BatMUD A living world since 1990

Everything in BatMUD happens through text, and the text does a lot of work. You type what you do: search a painting, open a door, kick a dwarf. Rooms describe themselves as you move, and combat runs in short rounds where you queue your commands and watch them play out. There is a long tutorial that plays like a small tabletop campaign, and after it you are loose in a massive open realm with hundreds of zones built over decades. No graphics, no music, just a world described well enough that you picture it yourself.

The heart of BatMUD is the character you build and the one you build after it. You pick from a huge range of races and guilds, spend experience on skills and spells, and shape a build that plays its own way. When you are ready for something different, you reincarnate: start over as a new combination, carrying much of your progress with you. A troll fighter this life, an elf merchant-alchemist the next. Death has weight, since dying while carrying experience costs you some, so there is a constant decision between pushing deeper and heading back to spend what you have earned. Locked races and secret societies give long-term goals to chase across lifetimes.

Parties of up to eight adventurers head out together to fight and loot, and the client's party interface keeps everyone's state in view. Player-versus-player combat is part of the world, and it can happen when you least expect it. Beyond fighting, the game is built around other people: a significant player-to-player commerce system, players who craft their own gear, sail ships they built, and run cities in their name. The community has a reputation for helping newcomers, and the newbie chat channel is where most first questions get answered, usually quickly. Guilds rise and races fade depending on who plays them, so the world's shape is partly in the players' hands.