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Hi,

It looks like you may like ArcticMUD. Briefly:

We're a heavily modified DikuMUD based on Dragonlance book. Arctic is online since 1992, our code is tested, stable and fully functional; the new features are added regularly but one at a time.

10 classes.
The list of classes is more or less standard - warrior, mage, thief etc. - but the skills and spells for each class are unique.

30 levels.
When you get a level, you may learn new skills or spells and enhance your proficiency in the ones you already know. After reaching level30, you may get ranks for killing legendary mobs (big dragons etc.) Certain classes (paladines, dark knights) may become, respectively, Knights of the Crown and Knights of the Lily.

Arctic is not roleplay-intensive. An interesting thing that I noticed was the fact that there was very little roleplay In Character, but more of it in Out of Character channels. When doing a hack-n-slash zone with groups of cunning AI-controlled mobiles that heal, rescue and assist each other, there is little time for storytelling. But then, "a good computer game is the one that can be played without a computer". When a player feels imaginative, they express it later on one of the game boards or in one of the forums. Or become a zone builder :--)

The last time I logged on (yesterday, at ~17:00 EST), there were 43 players on-line. The number is lower at quiet hours, but hardly ever goes under 15-20.

Please note that Arctic doesn't have "heartbeat exp" and doesn't allow multying or any other things that inflate the visible number of players. If you see 30 characters on the "who" list, that's 30 human players sitting right now by their monitors.

Please note also that some characters may be invisible or use other means to conceal themselves. That may add ~25% to what you see immediately after creating a new character.

Quests:
lots of them. One of the greatest features of Arctic is restricted game information. In many MUDs, once a zone is explored, there is no more mystery about it. In Arctic, knowledge is power and the players are reluctant to share the location of treasure vaults and dragon lairs, let alone to reveal the traps and obstacles that block the way. All good equipment is limited and all the powerful spellbooks and druid tablets are quite rare, the less people know where they load the better are your chances to have the bunge of them. Thus, one never runs out of new challenges and of new zones to explore, and even our largest and most powerful clans don't know all the quests in the game.

If you ever read a book about a wizard who completed a difficult quest and finally got a powerful ancient artifact that no one else in the entire world had, you may have wondered what that wizard actually felt at that moment. Seek no further! Hundreds of Arctic quests with unique, powerful rewards wait for you!

Free to play
Yes, free to play. No pay for perks, however. We've got players that are 15 years old and the ones that are 40 years old, from all all over the globe. Their monetary abilities may vary greatly. In this situation, selling bonuses for real bucks would ruin the game balance.

Active immortals
We've got several active coders and a handful of zone builders

Friendly imms and players
We would like to double our playerbase and thus a lot of attention is being paid to welcoming the new players. Just recently, a few weeks ago, a newbie complained on our forum that they were badly treated by one of our lower imms.

From what I know about the issue, the imm didn't actually intend to offend the newbie and that was rather a failed, poorly conceived humour attempt. Anyway, the imm was promptly deleted.
"Caesar's wife must be above suspicion"

Still, Arctic IS an elitist MUD (even though we're friendly elitists). A new player or not, you may ask any question on our forum or to one of the imms in the game and expect a a detailed reply. However, we don't provide handholding - explaining the rules and game commands is one thing, giving away solutions to the quests and riddles is another. Exploring is a fun part of the game and the imms of Arctic do everything possible to limit the availability of spoilers.

Finally, one of the greatest features of Arctic is unrestricted PvP:

We do not have a special pkill arena - the entire world is the site of battle. Have you found a room with a nasty special or a mobile that doesn't like unexpected visitors? Lure your opponents to the location and see them defeated!

We do not have opt-in or level restricted pkill. Have that little bastard said some obscenity about your mom? Aim the fireball and toast the miscreant!

A big part of our PvP is related to the feud between the big clans that lasts for months and years. However, that's not the only option. Do you feel powerful and agressive? Does a player that you see resting by the crossroads have a shining sword that should righfully belong to you? Do you simply dislike their name or the way they looked at you? Draw you sword and attack! Just make sure your survive the retaliatory strike then :--P

See you in Arctic!