I played a MUD that had a distance system, and even some of the devices had longer distance than others. What would happen would be that people would just comm

I played a MUD that had a distance system, and even some of the devices had longer distance than others. What would happen would be that people would just communicate as best they could, and occasionally ask people to rely what they were saying in a general direction. Of course, with a very limited world and a communication range of about 1/4 of the north-south distance of that world, relaying was pretty easy. There were other in-game ways to send and receive messages, but none were nearly as convenient as this one. The real world, however, has plenty of convenient communication methods.