alt Hacker Newsnope! wocmud, worlds of carnage. `telnet wocmud.org 4000` or https://www.wocmud.org/welcome.php
I think wocmud is one of the smaller muds out there but for whatever reason my brother and I were obsessed!
I learned about Wheel of Time much later in life so I missed out on WoTMUD
Ah! Well, enjoying a MUD is still a great shared experience haha. Nothing like them since. I still gravitate to punishing games with obscure mechanics and steep learning curves, and I imagine I'm still chasing that MUD high.
I think what made them special was that they were populated by others that put in that effort, and so the community felt invested. And you'd see the same names every time you logged on cause there was a single server, and reputation mattered. Ah man, what a time of life haha.