You realize that Gemstone III, for instance, is arguably older than you've been MUDing (original Gemstone started in 1987 and was commercial, of course), and that the team (Bartle and Trubshaw) that did the very first MUD went commercial in 1986? The MUDing world was almost completely dominated by pay-to-play MUDs until early 90s. It's reversed now, even if the biggest text MUDs are commercial. The vast majority of text MUDs are free, and the vast majority of people playing them are playing free MUDs.
--matt
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