Some years ago (like 5 or so) I used to do a lil mudding. On a mud called northern lights, text based one (aber-based if i remember correctly). I would take a graphical one over a textbased one any day nowadays though :).

in text based how do u know whats goin on? how do u know whats there?

Edit: changed it so my reply was to the correct post. :)

There are room descriptions (brief or long), and you can examine any objects in the rooms. Any possible attack is handled in real time of course. I guess an advantage text based muds have over graphical ones is the lag. Back then I _never_ got annoyed lag in any of those text-based muds :)

if ur a slow typer do u get owned?

Not really.
Usually you can get by with just typing short stuff.
For example going north isnt hard than typing the letter N and hit enter.
during fights you might wanna go "fire" (as in fireball) roshan (or whoever you're trying to kill) or maybe "duck". But usually you learn how to type these commans really fast, since you do it alot. I for example was a rather slow typer before mudding, but after i stopped i realised i had gotten quite fast, at least typing the commands was REALLY fast :).

i play wow!!!!!1111111

still mudding :/

on a shadowrun mud, the syntax is a little different from most of the basic fantasy settings ones, but it's all generally the same. the combat is a little faster, so you do tend to get owned if you're a shitty typer in battle :o there's hella commands, but a lot of them are sort of brief descriptions of what you want to do, for example

hold pistol
reload
shoot man
remove pistol
and you can usually leave off letters and have it still work, like

ho pi
rel
sho m
rem pi

then for the role-playing aspects, you can 'say' whatever, or emote whatever, etc etc etc.

pretty hot.

I played some textbased some time ago got addicted and have had a pause ever since.

I neved got into MUD, I tried WebRPG out a bit, it seemed pretty cool. http://www.webrpg.com/ Was a long time ago, so I dont know how it is now. I just play freeform D&D with friends, though I havnt played/ran a campaign in like 6 years. Im going to try a run a campaign with everyone on mushrooms (i like to play on various drugs :P), just need to find players. Shouldnt be too hard. ;)

everything is more fun when ur high/drunk :X