Not really. Take Minecraft for example – before the acquisition by Microsoft, servers were entirely run by individuals/groups who set their own moderation policies. Some servers were entirely PG-rated, some allowed cursing/sex stuff/etc. Mojang technically still had some level of control over things like skins (which were centrally managed), but otherwise it was choose-your-own-moderation for each individual server.

However recently (and widely discussed on HN[1]) Microsoft has started censoring the entire ecosystem, to the point where you can get banned from all servers for chat behavior in one server, because your MC account is now your MSFT account. So they can just ban the latter to block you from all of MC (except for cracked servers).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772810

But the point of an MMO is to share a space with thousands of people so individual servers with differing rules don’t really work in that context. And individual servers doing moderation is the same as individual server based games doing moderation, it’s just a difference in scale. I’m sure there are loads of other games people can play. For example Rust is infamous for a lack of moderation and has all the racist and otherwise edgey content in it your heart desires.

Ultima had plenty independent (pirate) servers with vastly different cultures and even game mechanics. Even WoW, I think, has servers with different moderation - those that require roleplay and those that don't. Unified experience IMO would be a detriment for most games.

Those servers still had moderation. Very different from "no moderation".

You still have centralised moderation there - moderation is centralised on the server admins.

Yes, the world is not black and white, there are levels of decentralized.

There's no difference between a Minecraft server implementing moderation policies and an MMO implementing them. The self-moderation we're talking about would be on an individual level.

a minecraft server yes, but this is forcing same set of rules to every server

That's not what we're talking about though.

Yes it is, we're discussing moderation coming from a single source vs moderation from many different sources.

We are not. We are discussing moderation vs no moderation (i.e. where you need to block every troll yourself).

> people can do their own moderation, instead of relying on a central entity which makes the same broad rules for everyone

"People doing their own moderation" includes a community of people who get together, appoint moderators, and enforce their own rules.

Moderation on Minecraft servers are done by admins, just as it's done on MMOs. Both controlled by a central entity. What is the difference?

The people appointing moderators are part of the central entity, unless you mean that the trolls being muted also have a say in it. Show me one such server that is not a tiny one with just a bunch of friends, where moderation is not needed anyway.

Not at all. Doing your own moderation depends on having the tools available to mute/censor/block people you don't want to hear from.

For example, I used to play Rocket League. I played either solo or teamed exclusively with a few friends and mutual acquaintances. They have various settings to mute the chat and comments from other people. I'm not interested in all in hearing flames or nonsense chatting from random people I'm playing against, so I have all chat muted except for team chat (people I know and choose to team with). This is doing your "own moderation", and is the ideal circumstance is far as I'm concerned.

Unfortunately, however, Rocket League doesn't allow you do your own moderation, despite the proper tools being available. One time, someone I was teamed with (who similarly had all non-team chat muted), typed something in team chat that ran afoul of Rocket Leagues sensibilities, and they subsequently received a week-long ban. Nobody could see this chat except our team (myself and this other person). We had already engaged in our "own moderation" by muting everyone else. This was an overreach as far as I'm concerned, and would far prefer to have the power to see and hear what I choose, and not what the platform chooses.

Rocket League is a bad comparison. You only have at max, what 5 other players, that you need to block if necessary. In an MMO without moderation you wouldn't be able to keep up with blocking every troll spamming even if that was all you did.