A MUD that was started on April 28, 1991 by Michael Huang (Michael, Lucincia) (along with Sunjeev Gulati (Sunnywiz)). It used the LPMud driver and had a complex multiclassing system. Most of the game was very similar to AD&D, but it had all the features that normal gamers would like, and of course it was a MUD. It also had many monsters which weren't fitting to the medieval theme. (Metallica and other musicians, Frye's Electronic Store Clerks, Dentists, a Bus, Aggieland (Texas A&M), and many other anachronisms were throughout the game.) Now, the theme is a bit more consistant.
The name comes from John Vincent Atanasoff, an early grandfather of computing who taught at Iowa State University. (That was where the mud was originally hosted.) The "Hollow" comes from an AD&D campaign run by Michael.
The game became a lot more famous, though, for its parties and sense of community. In fact, they're having yet another of their Annual Halloween parties. They've had one every year since 1991, so that's now 10 years. Wow. Many of our players eventually went on to other muds, so you can find former VH'ers on VargonMUD, Discworld MUD,ShadowMUD, Savage Garden... err ... DoodieMud (Sorry, I didn't name that one), and many more. (As well as ISCA BBS, also from ISU, which shared quite a few of the same enthusiasts/backers.)
The game was down and up many times over the years, going through radical redesign and wiping the player files many of those times. The current version has been relatively static since 1995 or so. I (Sabby) am one of the admins on the game, and for a while was the head admin. (I've retired to allow someone else to take over administrative tasks and allow me to focus on code.) We're running on a relatively recent (but somewhat out of date) driver, with Matt Messier (Marius) helping out with our intended upgrade to the latest driver. We are definitely looking for more players!
The address is mud.vhdev.com 1991 and you can see a very basic webpage at www.vhdev.com.