Alajha wrote:

"I've been kicked off of about three MUD's now, because I knew that I had to leave and I couldn't bring myself to type "delete <password>" and just leave."

They kicked you off, because you refused to leave by yourself...?  it doesnt sound like you lost very much.

Excuse me for going off on a tangent:  I am of the opinion that the common "delete" command should not even be on a MUD.  It seems to me to fall into a list of somewhat lame code snippets that people install purely for the sake of having "custom" code (though of course, it comes with some codebases).  Why must you delete your player to leave the game?  Just leave.. stop logging on, and it doesn't matter if those few kilobytes remain on the hard drive of FacelessCorporation MudHosting Server Inc.'s 12th computer.  Allowing players to delete their characters makes a subtle, silent statement about the game's quality:  if the game were of outstanding high quality, then there would be an issue with people getting deleted without their consent by others who somehow get their password.  Thus when the delete command is so easily accessible it sends the subtle message, "this game is not outstandingly important".

As for people who want to start over so they can recycle their name...  that's really tough (sarcasm).  The only person who can really justify NEEDING to keep their name would be an RPer... to whom there would be less need to start over, unless the MUD had a ton of special RP code.