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I actually had a crazy idea myself. What does a text client need to do "really"?
1. Describe the general environment.
2. What you can see in the immediate area.
3. Let you interact with those things.
4. Tell you what directions you can move in.
Now.. Imagine a 3D text environment that figured, server side, what you could see in the near distance, which "generic" description to pull up for the terrain, etc., what was close enough to touch and which, as you approached walls, etc, changed the exit list to show that you can't pass through the wall. Someone on the mud I play at is working on just this idea. However... What makes that different than a MMO? Not much, since you could easilly drop a full CG system over top of it, replacing the generic text for the room, which tells you about the mountains, etc. with actual mountains, and so on. There is some suggestion that this is virtually what EQ did when they designed their system.
The future of text games might, if done right, be an environment that you could "choose" whether to use the text system, or the graphical system. Would be interesting to try it at least.
Nearly anything else you might do, is already in MMOs to one extent or another. With some exceptions. It would be a lot easier in text to burn down most of a city, then have it rebuilt, complete with new NPCs and stores, with a few specific types always appearing (an idea I am working on for an area, where actually solving one of the quests unleashes a major war, which then must have its perpetrators fought off, hopefully with the master behind it finally defeated and peace restored. Not going to make that easy though. lol) Doing that in a graphical system would require a lot of generic building designs, a much more limited number of possible shops, etc. Though, if you didn't mind it being somewhat generic... the items for sale wouldn't be as big a deal. Even things like EQ have names + a few basic icons, instead of one for every named item.
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