I have been thinking on how to get new players. I myself have brought to this server 2 players who never experienced a mud before, they are interested but struggle which is expected.
My idea is can FL be advertised on steam? I'm thinking if you could get a client setup for your game via steam it could potential draw a lot of people. I don't know how hard it would be to do it but it's interesting idea you have to admit.
Steam distributed its first 'mud' very recently, as far as I'm aware, named hackmud. I believe Steam is a very fertile area for games like MUDs, but you would have to develop your own codebase (so you could use it commercially) and client to support it.
Can't they just put it free to download? I don't understand license or that stuff.
Steam is in the business of generating revenue, not hosting for free. I doubt you could distribute through them with a non-commercial license, but I haven't checked.