How do I play one of these games?

For a full answer on that, please check the Resources page.

How can we get our MUD added to the listing?

Right now this is not automated. We do still have a backlog, but if you want us to move yours up or you believe it may not be in the backlog, please contact us via the email address in the footer of this webpage.

How do you collect the data, and how often?

The main source is a protocol called MSSP. This transmits several pieces of information when connecting to a MUD. Not all MUDs support it, and many don't fill out their information, so we also have a number of other methods we attempt, such as checking the list of online players if available, or alternate commands that some MUDs support.

Normally, we check once per hour, but MSSP includes a Crawl Delay option that a server can set to tell us to collect less frequently.

We are aware of several other inter-MUD protocols that can possibly be used to get information, but we're still working on adding support for more than MSSP.

What's the difference between a MUD, MUCK, MOO, etc?

At their core, all of these are just different codebases for a text-based chat interface. Each codebase does things a little differently and has different features or built-in conveniences that may or may not be useful, like built-in webservers or other add-ons.

In general, a MUD is a progression-oriented game with levels and NPC monsters to fight and sometimes quests to do, while MUX/MUSH etc tend to be more focused on player interaction and have fewer tools to automate NPCs, and MUCKs tend to have stronger tools but require a lot more effort up front to get them going. These are just generalizations, because what it really comes down to is the preference of the admins. They're all largely text-based chats.

Can this help me find a MUD I'm interested in?

Maybe! We hope so! That's kind of the point!

Searching by genre and gameplay is the easiest way. We track connection info like number of players, but do keep in mind this is not always a reliable indicator of activity. It's better than nothing, but everyone's needs are different. A MUD with five people on it may be much better suited for what you want than a MUCK with 500 people on it.

We updated our MSSP info but the listing isn't changing, why not?

If we had to set an override to display information because your MSSP info was not complete or malformed in some way, that override stays in place even when you correct it. Contact our email below to have us remove the override, in most cases it's done very quickly.

Our listing is incorrect, how do we fix it?

That depends on what is incorrect!

If no override is in place, just fix your MSSP info. Next update the listing will update.

If no override is in place, but you did not return ANY MSSP info before, also contact us. The backend will not check if we have set it to use other methods, and we usually need to set a flag to tell it to look for MSSP. Sometimes this is not the case, depending on the server codebase. This is especially true if moving from an Untracked Server to the tracked listing.

If an override is in place and you cannot update the MSSP info, please have an administrator of the server contact us at the email below. For minor updates non-administrators can request corrections.

Under no circumstances should an administrator encourage non-administrators to attempt to contact us to change these values. It's not the responsibility of non-admin to maintain the system.

What Genres are valid to return with MSSP?

For the full specification, see here

Technically any Genre can be returned, but the official MSSP-approved Genres are: Adult, Fantasy, Historical, Horror, Modern, Mystery, None, Romance, Science Fiction, Spiritual

For ease of categorization we also accept the following:

• Anime: We might get rid of this one, but generally there's a huge difference between Anime/Magical Girl and Fantasy/Magical Girl in what people are searching for.
• Multitheme: Indicates a server dedicated heavily to crossover of multiple genres.
• Superhero: This was added because otherwise it would fall under Modern or Science Fiction, and what people expect out of those is usually very different from a Superhero game.

How often do you update the website?

All of our administrators have full time jobs and other matters to attend to. This website is updated when we have time, usually once or twice a month, but many changes do not deal with the web interface you can see. That is updated less frequently, a few times a year.

What does delisted server mean?

A delisted server is a server that we don't want to advertise. Some delisted servers don't show up on the stat tracker at all, but others remain tracked, but show up as "Delisted Server" when queried.

In almost all cases, a server is delisted by their own request. Usually this means they are not accepting new players.

Very rarely, a server has to be delisted due to abusive behavior from the admin of the server. It is difficult to get to this level, and the only current known examples had to be delisted due to a truly staggering combination of incompetence and malice from the admin and players of the servers.