I'm on the fence as far as sedit/cedit/gedit/whatever. I think it's perfectly acceptable to cut your greasemonkey code work down by 90% by implementing these, however I agree that adding originality through actual code is key to making a robust gaming experience. Setting the same 5 damage spells with different names and damage types is quite lame/lazy. But I sure could have used this sort of template when I was adding the 200+ spells I added to my game to lessen the amount of time to do such a thing.

Just as time for playing muds wanes as you grow older, so does coding them. ;)

Edit:

I think stuff like guildedit/clanedit/godedit can be VERY useful when you have an immortal staff who mostly does not code, but still has power to alter things like this as the storyline progresses.

Well, I'm particularly interested in template systems that are more than just setting the name and damage.

The spellbook system in GW1 allowed mages to design various spell types and chain them together, but it still got repetitive - most mages would have some sort of "bomb" chain which teleported them to their opponent, unloaded a series of brutal attacks and debuffs on them, and then teleported them back to where they'd started.

I didn't bother implementing it in GW2, and I avoided customisable fighting techniques for the same reason.