I am reminded of the birth of the MUD concept when everybody thought it would be nifty to set up their own server. If memory serves, the rush settled down to a smallish set of devoted operators in short order to the benefit of all.
I never really MUDed, just thought the trend interesting. The desire I had yesterday to fire up my own instance which vanished by the time I woke prompted me to think on this.
@KGOrphanides The afternoon that I spent in a MUD/MUSH that was a devoted recreation of the area I lived in (the surrounds of CMU) was certainly surreal.
I saw the appeal, I just hadn't the time at the time.
@organon I was involved in a few, but my favourite was one that multipurposed as an offshot of an occult-oriented IRC channel, was linked to a small Ultima Online guild, and where members were encourated to build autonomous objects.
We had NPCs that chipped into conversations in their vicinity, lots of portal-fantasy stuff involving grand networks of rooms, organised lecture nights, books you could write in and a self-replicating tribble infestation that took down the server...
organon
Mighty Owlbear