@Tapewyrm if you're looking from people from the WORA era, you may have better luck posting in reddit in r/MUD
I say this with as little bile as possible, but since the WORA era, a lot of the more level-headed people left the hobby between then and now. VTTs and MMORPGs were a welcome escape from the normalized bullying and drama in the "Hog Pit" section of the forum. When the admin closed it down there was a rift in the community between two groups:
- People who wanted the personal attacks and bullying to end
- A large group of people (citing the moral high ground, btw) wanted specific admin punished, claimed the ability to bully and mistreat people in the Hog Pit was healthy, created their own forum, proceeded to high five each other for missions to get banned on this forum, and still occasionally check over here to sow dissent and throw mud.
A lot (and I mean a lot) of players quit the hobby between then and now because a certain "vibe" kind of got normalized and "dishonest character assassination" became more popular an approach than "communicate with each other and resolve your issues". It was simply easier, when it came to people who disappointed you or didn't go with your design, to chase or bully that person into feeling unwelcome on the server.
Edit: (And if that doesn't work, use drama/lies/accusations to isolate them from the people who like them and then they'll leave! Again...moral highground )
Then, naturally, people with that mindset started getting in with staff or opened games of their own, resulting in a whole 2nd string crowd of people who partake in the "Hog Pit" style of bullying so that they also get RP opportunities.
If you're truly coming back, you're coming back at a very exhausted and contentious time for the Mush/Mux crowd. Many from the WORA era, myself included, have stopped playing on the games altogether.
In my estimation, there were a number of game staff/coders during the WORA era who kept people like this in check, but those people either got sick of it, aged out, or went to do other stuff. Without that stopgap the "PHBs" now want control of who is or isn't welcome in the community.
It's at the point that a code base used by many, many games (Ares) own creator doesn't partake in the hobby, but that other group (claiming the moral high ground, btw) seems to claim that everything will go back to normal so long as certain admin from this forum are sufficiently exiled, the Hog Pit is reopened, and the ability to publicly humiliate people on this forum is reestablished.