[camlorn]

Well, yes and no. The problem as I see it with most muds isn't that you're always entering the same command, or rather, that's not the root of the problem.

Consider. I cast fireball. Great. Nothing else happens, so just cast fireball again. Boring.

Instead, I cast oil. then I cast fireball. Now, the greece gets lit, and continues to burn. But, my opponent wants to counter it, so he casts rainstorm, a weather control spell to wash it off before I can send the fireball. So, knowing that he will do this (a trivial ai for mobs, or so I think), I cast fixed weather, a high level spell that counters weather magic...etc. Perhaps I threw the oil, or it's napalm, or something; the point is that imho that's a better way than some sort of automate the combat even further. The trick is to slow down combat, i.e. add a range element, so I can get out of melee range, lowering the ammount of spam and damage I take, or just outright making combat slow (not my favoured sollution, but it would work).

In short, don't look for less player input, look for more; I could come up with a ton of examples. Maybe a warrior has techniques that increase a stat called cuts (not something the player can see, just a convenient conceptualization), and carries around saltwater to throw on foes. Not realistic, but fun, and something that I'd probably do. It's your mud and your choice, however, just saying what I think.

And sorry, thought you were hoping for players to all come running or something; that's just the impression I got. I didn't mean to be patronizing, but it seemed to me you were asking for someone to come play your mud after like 6 hours of development. That said, most of us couldn't write even a basic mud codebase in 6 hours and a large number in 6 days, so congrats.