I have been reading some stuff on the forums, and I sort of understand what is needed to create one but I have some unanswered questions. Do text mmorpgs run on game engines? Because there is one text mmorpg I'm very fond of, but I wish I could create a version sort of like it (http://www.megalomania-game.co.uk) You would think they would run on some sort of engine, I found quite a few text mmorpgs that model eachother (ex: http://www.kingsofchaos.com/ and http://www.mediwar.com/ basically the same thing).

Thank you for your time

Technically anything that runs a game is an "engine".

Look at dimensionex, its cross platform and I seem to be sending people there a lot these days.

Certainly sign up at their forums and post your questions to that community as this community gets its panties all bundled from the letters M M O R P G.

Drop back by and let us know your impression of all that stuff. I send people there and then never hear of their experiences.

Do some homework on where MMO began,in the mucky muck worlds of MUD

you'll also need to decide whether your text-mmo will be run in a web browser, or as a program that is downloaded and then connects to a server to display the appropriate text. This decision will pretty much decide what game engines you can use, if you're planning on using an existing one, instead of coding your own.
-wyrmmage

Or a text-mmo that you telnet into, like the good old days.