Disclaimer: Account of a brief (~1hr) experience. Apologies ahead of time if it seems like it's jumping around or otherwise disjointed, but I'm writing with little sleep.

Perspective: PC gamer (since late 80s/early 90s), MUDder; also console experience (Intellivision, NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Gameboy, DS, PSP, PS3). FPS, FPS-spinoff, RTS and RPG genres preferred.

Pros: Free, populated, playable, responsive (lag-free), bug-free (so far) and with plenty of character variety. A player dropped by in the first few seconds of my character's existence to say hi.

ANSI color is not always available in MUDs and can be horrendous to behold in others, but is decently represented here.

Stats are visible, which can be good or bad depending on your perspective. Disguised stats (in other MUDs) are prettier to look at, but can be hard to decipher until you learn what numbers or percentages they're roughly associated with.

Cons: Character creation was a bit odd. I had to look up race/class descriptions on the website, since it wouldn't let me access them while creating.

'Roleplaying encouraged,' but not supported. I'm sure this isn't the case in other circumstances, but it was immediately apparent with a 'who-list' screenfull of titles just shy of leet-speak. The player that dropped by to say 'hi' was caught in the awkward situation of both of us automatically knowing each others' names, but trying to introduce herself anyway.

Yes, names are immediately known to everyone in a room, which precludes the use character adjectives (not that I could find the command anyway). In some MUDs, there's a bit of tension involved if a grim-faced male dwarf walks in the room. Not so if you've already met and know him as Baldie the Pacifist Candydwarf. Knowing someone else's name right away removes the point of introductions the moment you type 'who' (if their titles are of any indication).

Because the site's helpfiles weren't all the way fleshed out, I wasn't exactly sure of what racial characteristics my character had. In-game chat was able to tell me that my race was 'cute' and 'crazy' but that was it. When I went to their site to ask on the forums, I found out that I had to level to 15 first (eh...). That would be a waste of time if it turned out that the particular race looked like everything I didn't visualize it as. This prevented me from writing anything more than one generic line in the description box. So if you're at all ignorant of the lore, you'd better hope there's a good helpfile somewhere because everyone else knows it and so should you.

Stats are incomprehensible. Is a 497 on something all that much different than 503?

Final Thought: I suppose a MUDs either your type or it isn't. Given some time, I could get into it, but I'd probably end up moving back to one of the more RP oriented ones (PK-enabled, of course).