pretty well implemented


they were kinda dicks (in general) about only sharing the open source code (as required by licences they took advantage of) but being super stingy about their own work (ie. implemented quests, which were fun)... so when things died, all that work was kinda lost


it's a shame, but last I checked it could still be compiled if someone wanted to write quests for it, I'd play again


https://github.com/luciensadi/AwakeMUD


edit:

...it looks like someone tried to run it again in 2021...

https://grapevine.haus/games/AwakeCE/play

 

[Absinthe]

https://www.topmudsites.com/ someone bored enough, try them all out and report back

That site is basically dead. It's no longer accepting new votes and is now just serving the top 100 MUDs of all time (could be a lot of dead ones there) and in archive mode. It has decent legacy listings, and the site (don't forget it has a forum and giant MUD database) still works, but there are no more updates. For some proper MUD listings, there are the following sites:

• http://mudconnect.com/ - The old classic, but site seems somewhat borked now, mostly because of a SSL certificate issue
• https://grapevine.haus/
• https://www.moolist.com/
• https://www.mudverse.com/ - Probably what you should be using instead of topmudsites now
• https://mudlistings.com/ - Seems somewhat abandoned
• http://www.mudportal.com/
• https://www.ironrealms.com/ - Just lists Achaea and four others. It's the devs' site. They seem to be stupid popular, but also have a cash shop with what looks to be P2W shit.
• https://www.genesismuds.com/ - A MUD hosting provider, which provides a directory of public MUDs hosted on their server infrastructure

And I may as well mention the following MUDs:

• https://www.british-legends.com/ - It's maximally oldschool, since it's the first MUD ever, which launched the genre.
• https://mud2.com/ - A version update of the above MUD.

Also, has anyone played Cybersphere? Seems interesting.

 

[ADL]

Used to play Multi-Users in Middle-earth and HellMOO during school 15 years ago and it's still going, unlike HellMOO which shut down in December. Good for them.
https://mume.org/

 

[Kruno]

Shangri-la MUX. It probably takes ~10 minutes to set up a character that can be tentacle raped.

Welcome to the land of Shang... sexual predators.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/jykhza/shangrilas_ban_hammer_all_about_the_victims/

On that day, a player shared with the group that, at some unknown time in the past, I (Sloth) sought to "cam" with a separate player that I knew was underage. Despite the fact that zero details were given--who, when, what it meant to "cam" with this person--it was decided that this "fit" my overall nature. That I was a sexual predator. That my history of predation was lengthy, involved numerous victims, and that other staff members knew of it and covered it up. Various suggestions were made for how this information should best be used, including contacting the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (???). Instead, it was decided to have one of their number log in anonymously, and share all of my alleged "crimes," along with their belief that the rest of staff was aiding and abetting my deplorable acts by covering it up.

You may end up on a list if you start playing this MUD.

 

[Levenmouth]

Since it basically doesn't have any mechanics, Shangri-la is made for trolling people who "play" it seriously. Change my mind.

 

[SerratedBiz]

You may end up on a list if you start playing this MUD.

Use a VPN if you're that retarded.

 

[Vic]

I used to play Syrnia, which is a runescape text based browser clone… basically you stare at a timer that counts down your action like woodcutting, mining, fishing, combat etc. and enter a captcha every 20 minutes or so.

I was botting it so I just let it run in the background 24/7..

also the community is the worst group of rules nazis I have seen on the internet. Complete opposite of codex, you can’t even say ‘WTF’ in global chat.

pretty tight little group tho, a user bought the game when the admit wanted to quit and they have been making their own little updates since. game has been running for many years, and the top levels in the highscore are insane

 

[Absinthe]

Yeah that's the ugly side of MUDs: power-tripping admins/mods and clique politics.

 

[Levenmouth]

I think in terms of the world and being consistently around, Armageddon is pretty high up there.

• Best experienced by not looking up any guides, because a large chunk of the game is shrouded in mystery on purpose.
• Don't know how it holds up nowadays. They used to have two major cities, but then they were reduced to one.
• Extremely slow, lots of RP game, but the crafting system is good, and the combat isn't bad either.
• Very easy to lose a character you've clocked 100 hours on though.
• Admins are best avoided, because they'll never save your character or do anything good for you, but will intentionally fuck with you by causing various crises and leading hostile NPCs in normally safe areas you're resting at.
• Not sure if true, but some people have been annoyed with the admins and started intentionally trolling the game by making dwarf fighters and killing random players under the RP premise of "raiding". If that's still the case, it's a major pass, because 2-3 combat chars with just a few hours on them can fairly easily down non-pure combat chars with months of playtime.

Achaea/Aetolia/other IR games are decent and much simpler, but very pay-to-win.

Also, whatever RPI is currently around that isn't dead if you want Armageddon with better crafting, lower likelihood of dying to some random thing and a much more modern engine, but also absolutely tiny worlds.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Fairly sure I've said it before in some other MUD thread on here but I played Discworld MUD ages ago and it was pretty alright. It was well populated at the time but the last time I logged in a few years back it was hovering around 50-70 people in the dead of night which ain't too shabby still. It is slightly tough to recommend because the gameplay's a mix of adventure game and regular MMO (XP mainly coming from quests, but a lot of the quests are pretty obtuse) and there's partial permadeath for everyone (Finite number of lives which you can buy extras for a significant stack of in-game money) so that slightly discourages fucking around. Does have a PVP system but only for people who opt into it, though opting in is permanent. Also technically a classless game although training out of class skills is extremely expensive in XP so it's not really recommended outside of getting a splash of shit here and there, only the real poopsockers who learn teleportation that aren't wizards since the skill requirements are high and you still have to have a wizard to mark teleport spots for you.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Also, whatever RPI is currently around that isn't dead if you want Armageddon with better crafting, lower likelihood of dying to some random thing and a much more modern engine, but also absolutely tiny worlds.

All RPIs are only shadows of their former selves, but IMO Harshlands is the best RPI currently functioning. Armageddon was always a campground for corrupt, psychotic admins and it's best avoided even to this day.

 

[Levenmouth]

Also, whatever RPI is currently around that isn't dead if you want Armageddon with better crafting, lower likelihood of dying to some random thing and a much more modern engine, but also absolutely tiny worlds.

All RPIs are only shadows of their former selves, but IMO Harshlands is the best RPI currently functioning. Armageddon was always a campground for corrupt, psychotic admins and it's best avoided even to this day.

Absolutely agreed on admins, but IMHO if you keep the game on lower levels of dick-wavery it's a lot of fun. Just riding around patrolling the borders of the northern city (don't remember the name) with your buddies in white cloaks is fun and, at times, very unnerving. Some templars could also be pretty chill and fun to hang around with. It's overall a great game to play a cop.

You just need to deal with the occasional wendigo suddenly becoming more sentient than it would normally be and almost killing your character because some admin decided to "make things more interesting". Or falling off a cliff, because that's totally something that people do accidentally and totally should not have more coded safeguards. Or running out of stamina, because travel is instantaneous for reasons, and you don't enough time to react to some hostile you followed in the city leading you out in the wilds and killing you because you ran out of movement points in 5 seconds.

I still like it. It's very unique and in dire need of a code upgrade that for whatever reason never took place.

PS: In terms of power-tripping, it's nowhere near as bad as Atonement RPI was great. It had a great setting and actually story progression, but the admin was basically the main character and you really noticed that, because everyone was sucking his dick for no reason.

 

[Absinthe]

Say, does anyone know any MUDs with SSH? I'm sure they're out there but the MUD lists don't give you options to search for that.

 

[Norfleet]

I don't think I've ever encountered this, because during the overlap of the heyday MUDs and popularization of ssh, encryption was still being hidebound under various export laws and thus it was very hard to get a codebase that supported it.

 

[Spectacle]

there used to be a good shadowrun mud project, but it fell apart relatively recently

I remember playing on the ShadowrunMUSH back in the late 90's. It was a hardcore roleplaying MUD, trying to bring the tabletop experience to an online game with 50+ players online. It was shamelessly elitist in a way that can't be done in the inclooosive 20's; to play you had to pitch your character to the admins and convince them you were serious about roleplaying. The upside of this was that when you did get in, the quality of your fellow players was at a consistently high level, for a great game experience.

 

[Absinthe]

I don't think I've ever encountered this, because during the overlap of the heyday MUDs and popularization of ssh, encryption was still being hidebound under various export laws and thus it was very hard to get a codebase that supported it.

The sad thing is you don't need a codebase with ssh support. You just need a ssh tunnel set up locally which redirects incoming connections to your telnet port. That's all.

 

[Levenmouth]

Yeah, I can't say I've ever seen SSH or any kind of encryption either. I guess there just isn't much demand for implementing it for all 50 people playing a MUD. Are MUD codebases actually being actively maintained or are they in some limbo where they kind of work but aren't updated like the ZMud client.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Re: Armaggeddon

I'm inclined to believe that the social / roleplay aspect of the game had quality to it, given how popular the game was and is, even nowadays. It's always been the RPI with the largest playerbase, but it shows too. There's a lot of stock emotes / barebones RP going around (>nod, >sigh, >kill man) and the quality of people is very hit or miss. It's not really my cup of tea but I get why people love(d) it.

SoI and Harshlands were more my thing. Unfortunately, SoI was forcefully ran into the ground by wave after wave of bad ideas, worse implementation and pipe dreams; I just read in their Discord that the server is finally being shut down after being in purgatory for ~9 years. Honestly it's for the best but I still had a glimmer of hope that they would finally just open the fucking Laketown and be done with the almost-decade-old "building phase", but whatever. Harshlands is SoI's uncle of sorts, their code actually works and is being maintained / expanded on, and the quality of RP is decent if you're into the setting.

I played Atonement but only briefly. I just don't like the clique that was formed in SoI's northern sphere (Angost, Caolafon) which eventually migrated out and became the central pillar of Atonement at a staff and player level. The lead (Atonement's Songweaver, who played one of the leaders or prominent PCs in Angost) is a great storyteller but also keeps his head way up his own ass and I'm sure he loves it there. I wouldn't be surprised if he saw this post after Googling himself and simply had to show up to sing praises about himself and his project.

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, I can't say I've ever seen SSH or any kind of encryption either. I guess there just isn't much demand for implementing it for all 50 people playing a MUD. Are MUD codebases actually being actively maintained or are they in some limbo where they kind of work but aren't updated like the ZMud client.

As far as I've seen, most codebases haven't undergone major updates since the 90s. Being so old and basic, they're remarkably resilient. They just don't make 'em like they used to.

 

[Absinthe]

Yeah, I can't say I've ever seen SSH or any kind of encryption either. I guess there just isn't much demand for implementing it for all 50 people playing a MUD. Are MUD codebases actually being actively maintained or are they in some limbo where they kind of work but aren't updated like the ZMud client.

As far as I've seen, most codebases haven't undergone major updates since the 90s. Being so old and basic, they're remarkably resilient. They just don't make 'em like they used to.

Don't make "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" sound like something magical. Telnet is also the most basic internet protocol there is, so there is absolutely zero need to adapt to newer versions or technologies. The only issue nowadays is the lack of ssh support and that's an issue of laziness. It'd take someone all of ten minutes (an hour if he's really slow about it) to set up a proper ssh tunnel.

 

[Levenmouth]

So what actually happened to HellMOO? Did they get a knock on the door or did the founder just pass away from old age and his wife unplugged the server?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

so there is absolutely zero need to adapt to newer versions or technologies

I don't think so. I played an actively developed mud that had 20 year old bugs with the end of line character which simply couldn't be solved due to protocol.
You could literally have sex with them, they reached the age of consent. In a few years they'll hit the wall.

 

[Kev Inkline]

BatMUD is one of the oldest, and is probably still going on strong.