Journey Into Modern Text MUDs

2025-10-05

I intend this to be a series about text based multi user dungeons (MUDs) for modern times. I want to investigate what is still out there, try out some of them, and see what a MUD is like in 2025. I will try to look at them through a modern gamer's lens and see what works and want doesn't work. Why? I want to implement a prototype of a modern MUD with my own ideas and tweaks, but I also want to enjoy what is still out there today.

So in short, I'm a bit obsessed with MUDs currently and this is my first journal entry about my new (old) hobby.

A few disclaimers:

A bit of background (about me)

I'm old enough to have played MUDs in the mid 90's on dial-up via a local BBS. Not for long (it was expensive making those calls), but a few hours here and there just to soak in the magic with my younger brother, when parents allowed us to do so.

Later on, early 2000's, I tried out different MUDs on the internet and had a blast on a few of them. I never got very far though. Instead of reaching immortal or anything like that, I would play for a few weeks, months even, and then I would lose interest and move on to something else.

I would jump in and out of the MUD scene every couple of years, trying out a few new MUDs, having some fun, and then go on to something else. There are a few reasons why I never stuck on a particular MUD for years:

MUD popularity in 2025

Recently, after a long stretch of not playing (at least five years), I tried to get back into MUDing again. Turns out, the scene is much smaller than what it used to be, or at least it looks like that from my perspective.

Sure, there a still MUDs around. There is even a semi-active sub-reddit about it. But I remember not that long ago (or was it?) when the most popular MUDs would have 300-500 people online during peak hours, and there would be many MUDs with a population above 100. Today, there is only a handful that might reach 200 people online during peak hours, and less than 20 MUDs averaging more than 50 people.

Where to look for MUDs

MudStats.com: This site has real-time statistics for most current MUDs. It lists more than 753 active MUDs, so the scene is clearly still there. The list also reveals that no less than nine MUDs had more than 200 people logged on at once in the last 30 days, though the kind of MUDs that reaches that kind of population is a rather interesting bunch (more on that in the next section).

MUD MSSP Stats: Similar to MudStats, it displays real-time statistics on current muds. It reveals total players connected to be 4336 and the time of this writing. I doesn't have max players over 30 days listed as MudStats does, but otherwise the stats that it reveals are similar.

topmudsites.com is a historical site, not longer updated as of 2022. It lists MUDs by popularity, meaning people had to activily vote for their favorite MUDs. It's basically a snapshot of the most popular MUDs at the time the site went read-only.

There are other "topsites" that I won't list here. They don't give any new information, and I always found the whole voting thing a bit sketchy. Player count and reviews are better indicators.

MSSP Mud Crawler is a fun and alternative way to browse MUDs. It lists current login screens from active MUDs with a variety of stats below each, like player count, uptime, codebase, etc. Looking at a MUD login screen can tell you a lot about a MUD.

There are other sites that lists MUDs like Grapevine and The MUD Connector (which doesn't look at all like how I remember it), but I didn't really look at them much this time around.

Obviously you can also browse reddit.com/r/MUD/ for recommendations.

How to pick a MUD

I know I have made it sound like I only care about MUDs with a high population, which is true to a certain extent, but it doesn't mean I'm adverse to playing something which a much lower player count. The quality of the actual game could still be great, long forgotten or simply just a hidden gem. I definitely plan to try out a few of the newer or lesser known MUDs as well.

But for now, I want to see what the most popular MUDs are like. Looking purely at the most active MUDs today, the information you can gather from the above sites paints a clear picture. Let me list the most popular MUDs today by category:

The commercial ones

Two companies still make commercial MUDs today. You have Simutronics that develops:

And then there is Iron Realms Entertainment, best know for

Iron Realms have a least three other MUDs running, but they are "legacy" meaning they are no longer in active development and basically abandoned. I'm going to write about one of them in a future journal entry.

No other company is actively running MUDs for profit to my knowledge.

The furry ones.

Going back to MudStats and sorting by "30 Day Max" reveals that out of the 10 most popular MUDs by player count, four of them are "adult" or "furry". It's not exactly my thing, but their popularity has me curious about what kind of mechanics they have. I'll most likely have a quick look at one of them at some point in the future, just to see what the "new player experience" is like.

The Chinese one

One of the most popular MUDs today is Chinese and is found at https://pkuxkx.net. I have no idea what it is about and I don't speak Chinese, but it has me intrigued. I will try to look up more information about this one later.

The free ones

And then there is the rest. Filtering out the MUDs I've already mentioned, keeping those with an average of a least 80 players over the last 30 days, you get this, in order of player count (most to least):

Of those, I only personally now Medievia, Realms of Despair and Ardwolf, because I've played them previously. Telehack is not actually a MUD, but more of an ARPANET-simulation (that happens to contain MUD1 if you want to see where it started!).

I actually have very fond memory of playing Realms of Despair back in the day. It was one of the few MUDs I kept going back to in the 2000s. I played Aardwolf more recently and had fun with that as well. I also remember Medievia being quite fun and immersive. They all fall into the "hack and slash" category at some level, though some of the finer details eludes me right now.

Where to go from here

So, my plan is to try out some MUDs and write down my thoughts. So reviews basically. I will focus on "new player experience", gameplay mechanics, immersion, world building, and community.

I've already started a new character on Aardwolf and plan to give my thoughts on that in my next journal entry.

So long!

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