@Aaron, that is very good to know, I wasn't aware it was quite that easy to uncoouple MushZ from alteraeon.

@Figment a mud is a multiplayer real time text game.
You connect to a mud server somewhere and text is sent to your computer via a client in real time which describes the surroundings of your character and what is going on. Text wise it's similar to interactive fiction games like Zork, eg, you walk around a series of rooms with directional commands and use "get and "take and inventory as such, but the games are very different firstly since most muds tend to be either roleplaying or rpg based with heavy statistical combat and other activities, and secondly that being real time events keep happening whether you type or not.
so for example you might walk into a room and see a description, like
"You are in a small cramped cell with a wrack in one corner with a prisoner tied to it and pools of stagnent water across the stone floor"

However if a goblin entered the cell and attacked you the combat would be automatic and you'd continually get messages like
"You swing at the goblin and hit, the goblin swings at you, you have some nasty wounds and bruises" etc.

This does mean you need a client that will automatically read incoming speech as quickly as possible, and give you the best ability to respond similarly quickly.
some games have low spam modes for visually impared players, but others don't, it doesn't sound like harshlands does.

Clients also let you program certain aspects and behaviours, so for example triggers can automatically have the client type a command when you enter a room, in the above example for instance you might have a trigger that whenever the text "you have some nasty wounds and bruises" appears, automaticaly types 

"Cast cure light wounds"

Personally,I am not interested in reprogramming an entire interface for a game, and any mud that is so spammy, ie, has such lengthy text as to mean I can only be on equal footing with sighted players by intensive programming and knolidge of the mud's original commands is not a mud I'm interested in, indeed those muds mentioned in the database such as materiamagica, aardwolf, clok and several others which will get pages  such as frandom, fluxworld, wayfare1444, empire  and avalon are games which have lower spam modes for Vi players or other settings that make them equally playable out of the box without extra programming, heck, some just have less quick combat rounds that mean they can be played at a reasonable pace .

I'm sorry to hear harshlands doesn't have this. I might try the game at some point, but I would rather the developers were actually programming access into their game, though perhaps if I tried it I might have some suggestions that wouldn't require every player to effectively write their own interface.

On the plus side, there are lots of really great muds that do! have incredibly good access, or can be played equally well without, whether Harshlands falls into the latter category I don't know, though from  Caio's comments I'm not sure.

Btw, Alteraeon is one exception. Though it is a mud, a combination of help from the creator and a huge amount of work on the part of Oriol Gomez and others have created a custom client for the game called MushZ. nominally based on Mushclient but effectively a stand alone system for just runing alter. This has been designed to effectively turn Alteraeon into a full scale audio mmorpg with background music, sounds for in game events, and a huge! amount of custom functions and scripting.

I'd recommend alter to anyone, as a detailed rpg with quests and combat and exploring, pvp and grouping if those are your thing, though bare in mind Alteraeon with MushZ is not really an exclusive experience of a mud since most muds don't have any sounds at all, much less so many sounds they're virtually an audiogame.

I offer this warning since lots of newbies start on Alteraeon since it's a highly well run and newbie friendly mud, then get disappointed with other perfectly good muds which don't have sounds.

@Figment, Vipmud from Gma games can actually be used for free, it's just that the paid version has the miner restriction that you can't use msp, which is a way of playing sounds in certain muds, it also logs you out after two hours, though you can usually just log back in. I used it free for quite some time.
Your welcome to try mushclient, many people prefer it, just if your avoiding Vipmud for reasons of payment that's probably not a good idea.

I confess roleplay isn't my thin in muds either, most of the muds I play tend to be either the rpg combat heavy ones like alteraeon and aardwolf, or the ones that offer lots of interesting activities like clok which has crafting and exploring the wilderness and logging and all sorts of other things. how much harshlands is rp enforced and how much based on it's activities I don't know.

If your into the infocom adventures though Figment, I'd recommend Frandom, it's heavily based on exploring, doing quests and earning achivements, though it has a little combat and some other in game aspects that wouldn't have been seeen in the infocom days. Also I'd recommend alteraeon on general principles as just an awesome audio rpg with the MushZ addon and a down right well crafted game.

@Kaio, if people are using triggers to play the game out of preference fair enough, however I'm a little concerned if triggers are a must! for combat. I was rather putoff a couple of other muds for this reason, I attempted to play, found the games text too spammy for me to keep up with but was told "oh just write some triggers" which was a major putoff since I was just trying the games ut.
I don't mind if people make triggers as an extra, but I don't like the idea if the game is too spammy to actually be  played without. Most games are okay, even combat heavy ones like Aardwolf, but a couple just aren't.

As to how to create less spammy combat, simply let players adjust the prompt, and abbreviate the information.

For example instead of
"the goblin swings at you with it's onyx axe, it hits doing 15 damage, you have a few cuts and bruises, you attack the goblin, your sword cleaves through the air, you hit and do 10 damage, the goblin is injured"
Just have "the goblin swings at you and hits, you swing at the goblin and hit, the goblin is injured"
and let players customize their prompt to show changes in hp or have commands like hp and cn that give instant readouts of you and the enemy's condition.
Six dragons does an absolutely amazing job of this, though it is not the only game.