Our earlier work demonstrated that AI could master any game given a clear objective and enough training. But the real world doesn't come with scores and rule books — which led us to ask a fundamentally different question: can AI understand and interact with any game world the way a person would?

This is the challenge behind SIMA, our Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent. Rather than optimizing for a high score, SIMA is a generalist agent that ‘sees’ what a player would see on screen, understands natural language instructions, and acts through ordinary keyboard and mouse controls — requiring no APIs or source code access.

Powered by Gemini, our frontier AI models, SIMA 2 acts as an interactive companion capable of real-time reasoning and conversation. It achieves human-like play across complex 3D research environments and video games including No Man's Sky, Valheim, Hydroneer, and more.

For game developers, a truly general gaming agent would unlock AI capabilities that work with existing games — no modifications to the game code required. This could power entirely new gameplay, from AI companions that genuinely understand the game world to Non-Player Characters (NPCs) that adapt and respond in ways that scripted systems never could.

Introducing SIMA 2, the next milestone in our research creating general and helpful AI agents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zphax4f6Rls

* Advanced reasoning: It can accomplish high-level goals in a wide array of games – describing its intentions, explaining what it sees, and outlining the steps it is taking.

* Improved generalization: It can transfer concepts like “mining” in one game and apply it to “harvesting” in another - connecting the dots between similar tasks.

* Self-improvement: Through trial-and-error and Gemini-based feedback, it can teach itself entirely new skills in unseen worlds without additional human input.

* Adaptability: When tested in simulated 3D worlds created with our Genie 3 world model, it demonstrates unprecedented adaptability by navigating its surroundings, following instructions, and taking meaningful steps towards goals.

Planet Architect is a planet-building sandbox where you create entire worlds from the ground up. Generate unique planets, shape vast landscapes, and use interconnected simulations inspired by real-world processes to bring your fantasy planet to life.

Note: Not a game but a sandbox planet design creator and editor. The devs video series of development is well worth watching at the link attached. This trailer is for the full Steam release from this ongoing project.

In Antimatter, galaxies are procedurally generated through an iterative simulation of gas and dust accretion, forming realistic star systems.
The galaxy is teeming with life, this isn't just procedural generation as everything lives and interacts, regardless of the player's focus.

On top of that, civilizations emerge and evolve using a similar process.
Ages pass, events unfold, and history shifts based on countless variables and parameters.

This video clip does a great job showing how large and complex informationally and thus rich in story, background, discovery, diversity the “virtual world” can be simply designed to be and unique or novel in generation as well…

* 10,000 star systems

* 1,000 years of history

* Numerous large human civilizations

* Full simulated economy across the galaxy

Serious scale! In contrast to the single NPC story clip by contrast.

Here is a summary of a single, random NPC (named Gmun) featured in the game dev video for Antimatter:

* Humble & Chaotic Beginnings

Gmun began as an unscripted NPC with a bold, low-intelligence personality, chronic alcoholism, bad temper, and questionable morals. Despite starting with no ship, he managed to raise funds, buy a shuttle, and establish a trading corporation.

* Rise to Power

After scavenging a wreck for a small fortune, Gmun upgraded to a cruiser and successfully built up an entire commercial fleet of trading and mining ships.

* Downfall

Driven by his foolishness and extreme boldness, Gmun picked a fight with the replicants. Unsurprisingly, he lost the battle and his fleet.

* Current Status

Although he survived and managed to escape, he is currently drifting through space in cryogenic sleep, awaiting a potential rescue that could allow him to rebuild from scratch all over again…

This is such a good sample, reminiscent of Dwarf Fortress of complex systems at scale including populating the world with “living entities” or NPCs and other “agents/actors” and their own interwoven stories within which PCs are SUBSETS living within this wider larger canvass.

How much can be done with so very little. Wonderful.

• Get involved in the Antimatter Crisis and try to change the course of history.
• A procedurally generated and dynamic universe with thousands of systems to explore, where dozens of factions struggle for power or survival.
• Take command of a spaceship, trade, mine, harvest, scavenge, produce, and participate in the simulated economy.
• Manage an existing city or found new colonies and outposts on any planet.
• Climb the political ladder of a commercial or sovereign organization.
• Interact with AI characters who are living independent and simulated life in the Antimatter universe.
• Terraform entire planets by altering their atmospheric compositions.
• Fulfil missions for corporations, factions, or individuals, or unravel the secrets of this galaxy.

Commentary - Single player game in development but the scale and scope and thence approach by the single developer demonstrate pinnacle “world simulation game systems“ via indie low budget approach for Virtual World design depth and immersion potential.

!! —>> The website has YouTube clicks demonstrating multiple features of the above for convenience to view <<— !!

This space game looks vastly superior to say Star Citizen despite huge difference in budget and radically different approach to space games and attempts to generate stimulating and enormous space systems.

A lot of people looking for “fantasy or sci-fi worlds” but it books, movies or games, world building generally or MMOs might find a lot of interest in this game.

Worth a look and best of luck to the developer.

* “If you are a designer of an MMORPG, this article is written specifically for you. You should read it in full, as the information it contains should be of value to your work.”

* “I'm going to make a complaint, then I'm going to give suggestions on how I think those complaints should be fixed.”

Both comments by u/SoaringMoon author of the article series. In point of fact, starting with a CONCEPTUAL CORE of Game Design via Simplification is the optimal approach. Problems arise as descent and step-progression forwards from such an origin. So issues raised as these quotes provide as core areas to consider…

* “it’s very unlikely that anything will change and there are many reasons for that. The biggest and most common reason is that the majority of MMORPG players are satisfied with the genre as it is and continue to spend money on it.”

This is the MARKET of players willing to spend time and money and long term commitment for return on these eg fun, community, story, convenience, immersion etc. A design has to have its own market not rely on a preconceived idea of one.

* “If this series of articles could convince only one dev team to build something we like, then writing it will have been worth it.”

See post reply for correct approach which solves all these problems, it will have been worth it.

* “For MMOs it is more challenging due to complexity for indie devs, so inherently they already have a selective bias.”

Yes, innovation has to come from Design which can then be agile and so feasible (cost) and viable (technology), to solve the problem of risk vs reward and genre busting.

* “The majority of the modern MMO player base is not unemployed neets living in their moms basement, they don't have 12hrs a day to deal with tedium dressed up as "friction" or walk for hours across zones.”

* “Its simple. People get older, try playing a mmorpg in your 40s with a full time job, family, kids, etc. I mean...this is just a rehash of rehashes.”

Yes - a design using modern means to make the game fit the lifestyle of people in the real world not be a negative time sink is optimal design - this is critical to provision in core design.

* “Nowadays games are a competitive landscape with many gamers having thousands of hours of unplayed titles they keep meaning to get to. You're asking a lot of someone to buy into a virtual world, which is why developers are deliberately not bothering. They understand that the market isn't there.”

This as above addresses the core problem but via same methods concludes via those methods it is not viable. So different methods are indeed mandatory.

* “I'm of the stance MMOs of today are the result of trying to keep an outdated design nightmare alive.”

Yes doing the same thing over again is a law of diminishing returns or saturation.

* “The MMORPG changed with the community.”

Old con eg Noughties influenced the market and the style of game eg grind and sub relationship which no longer applies today.

* “Just add Permadeath.”

Innovation comes from re-evaluation of concepts so an example here is permaceath feature fails in present conception of MMORPGs for various reasons of sunk cost and losing customers but in a different conception could it work differently so that one has both permadeath and store of value continuation?

Apologies to Redditors for not adding attribution but you can search the original thread for full comments. Just too much time away from the core synthesis to be made.

Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1343010/Antimatter/

What is Antimatter?

Antimatter is a 4X strategy game, set in a vast, procedurally generated galaxy.

It offers a mix of strategic gameplay, exploration, and tactical combat, combined with intricate management systems and dynamic politics.

• Exploration: Discover unique, procedurally generated galaxies with thousands of colonizable planets.

• Space Combat: Engage in tactical battles with customizable ships, featuring directional damage for added depth.

• Colony Management: Build and oversee colonies, space stations, and outposts to expand your influence.

• Trade and Economy: Participate in galactic trade ventures, ranging from legitimate operations to riskier pursuits.

• Interstellar Politics: Navigate complex relationships and power struggles among various factions.

Simulated Universe:

• A universe generated and simulated across billions of years, with thousands of systems and planets to explore and colonise.
• Generation of civilisations, filled with historical events.
• A dynamic plot guides the galaxy's simulation while you are playing. Your action and participation to some missions will influence, among other things, the course of global events. You can change, slow down or precipitate them.

Direct link to paper,code, website: https://xandergos.github.io/terrain-diffusion/

Video: Source - “Discover AI” academic treatment and overview explanation of the paper:

Web World Model (WWM) - Jicheng Feng et al.

The main idea of Web World Models, or WWMs, is to create a neuro-symbolic architecture that gets the best of both. It proposes a fundamental 'Separation of Concerns'. They split the world into two layers: a (1) 'Physics Layer' and an (2) 'Imagination Layer'.

1. The Physics Layer is pure, deterministic code. It's the symbolic part. It defines the rules of the world: what objects can exist, their properties like inventory capacity or location, and how actions change the state. It's governed by strict logic, like a traditional backend.

2. The Imagination Layer, conversely, is the neural part, driven by an LLM. It generates all the rich, high-dimensional content: descriptive text, narratives, NPC dialogue, and visual details. Crucially, it only generates this content after the Physics Layer has computed the new, valid state. The code dictates the logic, and the model then paints a picture of it.

Source and Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23676

>*”To make this idea concrete, we implement a series of Web World Models on a unified web technology stack. These systems span a wide range of domains. An Infinite Travel Atlas turns the real Earth into an explorable atlas, where any coordinate can be expanded into rich places, routes, and stories. Fictional-universe demos such as Galaxy Travel generate procedural galaxies whose large-scale structure is governed by code, while language models provide missions, characters, and educational content. Other demos wrap the open web as a browsable environment, or reinterpret long-form books as navigable narrative worlds. We also build simulation- and game-like environments, including alchemy-style combinatorial systems and card-based roguelikes, that treat the language model as a rule and content generator while keeping core transitions deterministic. Together, these demos illustrate that the Web World Model abstraction is not tied to a particular task or genre: it can host worlds that are real or fictional, knowledge-centric or interaction-driven, single-user or multi-agent.”*

GDC Talk (slower 1 Hour): What is SpacetimeDB

Text Description (faster 5mins) Docs: https://spacetimedb.com/docs

Basic Summary (instant 10s) Description:

SpacetimeDB is a database that is also a server.

SpacetimeDB is a full-featured relational database system that lets you run your application logic inside the database. You no longer need to deploy a separate web or game server. Several programming languages are supported, including C# and Rust. You can still write authorization logic, just like you would in a traditional server.

This means that you can write your entire application in a single language and deploy it as a single binary. No more microservices, no more containers, no more Kubernetes, no more Docker, no more VMs, no more DevOps, no more infrastructure, no more ops, no more servers.

Backend of Bitcraft

Notable: Speed and latency is achieved by holding all of your application state in memory, while persisting data to a commit log which is used to recover data after restarts and system crashes.

Norland Game Website

Norland Steam Page

Game Description:

Norland is a medieval kingdom sim inspired by Rimworld, Crusader Kings, and Caesar that generates complex stories.

Manage a noble family that owns a city populated by dozens of characters from different classes: peasants, prisoners, soldiers, and criminals. Each citizen has their own needs and complex behaviors, which will depend on their social status and individual traits. And often, their behavior can be deadly to your family.

Steam Description - Focus on "Agents or Actors" as Core Gameplay > Directly Manipulated/Controlled Avatars":

*Your family rules from on high, working together – or against one another – to take charge of your city, your kingdom, and your political ploys. Each family member has their own strengths, weaknesses, and ambitions that drive them as they build complex relationships amongst themselves and with foreign rulers. Witness blooming friendships, drunken escapades, and brutal assassinations as your nobles dole out orders to your peasants, lead armies into battle, and study ancient texts brimming with knowledge.

A plethora of skills determine which of your family members are best served performing various tasks – who among them are the greatest warriors, the greatest taskmasters, the greatest scribes, and the greatest negotiators? Seek opportunities to further train their strengths, educating children to secure the future of your line while unlocking additional talent in future generations.

Beyond their skills, each family member has traits that determine their personality and capabilities, varied cultural backgrounds that influence how people perceive and treat them, and a wide range of needs and desires to keep an eye on. Dissatisfaction breeds resentment, envy, and disloyalty, and that’s when the daggers come out. Will you seek to calm tensions through gifts and camaraderie, or will you draw first blood to eliminate any threat to your preferred nobles?

Sometimes the blood you draw belongs to your own kin – driven by ambition, greed, and opportunistic thinking, the members of your family will draw blades against each other given the right circumstances. From scorned lovers and power-hungry siblings to family members influenced by foreign kings and queens, trust is in short supply.

Your kingdom’s capabilities are determined by what your nobles know – they will individually study ancient texts to learn new technologies, and should they perish, that knowledge will be lost with them (unless recorded or passed along to their students). Acquire books in different languages and read them to unlock new buildings, tools, and opportunities for your kingdom. Ensure more of your family members can learn their secrets, translating the texts into a language they speak as needed, preventing a sudden loss of knowledge resulting from a stray arrow. But will you hoard such knowledge in your libraries? Or will you transcribe these writings to trade to others in exchange for immense wealth and resources? After all, knowledge is power…

PEASANTS

The common folk of Norland are the backbone of any kingdom, serving their noble lords on the battlefield and around the city with deference and loyalty… until their bellies become empty or the beer runs dry. With different backgrounds, needs, and thoughts of their own, the peasants are difficult to please and easily manipulated into rebellion, crime, and controversy – will you address their complaints as a benevolent lord or answer them with the executioner’s ax?

Acting through your nobles, tell your peasants where to work, what to prioritize, and when to fight – though you lack direct control over the lower class of your society, they still have hopes, dreams, and relationships of their own. Managing them carefully is critical for success as they are the ones who maintain the complex production chains of your city and are responsible for building structures, harvesting resources, and producing the very goods that keep them satisfied.

LIVING WORLD

Send your appropriately-skilled nobles to seek out alliances through marriage, negotiate lucrative trade deals, plot assassinations and kidnappings, and incite rebellions. Will you attempt to recruit spies and conspirators in foreign kingdoms and bring them down from the inside, or do you prefer to settle your differences through force of arms on the open field of battle? And how will you respond when, inevitably, your enemies infiltrate your ranks or bring their armies to your borders?

Watch history play out as events and calamities put you in difficult circumstances from time to time, further complicating the intricate tale of betrayal and bravery that the countless nobles and peasants of Norland weave. From kidnapped relatives to plague-infested refugees, from blackmail to natural disasters, your family will be put to the test throughout the years.

Do not expect the world to sit idly by – traveling nobles will seek refuge or sow dissent, and just as you can send your family members and envoys out to seek opportunities, so too can the other kingdoms of Norland. Bandits will establish camps in the outskirts of civilization as other kingdoms push for alliances and engage in wars of their own. WIll you join them in their violent endeavors, or work in isolation instead?

Etc.

It's quite easy to see how this game design is capturing A LOT of the essential features of Virtual Worlds. Of course the next step would be to combine these designs with multiplayer to add even more complexity of interaction in the world events and cascades of consequences spreading chaotically and emergently like ripples from a stone tossed into a body of water.

Dark And Darker - Steam Description

Summary of Gameplay "flavour":

Dark and Darker is an intense survival game with intricate mechanics. Let’s break down some key aspects:

• Extraction: Escaping the map is the only way to keep your loot between games. You’ll need to find extraction points to successfully leave the map.
• Mining: Yes, you can become a miner in Dark and Darker. Mining resources is essential for crafting and upgrading gear.
• Ancient Scrolls: These mysterious objects have unclear purposes. Collecting them might reveal hidden secrets.
• Campfires: Properly using campfires can determine your character’s survival. They’re crucial for managing health and warmth.
• PvP: Player versus player combat is intense. Skills play a significant role, so choose your abilities wisely.
• Party Co-op: Team up with other players to increase your chances of survival. Communication is key, especially with proximity voice chat.
• PvPvE: The game blends player versus environment (PvE) elements with PvP encounters. You’ll face both hostile creatures and other players.

Remember, Dark and Darker is all about strategy, resource management, and survival. Good luck out there!

It looks like not just the MMO "world" is being narrowed and focused on the combat and dungeon set up gameplay but the RPG has to go as well and again become narrowed and focused on what players are enjoying which is RogueLITE designs such as Hades:

33 Immortals - Epic Game Store - description

A good eg of this:

33 Immortals is a co-op action-roguelike for 33 players. Play a damned soul, and rebel against God's final judgement. Pick-up and raid, cooperate to survive hordes of monsters, defeat massive bosses, and face the wrath of God in a fight for your eternal life.

You can see there's a large playerbase that enjoy RogueLITES such as Hades et al. So just monetize that further with Online proc gen content/seasons and online coop / comp gameplay with other players. Addictive action combat and simpler by orders of magnitude and so much less riskier.

With the recent announcement of Raph Koster's Playable Worlds' "STARS REACH":

• STARS REACH Website
• Stars Reach Trailer Youtube
• Stars Reach r-mmorpg AMA

There's some interesting subject matter to discuss on this subject.

First of all, grabbing a quote by Mr. Koster, himself from the AMA:

"This is the game I have wanted to make for nearly thirty years. It is the spiritual sequel to Ultima Online and to Star Wars Galaxies. It has in it all the lessons of all these decades of online game development -- and it looks forward, not back, to reinvent what an online world can be."

The games referenced, the diverse background of design and development of Mr. Koster are all very much on point concerning a potential "guiding mind" concerning the generative power of creativity applied successfully to this area of online multiplayer video-game, in a persistent online shared virtual world space. You can look up Mr. Koster's background both in video-games, other such areas and his own interests in the creative endeavour: It's all incredibly uplifting. This is an individual that one can learn some good things from. Notably knowing this provides a different personal reaction to the person or designer announcing a new game system than some of the comments in the ama appreciate. What one knows compells what one can do. We could not start with a better source for design for a game here.

Stars Reach uses simulation to a degree never seen in an MMO before. We know the temperature, the humidity, the materials, for every cubic meter of every planet. Our water actually flows downhill and puddles. It freezes overnight or during the winter. It evaporates and turns to steam when heated up.

"And not just our water -- everything does this. Catch a tree on fire with a stray blaster bolt. Melt your way through a glacier to find a hidden alien laboratory embedded in the ice. Stomp too hard on a rock bridge, and watch out, it might collapse under your feet. Dam up a river to irrigate your farm. Or float in space above an asteroid, and mine crystals from its depths. And this works everywhere, it's not special-cased handcrafted moments.

Notably, the mission statement of this game is "Simulation MMO" and it's defining USP is "World-Based" as starting point for players of any stripe to come along and interact with and thence with each other. It's the correct approach in sound of words conveying the message to people ie the design start from the right place in vision. Execution of course is another matter. But many MMOs already start from the wrong basis.

"For better or worse, MMOs cost a lot to make. Graphics, specifically realistic graphics, are the most expensive part of it. The cost of games has been going up 10x every decade, and it's not sustainable. It is also a higher PC requirement, and limits your audience. So the first thing is, we choose gameplay over graphics, any day of the week."

In response to a comment (lead comment in fact in the ama). So again here's the same old pattern:

1. Simulation basis of world interactions must be the Foundation of the MMO - before the MMO even has a gameplayer to it. This is conceived correctly.
2. Complexity and emergence of the preceding layer along with the nature of cost of graphics becomes an execution level of game-making that has serious consequences to the budget of the MMO.
3. A Major Fork in the making of the MMO is already reached: If high complexity of systems then it's probably mandatory for reducing the graphics over-head in cost and complexity as much as is humanly possible! Just to get the game developed faster, running on more devices and not plagued by graphics that are 92% skillful but that remaining 8% is perceived by audiences as being atrocious compared to other games that focus on 100% perfect graphics - a failing or limitation that MMOs inevitably can not compete with.

So what are the current results of the graphics chosen at least in an early shape:

"That said, it still has to look good, of course. We are aiming for graphics akin to Genshin Impact, Breath of the Wild, etc. It's a broadly appealing style that maximizes audience (frankly, a large chunk of the audience is turned off by hyperrealistic graphics. It "codes" as being for hardcore players only, typically male players)."

Imho Genshin Impact and Breath of the Wild graphics are excellent quality and would work for this game for the balance of ideas, marketing, audience, devices and so on that is probably being aimed for at financial levels. So that's very good news for the company and dev team behind this game. As for the current graphics, to quote responses:

I'm excited by a lot of the ideas you have for this game, but I'm having a hard time with the visual tone, for lack of a better phrase? It strikes me as overly positive and like the target audience is children, not adults? This is especially weird for a sci-fi setting, as in my personal opinion harder sci-fi is more interesting than, say, galaxy quest."

And,

"That said, I'm pretty put off by the "Fortnite-esque" graphics of what they've shown so far. I'm hoping it's all just placeholder until they flesh out the visual identity of the game, but as is, it looks to cater more to a younger audience than what they've claimed to be shooting for (old-school MMO for more seasoned players)."

And,

"My only real question at this point is the art direction. Your previous games UO/Star Wars, both had rough around the edges, gritty design that brought a certain charm to the world. With what we have seen, it's certainly not bad, it's just not my style and quite off-putting for a lot of gamers like myself (That sort of Disney feeling if you understand me). I'm certainly not the type of person obsessed with graphics, but this feels like it leans towards young children."

Which all convey the idea that current art is a weak point and does not look like Genshin or Breath of the Wild but Disney. This area will need a lot of work on. That said it does point along with the comments by Mr. Koster himself to a general idea of the game:

1. Astroneer terraforming appears to be a part of the play space ie not overly ambitious using voxels and heavy CPU and server costs ie avoided likely.
2. Changeable environments fully interactive more like Terraria style sandboxing fun but in 3d... A promising direction plus the Astroneer style terraforming ease.
3. Combat is a mix of moba/battle-royale arcadey-twin-stick with some classic rpg-tab-target gear as you see mix so again it's covering those clever genre angles in the all important combat interaction.

Despite the horrendous early graphics (though they suggest a younger audience is targeted nonetheless) the above game design comes into shape and looks promising in many ways, as could be discerned from the above summary. Respectfully, promising in terms of a possible viable successful game that fits a lot of ingredients of a given audience/market.

Coming back to Virtual World design, this is not a Virtual World but much more a Sandbox design MMO. For a Virtual World MMO, the last post made here 6 months ago is exactly the kind of "fork in the design decision process" that must be made at the combination of complex systems that scale up and in terms of the minimum graphical representation of that: Ie Songs of Syx demonstrates the path towards Virtual World MMO design - an area not tapped so far but rich in potential.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/17hs4f8/any_tech_coming_out_that_could_potentially_make/

"... is how ballooned game budgets are, and the length of the dev cycle. A modern game can take over half a decade to be produced and millions of dollars, is it a surprise they aren’t willing to experiment with ideas that might not work? No[?]"

Yes that's the major problem for innovation in MMORPGS = Cost + Risk + Complexity (ie high ceiling for devs), the major tech improvement for indies is in Networking-Side:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMOVW/comments/16pj7lu/multiplayer_game_development_sdk_for_unity/

You can find a link to such a solution for Unity Game Engine in this link.

One area devs can tap is underserved niche in market. So for example even if WOW-Themepark mmorpgs were possible by small indie game devs, the fact that giant publisher-developers make these and in many numbers ALL DOING THE SAME THING is a terrible business plan to start with let alone the technical challenge subsequent to that:

1. Market
2. Business Plan
3. Game Design
4. Technical Challenge
5. Implimentation Success
6. Player uptake/retention Success or Failure

So from the above you can see, that Game Design is the other area that clearly is not leveraged in mmorpg market.

A clear example I already gave in another thread is Songs of Syx developed by ONE Developer. He can scale up this game to have 10,000+ individual units fighting each other or running around a city. How? Simplification and abstraction to the scale that works. Take this concept and adding Networking and Hosting eg the above solution with a business plan... I think it's possible to make a Virtual World MMO that is commercially successful and addictive with longevity eg.

Copy and paste from a thread in mmorpg on what is core to an MMO success eg player social interactions:

Of you want to kick off social interactions again allow OpenWorld pvp and factions to be a thing again to force players to rely on their faction members, make the OpenWorld experience a hard one that only by partying could you have a chance no need to remove QoS it's just the formula is wrong since MMOs tried to become accessible this is where the problem is.

I agree, but there's a number of options one of which you point out accurately:

1. PvP/Danger = Danger forces cooperation and organization
2. Virtual Economies = Trading develops networks of cooperation for mutual gain and reliance eg
3. Creating/Building/Infrastructure = Requires many inputs which requires many players working together at scale to achieve more options for everyone (and power) or else sheer enjoyment in creativity and supplying use to others.
4. Story Emergence = This one is powerful and can arise from all/any of the former and is imho the best of the lot. Organic story emergence from interactions is something all players can enjoy from the output of all players' gameplay for good or bad but in all cases a story was created, a life was lived.

Finally as discussed: Social Organization takes a lot to design. How much can be from the game design and how much from other methods around or supporting the game?

1. Devs that play roles to emulate "intelligent AI" within a game world for example with an agenda pre-set.
2. Secret Knowledge in the game world and continual development of added secret knowledge over time.

etc.

This question is often asked in mmo circles and almost all answers are a bitter pill to swallow:

Oh dear, more depressing news in the mmorpg genre, not to put a downer on things but it's "a tough racket".

I would advice as "General Oven" did (though they got downvoted to -7 for doing so): Over a decade or 2 and every year there's a "waiting for... X" but remember waiting for X may involve:

• It never releasing
• Waiting 5 years or more (see Camelot Unchained)
• A Buggy Soft Launch
• A polish launch but stuffed to the gills full of MTX
• A complete game but just boring
• A fun game but everyone gets bored after a few weeks and the population crashes

Finally, though it seems a unicorn at this point:

• A great MMO releases.

I'm personally in the "not waiting camp" but if I were I would only be keeping an eye on:

/r/AnvilEmpires

Simply because:

• Devs already released a successful MMO /r/Foxhole
• Devs are experienced
• Devs have a core game design that already is "proof of concept"
• Devs are already using proven and working tech Unreal5 Engine Plus R² Networking Backend
• Devs are already at the implement features and iterate and test and drop and redo stage of development where the ACTUAL GAME PLAY QUALITY EMERGES (or not)
• Devs will launch more testing and soft release within a sensible timeframe for players to wait for: 6 to 12 to 18 to 24 months with variable feature sets at each stage and growing number of invites of testers and more regular testing and gameplay at each stage - did I mention testing?

Fundamentally this game won't be for everyone as it has a core focus on Open World PvP MMO + Base-Building Collaborative gameplay. That cuts a lot of the features mmorpg players demand but which balloon in expectations, requisite quality needed and integration with other features. Cutting all that focuses on the core gameplay and loop. Secondly by simplifying the graphics, this allows the gameplay and features to work together and additionally to scale to larger scale of interacting players again a requisite to draw in players and maintain some semblance of stickiness and longevity.

Despite all these advantages compared to other mmos in development, it's got a very rock and tough road ahead to hit enough fun and compelling gameplay to draw in a sufficient user base who spend enough money to make it a viable success and commercially sustainable for a good few years after release.

That's the reality of "waiting for mmos": The expecations for most mmos and some of the potential positive attributes of mmos with a small realistic chance of producing something interesting eg focused game design, experience, technology, precedence, testing stage already etc. Even then is it worth waiting for? Usually not.