Speaking of text RPGs...
There must be one that's interesting out there!
I can't say much but I hope to remedy that myself. I'm aiming for a truly multi-faceted game where the emphasis needn't be on combat - where other systems offer just as much depth and enjoyable content (i.e. not a game where crafters exist just to augment the killer/achiever archetype)
Gemstone 4, as I mentioned above, is a good game. It does focus a bit much on combat for my tastes - however the community is perhaps it's biggest asset. While it's not RP enforced, it is RP encouraged and even more importantly, OOC stuff just isn't tolerated (or at least it wasn't when I use to play.) There is a huge and interesting back-story to the game, the world is huge (and not randomly generated) and yet not so large that it feels empty. A lot of that is attributable to the fact that it has quite possibly the most # of active players of any mud out there...between 600-1200 at any given time of day.
As I said before, it's not free (after the 30 day trial), but the depth of the world & community, along with the number of active players (I mean, who wants to play an MMO in an empty world) make it worth the $15 or so per month, in my opinion. I'd be playing it now but then I'd never get anything done.