[KaVir]

You might find this thread of interest:

Actually there are quite a few muds using the balance/affliction style of manual combat. First introduced by Avalon, the system is at least as old as DikuMUD, and has its fair share of fans (although I must admit it's not to my taste).

Worse still, when taken to the extreme (scripting is required to compete) you're effectively back to an automated combat system.

It's not just about accepting a more difficult system because you don't know any better, either - even if both systems require equal effort to learn, many veteran mudders will make assumptions based on their prior experience - these are the players who tend to switch off the hints (and then have no idea what to do), ignore help files (and then get confused about how things work) and choose advanced creation options (and then not know how to play them). This can end up making the game slower (and more frustrating) to learn.