Aardwolf has a lot of flaws - goals being among them, as many of them are extremely obscure and give god-awful rewards - but one thing I want to set straight is that you do not need clan knowledge to get good eq on Aardwolf. The eqsearch command, which has been around since at least 2011, gives perfectly serviceable equipment suggestions tailored to your class. I've reached tier 1 (seven full remorts) using this feature and no quest gear. People with quest gear probably do it faster/better than I do, but I'm still reasonably quick and can still get through most areas just to level. I've got to give Erion another try though.

I think I just need to get used to ramping up my screenreader, but I can't keep up with combat and it frequently gets ahead of me.

I like the idea of having a variety of dungeons, missions and such to do. 
While I love Alter, even though it's multiclass, I still feel incredibly limited in ways of where I can reasonably take my character.
I can't wait to give this a good go this week.

Yes, Dark, most of the suggested gear is clan eq. But that clan eq is open (i.e., you run to the area, find the shop, buy the gear and off you go). The game's actual drops, for the most part, aren't great, which is an entirely different problem. The gear suggested by eqsearch, however, is pretty good, more than serviceable and available to anyone who has the gold. It's also not particularly expensive.

also, I have to spend quite some time acquiring equpment because what I have sucks right now. I need some better stuff and that will take me some time for sure.

Thank you guys for your ideas on everything so far. I do plan on adding fishing and crafting relatively soon. As far as more interactive missions go, what do you have in mind?

some other MUDs also have community RP events where characters gather in one place or roleplay as themselves and it is more about being involved with the world as a living breathing universe rather than just a place where adventurers go around killing things.

Another thing I've seen MUDs do is have events where in-world actions of the players determine a future event. For example, in one game, there was a war started between pirates and ninjas. The players could fight mobs on either side and the first side to wrack up enough mob kills on their side determined what the next class would be.

Other games sometimes would have RP events like mentioned above, and the devs would sit in as characters or counselors and fit future stuff that happened in the game based on what the heroes talked about in these meetings and such.

You could also have global collection events. This would not be a competitive thing but rather could be something like you challenge the player base to grab a certain number of limited time drops and items and turn them in somewhere important, possibly for special currency or to push an event of some sort along where all the players' totals would work together towards a grand total. You could do this as just a global effort on the part of the adventurers or you could have multiplefactions or sides at work and have the players race to get enough points to one side. Whichever side gets the most will effect future game events.