I have seen muds with all of these. Builders will often make multicolored objects and mobs if they have this power. Players will make their names colorful and blinky to attract attention. Should the coder let the players set the color, or restrict it to only the builders, or perhaps preprogram colors into the game and let nobody edit them?

As long as the colors don't hamper my playing I'm all for color of any kind.

as long as there are rules controling the use of color, im all for it, i just dont like to see peeps running around with a rainbow sword of death and then does the care bear stare....*shiver*

Tastefully done colors are great. If there is no color i might as well bust out an old monochrome monitor. Too much color might make me dizzy. The trick is to have a nice balance. If that can be done, color can really add a nice dimension to the game.

i like color, however the majority of the text (room descriptions, actions and whatnot) i prefer to be colorless.

Muds with all white text really hurts my eyes.

Well, on Seasons of Almadyn we use a term object with variable messages. We allow players to customize colors hp message types of commands, channels, and guild stuff. We have messages types like hp_bar, gossip_channels, mage_channels, say, tell, whisper, shout, help, short_desc, long_desc etc. We don't allow builders to hardcode any ansi into the mud because we feel that it becomes tacky. Colouring words in code like 'red' or 'green' becomes blinding and may vary directly with the client's own colour terminal so we let mortals and builders configure the term object to their liking. There are preset colors, but the term object allows you to overwrite them. Thanks to Leto for that term object and Mojo@SoA for rewriting it to fit our code base. We run on LPC.
~ Grey@SoA

We have the preset colors which seem to be adequate for the mud that I code for allowing a range of colors which can be bolded which provides more colors.  

I have to agree with some of the previous posts though, too much color gives me a headache.  A long while back I visited a mud that looked promising in description, but unfortunately everything was in bright blue, with some bright green and bright red thrown in, and I had a migraine and refused to read the screen within 5 minutes.

I do like color, but every single thing does not need to be a color.  I think color should be used to make things stand out, like titles, and that players should be allowed to use color on certain things, like decoration of their eq, titles, and their maincolor preferences.

I'd probably agree with Mason's post above : you need a balance.

I've played on worlds that had no color : no problem.
I've played on worlds that had too much color : eye strain!

But if you have a balance - having words that are accented in the room descriptions, certain "flaming" objects that are bright red, it all helps with the entire "experience" of playing on that mud. When you see something in bright colors, it draws your attention to it - it makes it more important, dangerous, or what have you.

I like the idea of having the builders be able to code the colors they want, but the players be able to choose their color level.

On our mud, we have a few different levels : no color, partial color, complete color. That way, the players can decide what they want.

Some mud clients don't support full ANSI color either, so you dont' want to have color viewing a requirement either!

Hoop

So we seem to mostly agree that color is good in moderation. Of course, the line of that moderation is still up for debate.

When builders make zones, nine times out of ten they will include colors for the objects, make room descriptions painfully colorful and such, make rainbow swords as somebody mentioned, and make multicolored mobs. Not only that, but the array of color used by telnet can be rather horrifying (thank IBM). Walking through a zone like this can cause severe headaches, cramps, and internal hemmoraging.

Players, if they recieve color, go out on a tangent. They love to make their open chats flashy and colorful. They like to post on boards where they will get attention. They can find many ways to abuse color.

Is it good to let builders and players mess with the color set of the mud? Colors take a large part in the presentation of the mud. Some may view letting builders and players mess with colors as letting builders mess with the presentation. Others may say that color is something of an expression issue, where colors help convey a message, even if it is casually abused.

The bottom line here, is that color is used more often then not as a way to outline what the color-er thinks is important. Its a grab for attention at the least. My opinion is that whatever the person has to say remains of the same level of importance whether or not there are blinding colors to accomodate for it. The great dont make cheap grabs for attention.

I use colors to relay alot of information quickly, and to help differentiate between different areas on the map.

For example, a map will have color-coded terrain and temperature.  Any players or objects appear as a red background on the map, so that the player can still see what type of terrain that player or object resides on.  Whatever object you currently control appears as a blue background on the map.

So this creates maps that are quite color intensive, if the terrain is non-homogenous and there is alot going on.  But it's almost necessary to convey all of the information without writing my own graphical client.

I tend to think of text as the same way.  If there is an important piece of information (such as a keyword), I like to have it highlighted so that it stands out to players.  Consequently, I dislike "hunt the keyword" puzzles that some muds employ.  But all of this depends on what kind of game you're trying to run.

As for giving players the ability to choose colors, that's both a good and a bad idea.  Within reason, colors can augment a conversation by highlighting and giving a certain tone to certain words.  But 99% of the world will just use it to make flashy annoying messages where the content is lost in the noise.  Perhaps it would be useful to limit player input to one or two color-codes per command, as more is rarely needed.

It's best to have several preset color schemes that players can choose.

Failing that, one really good color scheme should do.

Try not to have more than one color per line unless you're highlighting a word, and that I'd only recommend in motd's, announcements, help pages, and extremely emphasized text.

Keep the scheme consistent and pleasing to the eye.

Don't overdo it. Less is more.

I have no problem with muds having color, and don't really care what sort of scheme they use. However, there must be an option to turn off colors (even better is if you can select what you want to see in terms of color) for me to even bother playing.

i dont see how people woulnd not want colors..... colors are fun.. and make it easy to read after spending like 8+ hours in a mud

I'd personally rather have preset color. As a builder, I don't believe I've ever made things differently-colored, simply out of my preferences. The area should speak for itself.

As a player, I only use color in one place if possible, and that's in setting my prompt. That's more out of a habit, though, as the first MUD I played had a nice-looking prompt, very easy to read.

I personally like the smaug default colors...and dont intend to change these. But in something like ROM...more color is GOOD! COde bases like rom lack in color..which is a downfall for me.. I want to see some color in a mud I play...staring at a black and white screen is annoing ya know?

I like the idea of colors, but they have to be somewhat uniform and make sense in regards to the area/object/mob they are being used with. And DEFINITELY, as it seems everyone agrees, too much color is a headache and a bad thing. We, being a relatively newer MUD, have alot of younger, newer builders. Everyone does a pretty good job, but when first learning to build, tends to make rooms/objects/mobs with huge alternating colors of every rainbow! Fortuneately our head builder has to approve everything that goes in, and an editting team helps out as well to guide people in what is expected. I don't mind a description in a room (ie forest) being all green with one or two words highlighted, but when everything in the room is colored specially, that can get annoying.

Players can also, in some respects, choose their colors for their titles, descriptions etc. but I find that most will tend to go with what they see around them, if not crazy then they won'ts be crazy, and the few that are, well they are quickly discouraged by those of us playing who complain of headaches. hehe.