[KaVir]

I don't see the correlation, to be honest. I've seen low quality pay-for-perks muds and high quality free muds.

However it's a well-observed phenomena that "", and that also applies when it comes to mud development. That's why Diku players usually go on to develop Diku muds, LPMud players usually go on to develop LPMuds, TinyMUD players usually go on to develop TinyMUDs, and so on.

The same happened with Avalon, which (as far as I'm aware) was the first of the balance/equilibrium muds. There were actually three Avalon-style muds in development in the late 90s: Cardea, Orone and Achaea. But over the years since then I've seen many more.

Avalon is a commercial mud, and this has trickled down its family tree in much the same way as other design decisions. Achaea made the rather wise decision to follow the same pay-for-perks model that several other muds had started using, rather than sticking to Avalon's pay-to-play model, but it was still very much designed to be commercial.

You can see the same with newer balance/equilibrium muds as well - most of their developers seem to be former IRE players, and their muds tend to offer the same style of gameplay and payment model. So while you may well be able to find other muds with balance/equilibrium, I suspect you'll find they're all pay-for-perks.