I have tried to explore some areas in the past (for example, for some quests).
However, some of those are coded in a way that allows one player to fuck up
everything for everyone else in the boot. Those people who actually try to
explore the area are in the mercy of those who hammer the booting
batmud.bat.org and have "You enter the game." trigged to loot the area.

Therefore, I propose an "explore mode" for areas. This could work so that you
can enter an area in explore mode, then a new clone of the whole area is
created, as happens in boot, but only you (and some others you can choose, if
you need a party to kill stuff) can enter that clone of the area and explore
things in peace.

Of course you could get only marginal amount of exp (or 0) from the mobs in
the area, and you couldn't export any objects made inside the area to outside
world, to avoid abusing, or the objects could have no stats & no value. But
all the secret levers there would be unpulled and hidden buttons unpressed.

Other solution would be to code areas wiser to avoid such abuse.

-Slobber