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.