I've been playing AA for over 10 years. I've played other muds but few compare to it.

For the explorer sort, this mud packs quality into its areas like no other mud. Pretty much everything can be touched, smelled, sniffed, tasted, searched. The NPCs being made for the game keep getting smarter. The classes are top-notch, it has the fewest bugs and typos I've seen in any mud, and the players are extremely friendly and fun.

For the competitive sort, there are many top ten lists to compete on, from killing to discovering new areas to being the best player at trivia or poker or chess or flaghunting or any of the other myriad of games available.

In the past year or so, AA has seen some pretty major improvements. We have an entire new continent, with dozens more areas, higher level monsters to go with our new levels (up to level 50 now!), some truely epic creatures that are akin to WoW raid size. We have mining, we have a new guild up north, new quests and miniquests, and best of all, a new class.

The artificer class has finally hit AA. About 7 years in making, worked on by a number of people, the class is one of the hugest, complex and most compelling classes I have played in a MUD. You can produce just about everything, specialising in one of two different areas - spellforging, and spellcrafting. You can build mechanomagical monstrosities, enchant wands that rain fire, or just make lots of money forging different items for people.

I definitely recommend trying it. Some guilds are more newbie friendly than others (don't jump right in bed with the war-mongering Scythe clan!), but bears, knights and snowfolk are extremely friendly to newbies. For those that have tried the game, come back and see what's on offer now!