19. I was at university and visiting a computer science major friend in the computer lab. Walked past a guy staring raptly at a NeXT screen that had rapidly scrolling text and wondered what the heck he was doing.

That moment really changed my life.

--matt

If I knew of any preteens, we'd ban them. You're not permitted to play unless you're at least 13. Our games aren't suitable for people under that age, and anyway, COPPA makes it illegal to gather and store information about people under age 13 without express consent from their parents.

Just a bit over 44 when I was introduced to MUDs, as I recall. Dinosaurs roamed the earth...

Almost 46. (Though I've been RPing in PnP games since I was 18.) Played a MUD for about 2 months, then left for MUSHes.

I actually started player-killing other people when I was 6 on the old Hunt the Wumpus browser game(I'd hunt the humans instead of the Wumpus), when one day, when I was 8, I ran into what would be Simutronics. Roleplaying from MUDs got me into acting years later, which I've since made a career of - and I can only say great things about what the competitive spirit of player-killing has done for me, and how MUDing has only made me a more intelligent, sharper person.

Not to mention how fast one finds that they can type when they have been MUDing for years.

18, while at University...

But I still can't work out what this has to do with "Advanced MUD Concepts".

I first was introduced to them at 18 in college, but had a little more of a social life back then so didn't really get into playing until I was about 23.

I was twelve, lunching in the math teacher's room with a bunch of other geeks, when I started watching some guy playing some text game on the school computer. It was about the -only- game you could play on the school computers. I didn't actually start playing on my own until a couple of months later, when I was thirteen.

Back in '98 when I started going to FAMU, my roommate had a computer and used to play MUDs along with other games. That's what really got me started, I hadn't really even used a computer until college.

I don't remember the exact year, but it was right after Simutronics first presented GemStone to Prodigy Online users, and it had just finished its beta front end there. I was around 31 or 32 at the time (depending on which year that happened to be). Somewhere between 1992-1994 if I remember right.

I was 22 and it was Martin Luther King Day in 1997.  It was a ****ty H&S that I never played again but for years I toyed with the idea of trying a MUD again.  Wasn't until the first week of March of 1999 that I tried again, finding a H&S that I played for several years. Later in 1999 I played my first RPI.  Been playing those ever since....

I was 9 when I began mudding, I'm now 18.

Well, the first time I ever logged into a MUD was 18 (to annoy my roommate), but I didn't actually play until 20.

I was 13, I played a game I cannot remember for about half a year and then Adventures Unlimited for 3 1\2 years. I then played Unwritten Legends off and on.

I could still probably navigate my way around most of AU and a good chunk of UL blindfolded, I think the terrain is etched into my brain.

I am now nearly 20 and am a programming major.

I was 19, back in the may of '99

I started in December '91, at the university, when I was 19. Was looking for Roleplaying games on the internet. Some Geek in the lab saw my search requests and pointed me to muds. Have been playing ever since.

I was thirteen when I first began playing Text based games. My first game was ULRPG.com, a former AOL texted based game. Ah, the memories.

I was twelve or thirteen, playing muds on dial-up BBS door games like Quest for Magic and Crossroads. Once BBSs began dwindling away (sob), I would telnet into some small, generic muds occasionally to talk to friends playing there, but never really got into them again until I was pointed to Achaea. The Achaea/IRE communities somehow remind me of the old BBS communities from way back in ways that other online communities haven't for me.

There was a time without muds?

Hmm, looks like that makes me the youngest person to have begun mudding (that posted). What I wonder is why I never got banned as a 9 year old mudder when most young mudders I know are banned commonly for immature behaviour.

I was like...10.

I was 10 years old. (I'm 23 now.)

My first taste of MUD came at the tender age of 8 when my parents played a game on British Telecom's Micronet system called Shades, back when you had to pay for the phone call AND pay for the game. Boy did they rack up some bills...

I started properly playing them when I discovered the internet around age 16, 11 years ago now. Then again I haven't actively played a MUD for at least 6 years now.