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I think it's worth pointing out that the issue isn't realism here. Realism (ie that which is would require removing all magic, dragons, orcs, other races, etc. Rather, the idea is to allow for immersion via internal coherency of design. It may seem like a semantic argument, and I suspect you guys really mean internal coherency rather than realism, but I think it's important to recognize the difference.
I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that unless you're running a MUD whose goal is simulation of something, you want to think up the systems first and then figure out what 'wrapper' to put around them in terms of in-game fiction.
Of course, it's also pretty clear that a lot of players (most probably) don't require anything approaching a perfect degree of internal coherency. For instance, global channels are simply accepted in nearly all the most popular MUDs. I remember running around Paragon City in City of Heroes, reasonably immersed (for a graphical MUD at least) in the world and having no issues with world-wide tells. Didn't impact my playing experience at all and I never heard anyone mention it as an issue.
I suspect that a large part of this is about setting expectations. Many or most MUDers expect to be able to communicate over distances. It's just part of MUDs to them, so there's nothing immersion-breaking to those players about having that feature with no extra explanation involved.
--matt
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