Guys, I just wanna say THANKS for all your dedication to Bukkit. The reason it's so important is, when you take Minecraft + Bukkit to its ultimate logical conclusion, what do you end up with? The first real GUI MUD/MUSH. But in order to get there, we need the game to be able to do all the things you guys are working on. Here is what I think would be necessary to bring us to what could be, in my opinion, quite possibly the pinnacle of online gaming. What the players would see: -Players make characters with levels/hit points/races/etc. -A menagarie of monsters & npc's. - Customized weapons, armor, spells, etc. -reach a certain level, you can build a castle/dungeon/land -grouping -boss creatures -area-based PVP (mostly pvp with safe areas, or, mostly safe with arenas) What is needed for such a thing: - ACL's on x/y/z sections (Access Control Lists, for you non sysadmins) - sql backend controlling it all: boss drops, character info - set spawns w/timers (for bosses) - automated backups ETC. ETC. ETC!!!!!
I do like this idea (for RPG servers though, not default), but it'd be too difficult, and would require a modification to the client, like Fifteen said. Right now, we can only dream.
It would require BOTH, really. I'm talking about things much larger than bukkit, really, but I'd thought I'd share here. As far as WoW goes, 1. monthly fee; 2. proprietary content; 3. non-customizable. WoW is not a GUI MUSH. it's a MUD. you can't build your own castles in wow.
I say it could be possible. if you have a complex database and attribute almost every action made based upon their stats/status. and by that i mean no visual differences, but say "Leather armor on a Thief class character = they have protection and less speed reduction" vs "leather armor on a Mage class character = they have protection but are uber slow". all of these actions, players moving, jumping etc, would impart something of a nightmare as you need to dynamically slow or speed up players, etc.