[KaVir]

The programming language is just a tool, and what you can achieve with it is limited only by your skill.

It's the "familiarity" thing. It's a commonly made observation that players will use their first mud as the measuring stick when judging other muds - if their first mud was a SMAUG, for example, then they're probably going to stick with SMAUGs. They might try a ROM or Envy, because they have a somewhat similar feel (due to all being derived from Merc). They're less likely to try a Circle or Silly, but they might. They're even less likely still to play an LPMud or a MUSH. Even players who complain about stock features, demanding something new and original, rarely want something that deviates too much from what they're used to.

The same holds true when it comes to creating a mud. The budding mud owner has a general vision of what s/he wants to create, and that vision will almost always be in terms relative to their former mud. If they're from a Diku background, then in most cases they'll want to create something very much like their former DikuMUD, and so it makes sense to simply download DikuMUD as a starting point. The same with LPmuds, MUSHes, and so on. It's a very difficult mindset to break out of, particularly if all your experience comes from just one mud.

If you look at the people creating muds from scratch, in many cases you'll find that they're former players of a mud that isn't available for public download. An obvious example of this would be Avalon, which inspired the IRE games, which in turn have inspired several more muds. Sooner or later one of those muds will lower the entry barrier by releasing its source code, and then you'll see a surge of "stock" Avalon-style muds.

I've seen a few muds that can import them, including CoffeeMud. It seems fairly unlikely to me that someone who's willing to move away from Diku would want to have a stock Diku world, though.