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The age of a mud does matter in several ways, altough Valg is right that you might be able to find examples of both 'poor' old muds and 'good' new ones. Generally speaking, the chances are much higher of a new mud being more unstable, having more bugs, more crashes, more unscheduled downtime, more stock code and zones than one that's been on line for several years. And worst of all, a new mud is much more prone to suffer drastic changes like equip wipes, pwipes or folding down completely. Developing a mud simply takes a lot of time, especially building is extremely time consuming, so unless the Mud has been under developing for quite some time before opening officially, (which is rather rare) it obviously must be at least in an 'unfinished' stage, to put it politely. Not to mention all the inferior stock muds run by incompetent imps, who have no ambitions whatsoever, and just want to be able to powertrip on the players, or brag to their friends of having a mud of their own.
For me it's a lot different if you look at things from a player's point of view or a builder's however.
Muds in the early developing stages can be very entertaining to play. Something new is added almost every day, and there is often a sort of pioneer spirit, shared by the staff and the players. Even bugs are often quite funny, and finding them is a challenge in its own. (Depending on what type of player you are, the next step is either abusing them or helping the staff to iron them out. Both can be 'rewarding'...) Some players actively seek out budding muds in beta testing, because they like the special atmosphere in developing muds.
New muds also generally offer you a chance to put your mark on it as a builder. It can be hard to make an impact on a developed mud, where there already is a well established staff hierarchy, and a world that is already quite large. Your options of what you want to build might get hemmed in a bit too much . Also in a new mud even comparatively inexperienced builders can become head builders in a jiffy. (Which of course often is a blessing in disguise, even though some of them grow with the resposibility).
However, if you value stability and a good working environment, the established mud is a much better choice. All builders hate losing work to crashes, and the nightmare scenario is losing it all, because the mud unexpectedly folds down, (in the worst case leaving you without even a contact address for the admin).
This happened to me twice before I found my current haven, and that's when I swore never ever to build on a new mud again. But the second time I was at least lucky enough to persuade the owner to send me my zone files. I was also lucky enough to meet a kind and experienced head builder in the new mud, with an understanding for my frustration. They even managed to convert most parts of my zone files, so that I could resume work on them, even though their codebase was rather different from the one I'd worked in before. It must have meant a lot of extra work for them, so making this effort for a relatively new builder is something that I really appreciate.
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