10 Apr, 2012, Tyche wrote in the 1st comment:
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Quote
Muds listed at TMC
total - 1097

Muds by family
DIKU - 487
TINY - 330
LP - 147
UNKNOWN - 115
ABER - 11
TALKER - 4
BBS - 3

The diku mud group
MercMud - 320
CircleMud - 100
DikuMud - 53
SillyMud - 11
VME - 2
SoI - 1

The merc mud group
ROM - 152
Smaug - 85
GodWars - 32
MercMud - 23
EnvyMud - 16
NiMud - 5
TFE - 3
EoS - 2
Ack!Mud - 2

The circle mud group
CircleMud - 83
TBAMud - 6
CWG - 4
LexiMud - 2
AwakeMud - 2
EmpireMud - 1
DBSaga - 1
RoAMud - 1

The rom mud group
ROM - 120
ROT - 22
DoT - 6
EmberMud - 2
GhostMud - 1
Oblivion - 1

The smaug mud group
Smaug - 52
SWR - 25
AFKMud - 5
Resort - 3

The tiny mud group
Mush - 221
Muck - 60
Moo - 38
ColdMud - 5
Muse - 3
TinyMud - 2
UberMud - 1

The mush mud group
TinyMux - 70
PennMush - 64
Mush(unk.) - 50
TinyMush - 27
RhostMush - 10

The muck mud group
Muck(unk.) - 20
ProtoMuck - 17
FuzzBall - 16
GlowMuck - 4
NMC - 3

The lp mud group
LPMud - 64
MudOS - 35
LDMud - 20
DGD - 8
FluffOS - 7
Genesis - 6
Amylaar - 6
SWLPC - 1

LP Mudlibs
Unknown - 95
Nightmare - 9
TMI - 8
Heaven7 - 5
DiscWorld - 5
CDLib - 5
Limabean - 4
LPMud245 - 3
Skylib - 2
DeadSouls - 2
Dragon - 1
Merentha - 1
ZombieLib - 1
CoreDump - 1
DarkeLib - 1
ColonyLib - 1
EverLib - 1
UNILib - 1
StarLib - 1

The top mud codebases
ROM - 120
CircleMud - 83
TinyMux - 70
PennMush - 64
LPMud(unk.) - 64
DikuMud - 53
Smaug - 52
Mush(unk.) - 50
Moo - 38
MudOS - 35
TinyMush - 27
GodWars - 27
SWR - 25
MercMud - 23
ROT - 22
Muck(unk.) - 20
LDMud - 20
ProtoMuck - 17
FuzzBall - 16
EnvyMud - 14
RhostMush - 10
SillyMud - 9
AberMud - 8
DGD - 8
Mordor - 7
CoffeeMud - 7
FluffOS - 7
DoT - 6
Genesis - 6
Amylaar - 6
10 Apr, 2012, Kline wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
Ack!Mud - 2

Still on life support!

Tyche said:
LP Mudlibs
Unknown - 95


That many "custom" libs? Or truly unknown / not-categorized further? Interesting data at any rate, thanks. Curious how many (out of the entire list) are actually alive with more than the owner connecting to them.
10 Apr, 2012, Tyche wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Kline said:
That many "custom" libs? Or truly unknown / not-categorized further?

The TMC listing just doesn't contain enough information.
I use a big ball of regular expressions to make the guesses I can at both the server and mudlib.
Some of them I happen to know and just scan the mud's name.
10 Apr, 2012, Tyche wrote in the 4th comment:
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I dumped the data in a spreadsheet and exported some charts in html.
You can find them HERE.
10 Apr, 2012, Zeno wrote in the 5th comment:
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Good stuff, thanks Tyche.

Also thanks for posting here, my bot picked it up: https://twitter.com/#!/MUD_News

(I haven't fixed the bot for TMC yet)
10 Apr, 2012, Kline wrote in the 6th comment:
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Man that's a sad trend to see overall; such a sharp decline. It's not anything I didn't already know, but it's more disappointing to see it visualized. At least there was a small upswing going into 2012? :)
10 Apr, 2012, Hades_Kane wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
Man that's a sad trend to see overall; such a sharp decline. It's not anything I didn't already know, but it's more disappointing to see it visualized. At least there was a small upswing going into 2012? :)


Well, I kinda hate to say it, but the more of them that die off, that might be better news for the rest of us as the already thinning pool of players will have a chance to concentrate in fewer places, helping those that do stay up.
10 Apr, 2012, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 8th comment:
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Too many choices result in a bad choice as you cannot humanly evaluate all the possibilities by yourself (and even if you made the best choice, you would not know it hence a depressing feeling you may miss something).
That is called the fallacy of choice. So no, dont hate yourself for wanting less choices, it is actually a better reasoning than all the open source hippies claim.
10 Apr, 2012, Ssolvarain wrote in the 9th comment:
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Given enough time, it's not hard to focus on a specific codebase and explore your options.

I'll often go mud hunting, only to find I already have a character on a mud I've tried and forgotten. I'd like to think by now I've experienced at least a few levels on most of the diku derivatives listed on TMC.
10 Apr, 2012, Idealiad wrote in the 10th comment:
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In practical terms there's a difference between too many choices and a defined number of choices though, in this case the number of muds. It's not easy but quite doable to sample all the muds out there.
10 Apr, 2012, Hades_Kane wrote in the 11th comment:
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Well, we can also hope its the lower quality ones dying off, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Even if the pool of MUDs shrank and upped the overall quality, it might make it harder on one hand to compete because there'd be less of an obvious choice between the buggy unicorn puke MUD and the tastefully done stable game, but the hobby as a whole, I would imagine, would benefit overall by the average level of quality increasing.
10 Apr, 2012, arholly wrote in the 12th comment:
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Yes, but then you have a greater barrier to entry because you are looking at a higher overall quality.
10 Apr, 2012, Tyche wrote in the 13th comment:
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Kline said:
At least there was a small upswing going into 2012? :)

Icculus purges the list of inactive muds about once a year. I'm pretty sure he hasn't done it since the 2011 data I used.
I expect it to fall below 1000. :-(
10 Apr, 2012, Scandum wrote in the 14th comment:
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I could only connect to 807 of them during my last crawl. While at it, there are 30 MUDs supporting MSDP now.
11 Apr, 2012, Kline wrote in the 15th comment:
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Hades_Kane said:
Well, I kinda hate to say it, but the more of them that die off, that might be better news for the rest of us as the already thinning pool of players will have a chance to concentrate in fewer places, helping those that do stay up.

Given that you are actively trying to run a game that will be successful and attract players and that I am not, I think we are seeing this from two different sides.

I do agree that for those of you still trying to keep your games and player bases alive it probably is a good thing as the signal to noise ratio has lowered. There are more odds of a fresh playing selecting, and sticking with, your game now. Or even veteran players who are just looking for something different from where they're at. Me, though, I'm past actively running and promoting any games. Yes, I still have one or two up and running for the handful of nostalgic people who pop in every few months to see if it's alive, but I haven't touched them past that in years really.

My part of this community is just enjoying a hobby of self-improvement through development and hoping to inspire younger people to take a similar interest. I still remember how "magical" things were when I stumbled into MUDs as a kid, and how much more "amazing" they became to me when I learned how to even change some words or colors in the code and see the effect of my changes in the game. I'm trying to keep that alive for the next generation. I want kids to learn this stuff; it's not only a small piece of history but has taught me a lot and even given me some skills that, from a hobby, have helped me get further in my job. So for me, to see "less overall activity", even if they are all unicorn rainbow puke, is a sad thing.
11 Apr, 2012, Chris Bailey wrote in the 16th comment:
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Consolidate, reinforce, expand. I need to thesaurus my way toward a memorable acronym but that is by basic outlook on all things.
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