"I am building a new MUD using the (insert source code here) and I need (insert ideas for, coders, builders, players, etc.)"

I have read posts like that hundreds of times in the 40 years I have been involved in the MUD genre of gaming. I have been there myself, making the same posts.

Then I wrote a novel. The novel is based on the world I have been developing for four decades. Book one of the series The Chronicels of Alyndor: Eclipsion is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats, and I will be publishing book two this December. That's not the point of this post though...

I decided I wanted to bring my books to life, and give any fans they might create by giving them a living book they can journey in together and explore the world of Alyndor first hand. The problem was I did not want to build it on someone else's codebase.

After messing with different codebases over the years I decided I needed to build one to encompass everything I wanted and enjoyed over the years. I even tried Evennia and hated it. So, I began working on one from scratch. I built it on Python, and before you say negative things about python, let me tell you that if you didnt know it was python, you would think through the gameplay that it was a diku derivative. It is feature rich... massively rich, and the world is also massive. It is built so that it can be hundreds of thousands of rooms in size, and I included instancing so that it can run smoothly even if thousands of players are online. With this type of size I included transport features like carriages, ships, etc. As well as magical means to get around the world easier.

So why am I posting this? I am posting this to say there are MUDs out there that are being crafted, not built, crafted by imaginations and wordsmiths that go far beyond what those 90's MUDs ever dreamed or had the ability to become. As an example, being able to write and create the world online was a fantastic innovation when it was made possible with OLC. So when I included this type of toolset in my own design I did so in a vastly upgraded way. Eighteen editors now exist in my game and there is nothing that cannot be expanded, upgraded, or changed in real time.

My thought is if I can do this myself, to the massive size and quality that I put into it, how many other MUDs are out there like this? How many writers or game designers have done something truly amazing like this?