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Well done areas on a MUD take a combination of skills, both technical and artistic. The actual building itself takes a measure of technical skill (especially on an LPMud where rooms can have active code in them). The descriptions of the rooms take the skills of a creative writer, which is difficult to reduce to a series of rules, though I can make a few suggestions.
Number one: room descriptions are more akin to writing a short story than a novel. You need to keep the description short and to the point and capture the attention of the reader quickly. Writers speak of the 'hook', a turn of phrase which keeps your audience reading.
Number two: Theme. You should have a firm idea of the theme of the area in your mind and carry it out not by spacial repetition, but by descriptive 'motifs' which tie the area together. It helps if you can visualize the area in your mind.
Number three: Atmosphere: The main description of the room needs to be evocative of the atmosphere of the room. One way I do this to use loaded adjectives and specific synonyms. Pay attention to the connotations of a word and use a good thesaurus. The better ones will give shades of meaning for the various synonyms.
For instance, I have an area with a middle-eastern atmosphere. I could have called the central market a 'market', but I call it a 'souk' instead. There are many connotations loaded into the word souk that just aren't there in the word market. Or consider the sequence of words 'valuables', 'treasure', 'loot' and 'booty'.
Number four: God is in the details. The main description of the room needs to be short enough to be grasped quickly, but most codebases allow you to add 'extra descriptions' to a room which a player can see if they look at them. My policy is to make an extra description for every (significant) noun in the main description. For instance, a table described as a 'wooden table' in the room description might have an extra description of 'A sturdy oak table darkened with age. The surface is scarred and marked with the stains of heavy use.'
Number five: Smells and Sounds. If your codebase allows it, smells and sounds can add depth to an area. In the mudlib I work with, a player can sniff or listen in an area to see smell and sound messages, or they will see them as the description of the room if it is too dark for them to otherwise see.
Number six: Dynamic descriptions. Again, this will depend on your codebase, but I tend to make the descriptions of my rooms vary by time of day: Differences between the day and night descriptions at the very least such as candles being lit at night (I also make the smells and sounds different during the day and night.)
Number seven: Research. This of course depends on the theme of your area, but see if you can find real world examples of what you are trying to build. Look at pictures, research the technical architectural terms. Is that archway a rounded roman arch, a pointed gothic arch or an ogee-shaped middle-eastern arch? Are the walls timber-framed stone or wattle-and-daub? Is that ceiling a barrel vault or a groin vault?
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