LAND is a BBC Micro port of the MUD of the same name which ran on the DEC mainframe computer at the University of Essex in the 1980s. The mainframe version of LAND was written by Darren Higgs (Toodleoo), Jonathan Cornell (Arnie), Bret(t) Giddings (Bret), and Richard Thombs (Zarf).
The Essex University mainframe had previously hosted the original MUD, known as MUD1, which was created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle.