[plamzi]

I agree with the general sentiment, but can't help to point out that it's a chicken-and-egg situation, and both the chicken and the egg have moved on. As in, it's a tad bit late in history to expect excited crowds to gather around a text-based game, even if it's awesome, professionally run, and totally free.

I'm of the opinion that if popular MUD codebases in the late 90's had more permissive licenses, with clear provisions for commercial use, the community would have been able to retain more members longer. The two well-known commercial operations remain in a fairly good shape, while the thousands of free MUDs have been more than decimated, with only a handful having anything near a healthy playerbase.

With very few exceptions, the admins and devs of free MUDs have neither the resources, nor the desire, to go after new players.

I'm absolutely convinced that there are people out there who have never heard of a MUD or played one, but who would pay a good amount of money to experience depth they have not imagined before. The question is, how do you reach those people and get them to stick around long enough to realize this is possible?