[Threshold]

You realize there is not a single game on the internet that fulfills that condition, right?

With money people can buy superior hardware, a better internet connection, gold or other currency, items, powerlevelling services, characters, or accounts from third parties. The third party gold/item sales (RMT - Real Money Trade) industry is a multi-billion (yes, billion) dollar industry.

Honestly, I think this interpretation of the word "free" just doesn't jibe with common sense or common, real-world usage. I think the only reason some people choose to insist on it here at TMS is for purely personal, competitive reasons. They want to obtain some kind of marketing advantage against MUDs that are not "free" in their eyes, and think this is a good way to go about it.
I know exactly why this discussion crops up every 6-12 months. A very few people decide they are jealous of someone else's success, or the number of players they have, or something of that nature, and they want to take a shot at them. So they lash out in this one little way in the misguided hope that they can obtain players for their own mud they feel they would not have gained otherwsise. This is, quite honestly, a false hope. Good marketing is not done by trying to control how other people market their own products or services. Good marketing is done by finding new, creative ways to make your own product attractive to potential users.

The same people who want 100 categories of free and pay are all too frequently the same people who oppose search options for "Professionally Run" vs. "Hobbyist Run" categories. If the real motive was giving players information that is useful to them, they would wholeheartedly support this differentiation as well. There are an enormous amount of people who prefer games where the operators have a livelihood stake in the continued, successful operation of the game. In fact, since the majority of gamers play games that are "Professionally Run", it is quite obvious that this is one of the more important factors in players' choice of game. But accepting this type of categorization runs contrary to the goal of "stealing players" from the more popular games, so you won't see the same level of support for that type of search differentiation.

Ultimately, players will find and play the game that best suits them. There is never going to be community-wide agreement on the definition of terms, so it is really best to just let each mud describe itself in the manner its operators feel is most accurate, and let potential players show their agreement or disagreement by choosing to play or not play.