MUD's mentioned on Cracked.com
 

Shout out to MUD's on Cracked.com. Man I still have an Island of Kesmai t-shirt! Hasn't fit in 20 years but I still have it.


:D

Re: MUD's mentioned on Cracked.com
 

I think MUD2 went commercial in 1985, making it the first commercial MUD alongside Islands of Kesmai, although it wasn't much of a commercial success.

Re: MUD's mentioned on Cracked.com
 

Aradath was released in 1984, But there were a couple other MUD's operating around that time as well, I don't know how many of them aside from Aradath could be considered commercial ..... I don't know if the author just didn't bother to do research or if he Chose Kesmai based on it's relation to modern MMO's

Re: MUD's mentioned on Cracked.com
 

The author simply copied the MMORPG history article on Wikipedia.

I know Shades was commercial around that time as well in Great Brittain, but as with Aradath the lack of sources make it difficult to create an encyclopedic article. The Realm of Angmar was an early commercial MUD as well, though with 32 simultaneous connections, phone companies taking a cut, and the price of hardware there wasn't a whole lot of money to be made back then.

I think Simutronics's Gemstone III was the largest MMORPG at one point in time, somewhere around 1996, though it might be tricky to source that claim.