In the late 1980s, I helped teach MUD coding at TMI (The MUD Institute) for a short while. From there I was recruited by David Bennett (Pinkfish) to help build a new MUD he was starting. It is called Discworld and is based upon the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. It still exists and I pop in every few years. I created the forest east of Ankh-Morpork. You can read about it here:
Discworld MUD - Wikipedia. You can play it here:
Discworld Mud.
It was fun, but also frustrating. The MUDLib was undergoing rapid development in the early days and whenever they released a new library, all my code broke and I was spending more time reworking old stuff than creating new game material. I really loved writing the stories and adding silly humor. Check it out if you’re so inclined.
At TMI, we spent a lot of time talking about how to break out of the room-based design to allow free movement in 2-D space. We also tried to figure out how to make it graphical instead of text based, but all we had then were 9600 BAUD modems. About a decade or so later, my nephew told me about a new MMORPG he was playing. It solved both those problems. It’s called World of Warcraft and I’ve been playing it or Rift ever since.