I'm mostly lurking here, are you going to implement shopper rules natively in WMD? Nowadays you need to tell people when they need to skip turn or that they need to shot weapons form rope when possible.
It would be highly difficult to implement rules for various schemes natively. The rules are going to have to be transmitted as they are in W:A... by telling others.
It is our responsibility as old school players to make sure that the newbies are:
1. aware of the rules
2. adhere to the rules
3. understand why there are rules to begin with
The community for the newer games is very dismissive whenever I mention rules. They believe that there should be no rules whatsoever for any scheme and that by trying to implement rules, I (or whoever) am being controlling, narcissistic (that doesn't even make sense), and a general pain in the ass.
With W.M.D. we are going to have to look at ourselves as teachers, role models, and admins, otherwise the community is going to suck. I feel that the online component of W.M.D. both in-game and in the lobby is going to be exponentially better than the games released post-WWP. As long as we have a WormNET type environment with a global chat lobby, it shouldn't be a problem steering the community in the right direction. We just have to be proactive about it, and if people want to be jerks and not listen, we can 'encourage' them to utterly destroying them online. I am prone to listen to someone who is clearly better than me.
We still don't have any info regarding the server system for W.M.D. yet, but with all of the people begging for a global chat lobby, I can only assume that it will feature one. I don't really care if we have separate channels like PartyTime and RopersHeaven (does anyone even use those anymore?) as long as we have a main one. Separate channels would be nice, because who knows what might happen, but a global chat lobby is a MUST for W.M.D. to be a success. A matchmaking system is terrible for Worms, and should have never been implemented.