In HS, a friend of mine tried to get me into MUDs… I played their favorite one briefly (it was very low pop and very mechanical) so they suggested another one they Admin’d for - I also very briefly played that (for like three days)… like five years later I didn’t have a good TTRPG group so I tried picking it up again and loved it… met my partner there, moved to another country… a seriously large chunk of my life can be drawn back to my friend asking me to try their game and me playing it for a handful of days then randomly deciding to try it years later.
Damn, that’s crazy! I got introduced to MUDs in high school as well by one of my best friends. It’s neat the people you can meet but never though to go any further and meet them in real life especially if you needed to go to another country.
I almost met a girl through one of those online kingdom building games (Utopia Jesus, it’s still going) but called it off last minute. Kinda wonder how my life would have been different if I had gone.
MUD stands (sometimes) for multi-user dungeon… it’s essentially a text based mmorpg that’s usually light on the “massive” (the more popular MUD I played on for a while had a max concurrent user count somewhere around 120) and they tend to be very focused on role-playing and descriptions rather than mechanics - though your mileage may vary, a few are extremely focused on the mechanics and pay little attention to role-playing.
It’s quite fun and the communities are always really welcoming, I’d suggest giving it a try if it sounds interesting!