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There is one important difference though; (most) muds evolve, while 'normal' computer games do not (other than patches, bugfixes, and the rare expansion pack). The major exception to this is mods, but you don't see those on the best-seller lists anyway (because you don't usually need to buy them).
If you played and enjoyed Diablo, you'll probably also have bought Diablo II - because it's a 'better' version of a game you already enjoyed. Equally, if you enjoyed Diablo II you'll probably also have bought the expansion pack for the same reason. You'll also see people who enjoyed Diablo II moving on to other games which are similar, but with some feature or other they consider 'better'. The same logic applies to other computer games - people like the game, but they want some new toys to play with as well, because the existing gameplay is starting to feel a bit stale.
A well-run mud has no need for sequals or expansion packs, though, because it is being constantly updated anyway. A player may look somewhere else if they don't like the direction their favourite mud is taking (and some players may even start their own spinoffs), but there's no need to move elsewhere just to find some new toys for your favourite gaming environment.
A regular computer game can make its own niche just by adding a handful of 'cool' features that will appeal to players from similar games that lack those features. A mud cannot do this anywhere near as effectively, because if those features are really worth having the older muds can simply replicate them themselves. I remember the days when things like "ANSI colour" and "OLC" were selling points - these days they're so common that they're not even worth mentioning as features. For normal computer games, each such feature has to wait until the next generation before it appears, so that the newer the game the more advanced it tends to be - but for muds, the reverse is true, with such features being applied retroactively so that the older a mud is the more advanced it tends to be (unless it stagnates).
Marc LeBlanc seems to have fallen into the same semantics trap he's arguing against (indeed he almost seems to be making a straw man argument). Innovation and originality doesn't have to mean something utterly different - indeed, as he points out, that's not even possible. You cannot develop in a vacuum - everything draws ideas and inspiration from elsewhere. However you can certainly innovate in terms of evolving and combining old ideas into new concepts, and I think that's what most people mean when they speak of innovation. There's a big difference between taking existing game features to the 'next level', and copying the gameplay entirely and just relying on eye candy to sell the product.
In mud terms, 'originality' tends to have three different meanings. The first is similar to that used in copyright law - an original world or codebase being one that you created yourself, rather than downloading from an ftp server. The second meaning refers to ideas and concepts drawn from outside the mudding community - for example there's a mud which is heavily based on RTS games such as C&C and Warcraft, yet the concept is fairly original when applied to a mud environment. The third meaning is similar to the innovation argument detailed previously, with 'originality' meaning something that significantly expands on an existing idea or set of ideas - a "combat system" may be an old idea, but with sufficient effort you can certainly create a very original spin on it.
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