I started playing on Discworld 6 years ago. At first I felt pretty overwhelmed - there was so much information that seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. After taking a break, I came back again and figured out how to earmuff some things and turn off my communication channel, and was able to get a better feeling for my surroundings.

Even back then, it was the most developed MUD I'd ever been on: some guilds were completely player run, clubs and families that anyone could start and would last as long as the dues were paid, vaults to store extra goodies. The levels of realism and playability went far beyond anything I had ever experienced before.

And it's only gotten better since then! Player owned houses, player run newspapers, player owned shops, player run councils, even more player run guilds. The areas slowly evolve and are even completely changed as problems or inaccuracies with the old ones are spotted and fixed. Guilds have developed more specializations that give players different primaries, different themes, and often different abilities as well. There are 7 priest, 5 thief, 22+ wizard, and 9 warrior specialisations currently, in addition to the Witches' and Assassins' Guilds. As someone that enjoys playing lots of different characters with different abilities (I have over a dozen alts currently) the variety on Discworld is nothing short of divine in my opinion :-)

As a creator, it's a great place to learn how to do everything since almost everything is thoroughly documented, and with a lot of experienced coders hanging around, it's usually a simple matter to get answers to coding questions. There are also a number of useful online editors to choose from in addition to the default, which seems to make things easier for a lot of creators. In addition, there's an online basic coding tutorial that many a newbie creator has found to be helpful.

To sum up, Discworld is a constantly evolving, constantly improving MUD, even when it's difficult to imagine how it could be any better. Folks are pretty friendly and helpful to newbies that aren't offensive, and even the playerkillers seem to maintain some standards of decency. All in all, a great place to play (or idle) whichever way suits you.