Hack and slash has also become a subcategory of MUDs, used to differentiate those with a log-on-and-kill-everything-in-sight mentality from the roleplay muds, which range in roleplay quality from places where people toss an occasional "thee" or "thou" into their speaks to the more roleplay intensive, where people rarely break character.

Signs of a hack and slash mud: logging into Midgard, a starting area featured in every stock DIKU mud; a prevalence of NPCs (also known as mobiles, or mobs) taken from pop culture such as Smurfs or Pokemon; and/or a prevalence of h@x0r speak and teenpup lingo on the chat channels.