I read an interesting discussion awhile back on MU* Soapbox. I can’t find it now, but they were talking about Evennia, and the points went something along the lines of, ‘nice try, but it doesn’t go far enough; it’s still too mired in the past’. I’m sure they would say the same about Ares. The critics pointed to things like Storium and Roll20 as better models for the future of interactive storytelling.
I’ll be the first to say that Storium looks neat, and if I were trying to run a tabletop game online with distant friends, Roll20 would probably be the way to go. But neither of those even come close to capturing the experience you get from MUSHing. They have their place, just like MMOs and tabletop, but they’re all completely different styles of roleplay.
Personally, I like the MU* style. I like the freedom of being able to tell my story in words, not limited by fixed maps or “story cards”. In the course of designing Ares, there were plenty of opportunities to do something radically different, but each time I tried to stick close to the familiar. Veteran MUSHers are the core audience; why scare them away?
So maybe I, too, am mired in the past. But I kind of like it there.