I'm planning a MUD, built for my friends and myself. Trying to figure out what tech to use. Maybe Java? Maybe NodeJS? We'll see.
I definitely don't want to use any pre-existing MUD code. I know, this means I'll need to solve a lot of problems that have already been solved many times before. That's part of the point, though; I want to figure all of it out for myself.
The game mechanics don't matter much at this point. The focus is on two things - learning how to write a game of this type, and producing a typographically beautiful game.
Up to now, typography has made little difference for MUDs. I'd like to change that.