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Muds are not "roleplaying" or "not roleplaying". It's not black and white. You can ever find people roleplaying occasionally on Everquest though you have to look for it.
I also have to say I'm not sure how what he's discussing isn't roleplaying. Guild and religious betrayal, etc. Seems very in-role to me since the only way to betray those things is to accept the roleplaying aspect of them in the first place (else there's nothing to betray).
And I don't know about you, but if I wasn't affected in real life by playing muds, I wouldn't bother playing them. I get happy, I get sad, I get angry, I get protective, etc. The ability to arouse those emotions is what has always attracted me to muds and what are one of the most interesting aspects, imho. Even in a single-player game, the highest compliment I can pay to it is that it was able to arouse strong emotions in me. Game developers often use Steve Meretzky's first Infocom text game Planetfall as one of the greatest games ever because the emotional attachment the game was able to build in you towards Floyd, your robot sidekick, was absolutely profound. The game is legendary for that, in fact. (and three cheers for text too)
--matt
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