I've been playing this game on and off since my teens too. It is very fun, despite the creator being a bit off his rocker. There's really something for everyone; the PvM experience is great (zones are immersive and well written), and the top tier PvP (CPK) is very intense and competitive. Some random advice that might make new player's lives easier:
1. Highly recommend starting as Cleric first because Sanctuary spell halves damage and hugely increases your survivability (among other extremely useful spells like Detect Invisibility, Recall and Heal). When you progress to next class you reactivate your previous class's abilities as you level. Warrior is hardest class to begin with because of no sneak, sanctuary or invisibility. Cleric>Thief>Warrior>Mage is easiest route to hero. Mages are all around most powerful/versatile, but for one on one PvP the thief is king for his backstab. If you start thief or warrior, watch the auction channel (type setauction some, and setwatch A) for blue or green orbs, which you can use to cast Sanctuary on yourself and everyone in room.
2. You can find lots of good equipment in the donation room, S E E of recall.
3. Train your class's primary stat while you are that class. Wis for cleric, str for warrior etc. It's important to max stats by the time you hero.
4. Try get into a nurturing type of clan early, so people will help you with expenses of multiclassing, and doing autoquests and stuff.
5. Be wary of CPK; you lose a level and people can loot you if you die. Because recalling is so easy, CPK is all about hiding out and ambushing helpless prey. Basically you won't know it's coming, and be Dead/immobilized before you can do anything. The trade off is that all the best equipment is gotten in CPK and you gain more experience there. If you have someone who can teach you the ropes it's fun and profitable.
6. Most people use Mudmaster for the in built chat feature (private, instant communication). I think I got it to work on Mushclient too, and I know tintin++ definitely has it.
7. Lastly, make good use of the Xezadha Cathedral zone. it's only available until you're level 20. Great XP and atmosphere to it, it's my favorite.
If anyone wants to take a peak at the game play, here are some "log files", basically closest you can get to a video of a text game:
http://losklogs.thoughtdump.net/http://www.theyeti.org/logs83298w/And helpful script files for mudmaster:
http://solinari.freeshell.org/http://mavscripts.webs.com/mavsmedieviascripts.htm