After the server move, there has been this general feeling
of slugginess in the MUD where response times are high and lag
spikes happen extremely often.

Keep in mind that I am playing from the east coast and that during these episodes my ping to the server never goes above 60ms with no packet loss. The "lag" doesn't happen all the time, but it happens more often than not. These symptoms and past posts for similar issues all point to inadequate server performance.

A simple lookup on bing (ip: 66.85.154.235) will show that there /seem/ to be more than _50_ other MUDs and various sites hosted on the same server.

I say seem because it is possible that some sort of port forwarding setup is in place with many different backend servers. In any case, a proper dedicated server with no shared resources can be had with 50-60$ a month. If the PBFs do not cover this expense then donations from the players could offset the cost provided others are interested.