[SnowTroll]

Bad generalization.

A MUD is a community of players, all collectively playing a persistent game together. Not all MUDs are roleplay-required environments; some are entirely OOC and outright discourage acting like the "virtual world" is real, instead encouranging players to talk on channels and privately, out of character, for the puropse of working together or against each other at the game, or just gab about real life or other issues. On those MUDs, they'd tell you that geeks who insist on roleplaying are the ones you don't want playing the game.

Even in an intense roleplaying MUD, most admins want their players to be a friendly and connected community out of character. That's why most MUDs have forums and/or wikis, in addition to or as an alternative to in-game public and private forms of out of character communication. You want players who like the game, collectively and together, and like to discuss the game, or just get to chat and know each other outside of the game a little bit, so you know that there are real people out there you're actually roleplaying with.

Very, very few people are attracted to a completely isolated virtual world, with absolutely no sense of community and no means of out of character communication with anybody, where they just log in and disconnectedly RP with strangers. Hardly anybody gets off on their sense of principle and the pure integrity of a virtual environment, when by its very nature, that virtual environment is already unrealistic and limited due to the limitations of coding and building.