Is/was anyone a Fan of Text-based Games?

[Beak]

I did a couple searches; couldn't find anything about MUDs/text-based games.

Anyone else dabble in this kind of game? For a long, long time, I played an online game called Achaea.

Games like this were, in my mind, years ahead of their time (obviously excepting graphics). Graphical games are still not coming close to the capabilities of text-based games. I remember hopping on a game like Achaea and being able to do basically anything. All cities and orders are player-run, all deities are actual players, and role-playing is a must. The game hardly limited you. You could hire assassins, you could be an assassin, you could be a thief, you could be a priest, you could be a business-owner, you could be a politician.

Fighting each other (PvP/PKing) was basically a complex, reflex- and wit-driven game of fast paced chess. It actually meant quite a lot to be a good warrior, and usually earned you notoriety throughout the entire world.

Anyway, wondered if anyone else had played games like this and what their thoughts on the genre were. Anyone at least play Zork?

[Ack]

I actually played through Zork earlier this year for the first time. I've got the Zork Anthology on CD, so I have access to five Zork games as well as Planetfall, but it's a pain in the ass to run on modern technology, even when run via DOSBox. While I find the idea of text-based games interesting, I've never really spent much time with MUDs, and the few I did were created by friends. I appreciate the creativity though.

[Flake]

I always wanted to get into these games but my attention span was horrible. I might be able to appreciate them for what they are now though. Are there any notable MUD's still being played?

[gennss]

I used to run a BBS so I played a lot of BBS games which were like facebook games but all text. Short fun.

[Opa Opa]

Aww man.
I love those games. Strange... I was just thinking about playing one the other day.

[xan_racketBOY_fan]

The name escapes me, but I had a great time playing the one hidden away in Black Ops.

[noiseredux]

I find the whole thing really interesting, but never actually played through one. I did download Stephen King's The Mist for my wife for xmas last year, though.

Oh and I keep meaning to play through Zork as someone went thru the trouble (?) of porting it to the GB recently.

[Limewater]

I'm not well-versed, but I've played through a few text adventure games, as well as a couple of Legend's early graphic adventure games that were essentially just text games with some still images. Good stuff.

I also used to play a little bit on a MUD called Darklord. Once I saw that I had logged 24 hours in-game, I kind of freaked out a little bit and never played again.

[Hatta]

If you don't like DOSBOX, there are Z-machine interpreters for any platform. You might try Windows Frotz.

[Beak]

The one on Black Ops was Zork.