If you're into serious roleplay including player-politics and rival factions, give Achaea a try. It's a text-based MUD with a high population and the mechanics are as deep as they get for the genre. There's also Lusternia which is similar but smaller population. You might also want to look at TopMUDSites. Based on what you describe, MUDs should be everything you're looking for.

Just got done doing a 2v2 spar in Achaea. My character is a Jester which is a circus-act type class. We have a pretty awesome instakill that I've highlighted in this log.

You set the jack-in-the-box on the ground and quickly wind it with its handle while whispering, 'Wyverex.' 

The cheerful music of a lute begins to emanate from it.

(p) 5920h, 4515m, 25429e, 19300w e 5<-

Wyverex has writhed free of his entanglement by webs.

(p) 5920h, 4515m, 25429e, 19300w e 5<-

Lightning-quick, Wyverex jabs Goggo with an ornate steel rapier.

Lightning-quick, Wyverex jabs Goggo with an ornate steel rapier.

Goggo dodges nimbly out of the way.

(p) 5920h, 4515m, 25429e, 19300w e 5<-

You may drink another health or mana elixir or tonic.

(p) 5920h, 4515m, 25429e, 19300w e 5<-

<-----------------ASSASSINATE----------------->

(p) 5920h, 4515m, 25449e, 19300w ex 5<-

Goggo strikes Wyverex's left leg with a mighty blow.

(p) 5920h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

A snow-white falcon dives at you, raking your face with its talons.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-(-299 Health) 

A look of extreme focus crosses the face of Goggo.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

Goggo eats some prickly ash bark.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

Goggo calls upon the powers of Water and projects his spiritual essence inwardly.

Goggo is surrounded suddenly by a form of his own spiritual essence.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

Wyverex viciously jabs an ornate steel rapier into Goggo.

Horror overcomes Goggo's face as his body stiffens into paralysis.

Wyverex viciously jabs an ornate steel rapier into Goggo.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

A guardian angel surrounds Wyverex with a protective shield.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

Wyverex takes some salve from a vial and rubs it on his legs.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

Goggo calls upon the powers of Fire and projects his spiritual essence inwardly.

Goggo is surrounded suddenly by a form of his own spiritual essence.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

Goggo calls upon the powers of Air and Water and projects his spiritual essence inwardly.

Goggo is surrounded suddenly by a form of his own spiritual essence.

(p) 5621h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-

You feel the Devil leave you.

(p) 5934h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w ex 5<-(+313 Health) 

The falcon dives at you and throws you off balance.

(p) 5934h, 4515m, 25449e, 19312w e 5<-

The music of the jack-in-the-box becomes faster and more frantic and a loud voice from within yells, "Wyverex, I'm a-cooomiiiiing!"

(p) 5934h, 4515m, 25469e, 19312w e 5<-

You bleed 11 health.

(p) 5923h, 4515m, 25469e, 19312w e 5<-(-11 Health) 

Goggo eats a bellwort flower.

(p) 5923h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w e 5<-

<-----------------ASSASSINATE----------------->

(p) 5923h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w ex 5<-

Wyverex takes some salve from a vial and rubs it on his legs.

(p) 5923h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w ex 5<-

You suddenly perceive the vague outline of an aura of rebounding around Wyverex.

(p) 5923h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w ex 5<-

Sticky strands of webbing spray out from Goggo to cover Wyverex.

(p) 5923h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w ex 5<-

A snow-white falcon dives at you, raking your face with its talons.

Your insomnia defence is ripped apart by its talons.

(p) 5615h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w ex 5<-(-308 Health) 

(Party): Goggo says, "Wyverex Webbed!"

(p) 5615h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w ex 5<-

Wyverex begins to tumble towards the west.

(p) 5615h, 4515m, 25469e, 19324w ex 5<-

Niks leaves to the east.

(p) 5615h, 4515m, 25489e, 19336w ex 5<-

The top of the jack-in-the-box flips open, and up pops a jester puppet with razor-sharp teeth. Growing to sudden, improbable size, the spring-loaded puppet rips Wyverex's head off with a single bite.

You have slain Wyverex.

Wyverex leaves to the ether.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

Back when MMOs were a niche, GM driven events were present. I recall quite a few in EQ and CoH when I played. Those events were pretty much massive fights and had no long term affect on the game world, though. GMs are pretty much gone now from MMOs.

I agree and my point is that the GM driven event is still alive in MUDs, so they're still worth a play. I think MUDs could convince people to try them if the interace was easier to use, today's generation is like "wtf is this text? is this a chatroom?" and they never even scratch the surface.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by maplestone

One of the favourite stories I remember hearing from a MUD (although I didn't participate myself) was an epic event where factions were fighting over an artifact, trying to get it back to one base or another.  After hours of back-and-forth fighting, someone summoned a demon to swallow the current artifact-carrier.  Due to a small bug in the way the demon and event interacted, this destroyed the artifact from the game.  When players realized what had happened, the demonologists burst out in a role-playing celebration, declaring that they had successfully sacrificed the artifact.  In response, the canon of the game world was then updated to reflect this.

However, that said, the game apparently later disintegrated in the politics between different immmortals with contradictory views of what happened in the canon.   So I personally prefer development of better, deeper simulations rather than handling it all by hand-written content.

The obvious problem of a game depends so much on interaction is the possibility of disagreement, drama, and the resulting fallout (like quiting and what-not).

That is why personally i limit my interaction to grouping, trading and may be some chatting. Anything else takes too much time/effort, and may not be conducive to getting some fast fun entertainment.

I think the drama is what keeps people coming back, but like you said earlier the majority of the market wants in-depth PK with stunning graphics. That's not to say MUD combat isn't complex, though, check out this 1v1 duel log. http://ge.tt/9V9uOJY/v/0

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Ergload

So in the debate of fancy graphics vs a rich immersive experience, why do the fancy graphics keep winning out?

Ambient informtion.  If you can afford to make it, you can simply communicate background information and atmosphere faster with graphics than with text.

I'm curious about your perception that MUDs were less static than modern games - I wonder if that comes from MUDs generally having a tier of immortals with wide freedom to write and rewrite their corners of the world?   I don't have a good sense of what MUDs have actually been experimenting with in the last couple of decades.

The dynamic events in MUDs are pretty unique, for me. I haven't seen an equivelant in the popular MMOs. A good example is the vertani invasion event that Achaea ran a few years ago. A portal opened to another world and foreign giants came through it. Some players interacted with them and learned a new language, and got the enjoyment of roleplaying with staff-controlled NPCs. Other players decided simply to kill the vertani, which led to a small war between that faction and the vertani NPCs.

It was incredibly dynamic because the event outcome shifted based on the actions of the playerbase and sometimes individual players. For instance, one player snuck into a meeting room and killed the ambasaddor of the vertani NPCs, while another player-faction was negotiating with them. Roleplay is king, so the staff couldn't just resurrect the ambassador and continue like nothing happened, it was now a part of the event.

This stuff doesn't happen in MMOs because the playerbase is so large that the company can't pay attention to them on such a personal level.

There's probably less than 3 companies that still design MUDs that could afford "mass marketing" but it wouldn't do anything for them. 5000 visitors doesn't equal any conversion. It definitely needs to be word-of-mouth. You're right about graphics offering instant-gratification in the beginning, that's why they lose appeal fast (for me).

There's also a lot of really old Diku-style hack'n'slash MUDs that haven't updated with the times and give the genre a bad name. Those are the "boring text games". The ones I play have made the effort to improve their clients and graphical interfaces over the years.

I haven't been playing many MMOs lately, it's just endless grinding from one game to the next. I never feel like I'm actually part of a community or a "faction" that works together to further ideologies. Horde vs Alliance: Who will win? Nobody, because the game isn't designed for one faction to "win the game" in any meaningful sort of way.

I've been playing MUDs a lot and the roleplay immersion is usually 10000x deeper, like this one MUD I'm playing they just blew up an entire player-city, and now all the players are homeless refugees trying to re-organize their military lifestyle without a home. It's very intense and very exciting.

So in the debate of fancy graphics vs a rich immersive experience, why do the fancy graphics keep winning out? I think MUDs should be revived so modern MMO companies will look at the roots of online gaming and see where they went wrong. Lots of MUDs are still popular for some of the reasons I've said.

Achaea definitely needs some exposure because it gave so many ideas to the MMORPG industry

I  want a persistent world MMOFPS, where ranking up allows you to drive new vehicles, call in strikes, new camos, but never do you buy epic gear to kill n00bz. Players can return to a main base to restock on ammo, chat with faction, access/customize vehicles, customize soldier. Battlefield type destruction but needs a smooth engine obviously. But ideally it should be a seamless world. Snipers would dominate though :/

Second Life

here i come bondage fursex community

Any MMOs where you can hop in vehicles like tanks or siege weapons or whatever? Something thats PvP focused, like a fantasy-inspired Battlefield.

check out Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

lvl 1 - 10 is f2p  so you can just do tier 1 pvp forever. lots and lots of twinks so far. apparently since tier 1 is free, tier 2 and tier 3 are a dead grind and then theres lots of action in tier 4 with all of the subscribers.

theres like no dungeons in the game (so far) and im up to lvl 16 (i subscribed so i can advance past all the tier 1 twinks, which is their plan). just run around in the open and you can join parties that are close by you, so while you're out exploring you can just join a group of players without having to be invited.

theres also Iron Realms MUDs which fit everything you want (playerbase, solid pvp, group levelling) but they are MUDs

I hear alot of pay-2-win hate, but I've been playing Warhammer lately and I see /advice channel get spammed alot with gold farmer websites. From 400 gold for $5.84 up to 10000 gold for $146. Also power-levelers.

So my question is whats the difference between pay-2-win / F2P cash shop games and subscription games with gold farmers / power levelers?

It depends on what kind of F2P model. They definitely should not go with any kind of pay-to-win model, and I wouldn't mind shelling out for expansion/DLC as long as it was price appropriate. Don't charge me $20 for an expansion that is like 2 new races and some more endgame content. But also don't go like Sony and throw 100 expansions at us in one year. They should experiment with different ways to monetize, like how Diablo 3 is supposed to let players auction stuff for real money, and then Blizzard gets a percentage. So the Elder Scrolls mmo should ideally have you buy the game for retail value, then keep us constantly supplied with cheap but cool expansions. I wouldn't mind a sort of micro-expansion system, where you buy new races for like $2 per race, as long as they didn't turn it into a pay-to-win where the expansion races had noticeable benefits over stock.