lol not saying i entirely disagree my dude but i think you're reading into this way more than i meant. blockland and co (engine) comes with crutches i've been frustrated with, especially taken into projects i've worked on for a few years. i could go on for days about the lackluster bot system that doesn't allow for anything neat like stealth mechanics or proper horror entities, combat systems severely restricted unless you start diving into client mods to free up controls/add pretty interface elements which splits up your server base or mess around with clunky workarounds, etc etc. the runescape formula is popular because that's the most logical approach any normal guy can find with what's available like vce and it's been like that for years. all the cool fancy rpg projects completely dropped off the face of the earth and nobody can use their scripts to improve it or work off of it. i was even thinking about trying to make a damn cool giant mech after considering getting into modding again until i remembered how weird and wonky the results would be. the frustration with limitations isn't an excuse but rather a complaint above anything. maybe that's just my vision of breaking the glass ceiling here but i think i've aimed a little too high for what this engine is worth
if you cant build around the limitations then you shouldn't bother making anything. like NES games were loving limited as hell and a lot of great games like castlevania and mario worked around the limitation just fine to make easy to see art and fun design. the games where the developers just said "sorry the limitations hurt so we just made something stuffty" are the very bad games that you see AVGN reviewing from time to time. they shouldn't have been made at all. 99% of all blockland RPGs fall into this category of the devs just saying "well theres no way for me to make anything interesting so ill make it all uninteresting and justify it by saying there were too many limitations" which most people can forgive i guess but it just loving hurts to see anyone try to weasel their way out of creative solutions
Like what makes an RPG fun? Memorable characters. Memorable side quests. Memorable gameplay mechanics. The first one you can do, there are plenty of talented writers on these forums who make up all these quirky stories (charlesspeaking, swololilili or whatever the forget). Second one has the same prerequisites of the first, just think of some crazy scenario and make it happen. GTA has missions where you loving steal a whole ass train with a helicopter, while chrono trigger has a side quest where you kill 5 of the same enemies in a desert as the entire quest. There's a real clear difference between a well thought out quest and a loving boring as stuff pizza delivery.
Last one's tough given the bot limitations and requires a lot of coding but i've seen people work around it before. Like already off the bat i can think of a cliff side area where you navigate a narrow ass ledge and the enemies are all janitors with push brooms who try to push you off. Now you have an interesting environment and boring ass bots that use said environment to make a loving fight with some amount of depth. Compare that to the stuffty rpg where you start off in a castle and basically fight 2000 sword orcs with slightly different stats from each other
Its not really that difficult to make a good server, you just actually need to think about what makes those types of games fun and try to stress and improve upon these points. There are a lot of tdms out there that are mediocre. What makes tdms fun? Shooting people. Teamwork. Make a two team tdm elimination where if you kill someone they become incapacitated and cannot move and use a weak gun to shoot, and you can carry them back to your base and grind them in a meat grinder to revive a dead teammate. Now you have a game with teamwork and shooting thats not just guns and nothing else, and theres actual depth around the way you push into enemy territory, rather than going rambo in the enemy base you might consider that if you die you basically give a free revive to the enemy.