While still in early beta, Dark Realms: City of Syne is an interesting effort. The owner 'Chad' is very interested in helping new arrivals. His programming approach is a bit different from many other MUDs I played, however he appears to be a sharp coder who can address issues rather quickly. and he seems to have a good sense of the long view. I have never experienced lag, and only once did my character get into a situation where I was unable to play for a while due to a glitch (my character got into an uncompleted area).

I believe the game has lots of potential, but at this point could benefit greatly from more players, both to flesh-out the fantasy world, and also to give Chad some help and feedback. On the down side Chad seems to have is own way of doing things, and I'm occasionally stymied with finding the right commands. For example, to get a list of what a shopkeeper is offering, the command is 'stock.' On top of that, the on-line help system isn't presented intuitively so nothing is returned when one types '@help merchant' nor for '@help shop,' '@help buy' etc. Shopkeepers don't immediately give you coin for purchases, either, but keep an account instead, and the player needs to 'ask for 'change'' to get the money. These approaches are very different from other MUDs I've tried. If it were not for Chad often being on-line (or quickly answering e-mails) I would probably have abandoned the game some time ago.