Well to answer to your questions, and reply to the comments:

1st of all, it's by far not a new MUD, it's also running since early 90s I guess, it's just that I, and obviously you too have somehow missed it by now.
I found it on a page tracking top MUDs, was in the top 20 when I checked it now, was nowhere near it before.
http://www.topmudsites.com/

As for its gameplay, it's indeed quite similar to Geas, (also from german developers, but accordingly not the same ones), but it has a somewhat larger world, more towns, races, skills, activities...so it's a richer game in general.

Dark, can you please specify what you mean by "crafts"?
Crafting, or something else?

As for role-playing aspect, yes, its description indeed sounds very role-play centric, but in fact it's by far not as role-play sensitive as Miriani for example, you won't get immediately warned or penalized the moment you happen to tell something OOC to another character, , there are even 2 ways to communicate ooc, either use the @tell command instead of simply tell, or there is a specified OOC area of the game those wishing to talk OOC can enter, by typing @ before their character name when logging in.
Also, there is a command @nline for those newer players, who have OOC type questions about the game.
I talked about OOC issues with lots of other characters in the game so far, and none of them ever protested, warned, or reported me, (including wizards, aka game admins), one of them merely suggested me to use that @tell command to make it obvious, so no warnings, sanctions, penalties, etc.

As for quests, there are probably enough of those too, given by NPC characters we meet, (I didn't bother much to find that out, since I prefer totally free gameplay, aka not to be told what to do in a game, but do whatever I like or am in a mood for), but there are none of those of obligatory type, I mean those you must complete in order to move on, advance, progress in the game further, gain access to a certain area, skill, equipment or gear, so not those of a restrictive type.
(those I really don't like, and avoid playing games/MUDs featuring them)

I started playing Xylomer only a couple of days ago, so there are probably many things I don't even know of yet, but my experiences are maximally positive so far, and feel free to ask more questions about it, I shall try to answer them if I can.

Well it did take the place of Geas on that MUD top list I gave the link to, while Geas has totally disappeared from it, as if it was replaced by Xylomer somehow...(I mean only the top 20 MUD list of course)

If you mean activities like hunting, fishing, skinning, butchering, cooking, mining, gathering herbs, sailing on ships, (even building them), and similar ones, yes, it sure looks richer to me, but again, I probably discovered only a small percent of all the things one can do in the game.

But of course you can progress solo, I am a terrible team player, and almost always tend to play as a "lone wolf", so am doing it in Xylomer too, and so far none of the actions I took, or activities I tried were dependent of anyone else than my own self, and my own decisions.
(not even when joining a guild, selecting a trainer for skills, buying a fighter ticket for the arena, or traveling to other towns by coach or ship, all were handled by NPCs)

Again, since I wish to play totally freely and independently, doing only things I choose and like, being instructed,, influenced, or restricted by other players, their reactions and decisions by any means, that would be totally unacceptable to me, I wouldn't play such an MUD at all.
(this is why I quit playing Avalon MUD after only a couple of days)

So if the game description on its homepage tells otherwise, it must be way out of date, from the "good old times" when such a player-interaction-centric gameplay was possible, thanks to the much larger regular playerbase and community.
(since then all those interactions were, obviously, changed to be NPC controlled instead)

Yeah, unlike in Geas, as I mentioned above, communication in Xylomer is solved pretty well, both IC and OOC, and all players and staff are very active, often visiting me, asking me how I am doing, sending mails, or remote, distant messages with the command "gtell", which I can do as well, since I was gifted a gem which allows such remote communication with everyone I know, regardless of their current location.

Oh, there is a single slightly annoying feature in the game I must warn you guys of:

Once weekly, at this very time when I post this, there is a server shutdown and reboot called "armageddon".

The annoying part of this "event" is, that after it all characters will lose all their bought or aquired gear, unless they are either "kept" with the command @keep", or magically protected against armageddon.
And there is a limitation of maximum 15 items being allowed to be kept.

The ways to avoid, or guard against this, those I know of so far, are the following:

1. Not all gear needs to be kept manually, there are many which are set to be automatically kept by default, so those don't count into those mentioned 15, which we can select to be kept manually.

2. Some of the gear we can buy, find, or get, initially are magically protected from armageddon. (those are normally more expensive and valuable gear than other, "normal" one.
I got gifted a couple of such items and gear from players and wizards right after my 1st, unpleasent armageddon experience, while I still didn't know about armageddon and the @keep alternative.

3. When you rent a room in an inn, (there are inns in all towns), in your room there is a gardrobe, where you can keep a certain, fixed number of your gear and items safe, aka armageddon-proof.
Some chests were also mentioned to me for that cause, I presume those are inside player owned houses or stores, so for player's properties.
I don't know that exact number those wardrobes and chests can hold and protect, will have to check it with a wizard yet.
(I already have a room rented in the inn of the town I am in currently, (luckily renting rooms is quite cheap), but I didn't need to use my gardrobe for now, since atm I have exactly 15 gears and items I manually set to "keep".

As for soundpack, I will yet have to ask the Xylomer community about, but considering how the most of us blind and vip gamers didn't even know about the MUD by now, unfortunately I seriously doubt there are any.

However, after this "armageddon" is over, I intend to ask one of the game admins, so called wizards, to join this forum, and tell you guys more about the game, he is much more competent than me, so his informations and responses will surely be more accurate and reliable than mine.