[Ide]

I've run across a few muds that gather data on which areas are visited and how often, and by whom. Setting up a good suite of tools to gather and process this information would be the first step, and while it's easy to put this off in favor of adding features and content, I think there are certain things you can't just learn anecdotally from your players.

As far as making it smaller, this depends on your setting and theme obviously. It might be hard to justify closing off a large desert or forest area for example, but you could rework the areas (perhaps making them substantially smaller in the process) to make them more suitable for your game. One thing that muds can and should take advantage of is the rapid development and world changes achievable with text content.