Ancient Anguish (commonly referred to in-game as AA) is a fantasy themed MUD based on the Amylaar driver which operates on the LPMud codebase. Coding for the mud by Zor and Drake started in 1991, and it opened to the public on February 2, 1992. It is completely free to play, but has been supported by player donations since 1994.

Ancient Anguish is based on a "map-coordinate" system rather than linked areas, which contributes to the immersive feeling of entering another `world`. Areas are then placed on the nearly 10,000 room `map` and tied into the geography and history of the fantasy world, called Oerthe. In addition, the mud strives for a describe-all policy for all areas, whereby any item/object/feature should respond to as many of the five senses as possible, which adds to the immersive quality, although not all older areas conform to current balance and describe-all policies. In the early 1990s, most MUDs were housed on university mainframe computers, either illicitly or with tacit approval from the computer science department (many of whom played or created the games they hosted!). In late 1993, Ancient Anguish faced the threat of being shut down by the Swiss university that hosted the game, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, for excessive bandwidth usage. Hundreds of players made donations totalling more than $7000 (US) and bought a SparcStation 2 workstation, relocating the MUD to Washington, D.C..

Exploration points are generally completed by thorough exploration, prodding, touching, and otherwise investigating a given area or room, or completion of a mini-quest. The hints provided by the Gaius character are generally vague, and no direct statistic is available to players.

New wizards go through an educational process where they learn about coding enhancements for the game, develop an idea for a new area, and proceed to build it. The system was designed to provide guidance both to experienced programmers and those with no experience. These new areas go through a process of validation to ensure they meet the thematic, quality, and balance/playability requirements of the game, and are then opened to all players.

Boki is an ogre character who has given up fighting in the name of academics.