Just wanted to quickly add a potential monicker for the game's category: MMOWB ... Massively Multiplayer Online World Builder :p
@Ogreman: it would be more along the lines of a ship that had been in deep space, returning to the Earth to find civilization gone. Cameni and Angrypig have always discussed on the forums exploration and rebuilding of a "virgin" Earth, without the current influence of humanity (in one conversation I had with Cameni, we both moaned about the absence of stars in our own skies due to light pollution. I used to be able to view the rings of Saturn more or less with the naked eye where I live, and the moons of Jupiter through even the cheapest store-bought telescope. But not anymore.)
Other than that, I think the rest of your post is more or less along the lines of what they're looking at, as well as Zeos's ideas. Honestly, from what little I knew of the direction prior to this release, I think Cameni and Angrypig were as surprised as I was how close to their idea Zeos's (and now yours and the others in this post) is to their initial thoughts.
To add a bit to Zeos's ideas, there are a number of possibilities that open up here. For example, jobs. A person who only wanted to experience the flight simulator portion of the game and who had access to the appropriate vehicle, could be responsible for ferrying resources and passengers (for a fee) to other parts of the world. Potential traders could hire these individuals for the task, by posting on a Job Search bulletin board within the game. And new players who decide they want to go to another part of the world could buy tickets on these planes, trains, buses, whatever, to get to their destination. Others who need resources but don't want to do the task themselves could hire surveyors to do it for them, and even hire miners to extract the resources and/or process them. Entire corporations could be setup for any of these endeavors, just as in the real world (although that would probably be a programming nightmare). And those who want to only experience combat can hire themselves as mercenaries, and take mercenary-related jobs, or join up with an Army for bad field rations and combat pay
. The only real drawback I see to this kind of system is the downtime while waiting to get to another location ... but I think that should be part of the beauty. Everything, including down to the time of day, is rooted in real-time. A day on our real Earth is a day in Outerra. It would almost be a real world experiment in the evolution of a digital world, something that hasn't been done before on this scale.
Back on jobs: In a lot of ways, this would be more of a skill-based system where a player could advance only skills he wanted to pursue, without necessarily tying himself to an individual profession or "class" (which is the bane of games like Warcraft). And over time, he can change his skills as he evolves his own gameplay choices.
The ship in orbit is responsible for the
initial funding and colonization. Further needs can be purchased (more advanced buildings or vehicles) for a fee (creating a money-sink for the player, and driving the economy, as well as perhaps the Outerra Dev's teams profits). These new buildings/vehicles can be created by the community and approved by the developers, or created/purchased by the developers from existing modelers around the world.
And as the engine/game develops, players who want to engage in "combat-related" activities could exist within the same world as a traditional (sorry for the term .. I'm a part-time care-bear myself) care-bear, who doesn't want any kind of combat at all. Special devices aboard the ship in orbit could allow certain sections of the planet to be "combat-neutral," effectively stopping combat from happening at all within that particular area.
For people who want to create cities, new players can choose to "start" within a city, and establishing a home would require its purchase (or hiring an architect to design and build it), as well as paying taxes to the city for upkeep. Or, for the adventurous newcomer, he could opt to try an undeveloped area, and build his home from scratch by the sweat of his brow.
*Edit* And to help facilitate initial starting players, one city could be pre-established: Outerra City. Created as part of the design process, it would contain empty homes, factories, airports, a seaport, etc, to help the initial startup.
I don't, however, think the economy should necessarily be ensconced by "money." The driving force behind re-colonization of a barren Earth should be more altruistic in nature, since we'd all be after the same thing. However, there has to be something there in some fashion, but I haven't come up with a possible solution as of yet. Credits are almost cliche now.
*Edit* Perhaps a "Reputation" can be exchanged. Give me X number of resources, and I'll give you Y amount of Reputation. But really, that's not much different than Credits or Dollars
