I've always been into MUDs since the mid-90s and every now and then I get this idea to write one from scratch (again) and I get pretty far and then I lose interest. The new one is browser based. The mud engine runs in a web worker and takes advantage of some of the modern web tricks to do stuff. For instance, data files (think: area files that don't change often) can be stored remotely and then cached with a service…
I really like your multiplayer idea. That sounds really clean and flexible.