[Ide]

That's kind of not the point though. People on RP muds don't type in Elvish, do they?

Don't forget about Shockwave and Flash, though. For example:



This simply is not as a high a barrier to entry as it once was -- see the above link.

I don't see why this necessarily is the case. There is nothing stopping the pool of graphical muds from diversifying more than text muds. In fact I would argue that with the public profile of graphical games so much larger than text games, more talent will flow to graphical muds, and text muds will be less diverse due to lack of development.

Currently I think text muds have two main distinguishing features -- they are text based (duh), and a small team can create an awesome text mud without a lot of resources. It seems much harder to do the latter with a graphical mud, though surely the tools for that will improve in the future.

Nevertheless I think for people who like to read, a developer on their own could create a really unique and fun game with a text mud, and this is what we should stress as the 'strength' of the text mud medium, not that a text game is better at RP or whatever.