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Re:The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds by soylentcola on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @09:23AM (#10085196)
MUDs and the like were my first thought as well. I guess they don't have the immediate visual effect of the later graphical worlds but over the years I occasionally log back on to some of the old MUDs I used to frequent if they're still up and running. Always weird to see a place that used to be filled with at least 20-40 people now only populated by maybe the sysop's character idling for months in the public channel.
Re:The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds by distances on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @12:30PM (#10086645)
Interestingly MUDs still have some niche to fill. Granted, a lot of them withered roughly a decade ago when MMORPGs became mainstream, but there are some that are fully alive and kicking. For example, Aardwolf MUD [1] seems to have about 300 players online most of the time, with peaks of 400 players [2].

[1] telnet: aardmud.org 23 [2] http://www.aardwolf.com/stats.html