Statistics

Data collected 2026-03-03

  • Servers responding: 912

  • With MSSP data: 320

  • Unique protocol fingerprints: 148

  • Unique codebases: 63

  • TLS-enabled: 39

  • Total players online: 10163 [1]

These statistics reflect the most recent scan of all servers in the mudlist.txt input list. Each server is probed using telnetlib3, which connects to each address, performs Telnet option negotiation, and collects any MSSP metadata the server provides.

The charts below summarize data from servers that report MSSP metadata. Servers without MSSP appear in the Server List but are not included in these breakdowns.

Codebases

235 entries report a CODEBASE or FAMILY field via MSSP. Version numbers are stripped and known aliases are normalized to a canonical name (e.g. FluffOS and LDMud are counted as LPMud, Merc and SMAUG as DikuMUD, PennMUSH and ProtoMUCK as TinyMUD).

Pie chart showing the most common codebases across all servers reporting MSSP data.

Most common codebases (235 entries from MSSP data).

Players Online by Codebase

Horizontal bar chart showing top codebases by total players online.

Top codebases by total players online at scan time.

Creation Years

Bar chart showing when MUDs were created, by year, spanning from the earliest to the most recent.

When MUDs were created, by year, as reported via MSSP data.

Protocol Support

Horizontal bar chart showing how many servers support each MUD protocol such as MSSP, GMCP, MSDP, and MCCP.

MUD protocol support across all responding servers.

Telnet Option Negotiation

Grouped bar chart comparing how many servers offer versus request each Telnet option during negotiation.

Telnet options offered vs requested by servers during negotiation.

CHARSET

The default encoding of Telnet is the system locale, usually UTF-8. By strict compliance, without negotiation of BINARY transmission all protocol text should be limited to 7-bit ASCII. The encoding used should be negotiated by CHARSET.

Any server capable of negotiating CHARSET or LANG through NEW_ENVIRON is also presumed to support BINARY, regardless of its response to the BINARY telnet option. In practice, many servers transmit 8-bit data without negotiating either mode.

Pie chart showing the proportion of servers that negotiate the CHARSET telnet option.

204 of 912 servers negotiate CHARSET (22.4%).

BINARY

Pie chart showing the proportion of servers that negotiate the BINARY telnet option.

65 of 912 servers negotiate BINARY (7.1%).

Server Locations

Pie chart showing the geographic distribution of servers by country.

Server locations by country.

TLS/SSL Support

39 servers support TLS/SSL connections, either advertised via MSSP metadata or configured with the ssl keyword in the server list. See Supporting TLS for a full breakdown by certificate status.

Although 38 servers report TLS support via MSSP variable SSL or TLS=1, they failed to negotiate TLS when requested and are not included in these totals.

Pie chart showing servers with TLS support vs without.

TLS-enabled servers vs servers without TLS.

Pie chart showing TLS certificate validation results.

Certificate validation results for TLS-enabled servers.

Stacked bar chart showing TLS support by codebase family.

TLS support breakdown by codebase family.