Here's my idea. It's sort of like Wurm online, only done properly. Pretty much its a civilisation simulator from the ground up. Rather than leveling your characters you focus on leveling your society. But its a social experience more than that.

The game is a sandbox. Start with a dozen or so servers. Each world is the same at launch. The game starts off as being a stoneage setting. It's up to the players to develop from there. At start its just humans wandering in the wild by the end its late medieval. Magic is a force of nature just like any other that can be controlled and developed. Servers are all interconnected. The game is a continuous world, zoning equivalent is actually a server switch. The setting is 9000 BC and is the rise and fall of a pre-civilisation civilisation.

In game should take about four or five years for the setting to evolve into the end game. New servers will be added as pop grows in a sort of Lebensraum concept that man expands as the pop rises. Technology can be started fresh in new servers of taken from other servers. Everything must be made, there is no society to speak of in the beginning.

Here's my idea of the games' progression.

You're out wandering for food (berries and fruits etc.) what do you find? A rock. And what kind of rock? A flint. Oh boy. The possibilities. You bring it back to your tribe (guild.) "Guys I found a flint." "Nice." "Now what." "We should start a fire I guess." "Hell yeah, first fire, next thing the wheel." "We're going to need to gather some moss and twigs and bark." "Yeah and some sand and stones." "That shouldn't take long."

So you gather your gear and then you place the rocks into a circle of sand, place the twigs and moss, the strike the pieces of flint together. Nothing happens. "Shit what do we do now." "Yeah its getting dark." "Fuck, stupid me, we need iron." "God damn it." "There's still time to find some." "Yeah, there must be some arond here." "The game wouldn't possibly try to pull that kind of stunt." "I know." "Worse comes to worse we get some sticks and rub them together." "That's what she said." "That's hardly funny you pussy." "Hey! I thought we were going to role play." "That's what she said." "Shut the fuck up!" "OMG kill the fucker."

You pick up a stone and throw it at the 'That's what she said guy.' "God damn it you hurt me." "Stop being a fuck then." "Fine."

Eventually you start a fire. That's like hitting level one. There's a shit load of development though. Everything actually has to be done. There's plenty of violence, but you can't just "Get phat loot." In order to get ahead in the game you need team work. Problem children will get throw out of tribes pretty quickly. The game is a race to being the best cuture, ultimately with each server competing with one another for advancement. Probably like EVE with cavemen, only I haven't played EVE.

My personal expection of such a game? Mindless stone age warfare in all but one advanced server. Why? The people who actually understand the game will try hard to seperate themselves from all the people who are amused fighting one another. I actually predict the great civilisation to give weapons and armor (of lower quality than their own.) to the "Barbarians" in order to keep them fighting one another and out of there hair.

Its a civilisation simulator, there's nothing too extreme that could happen. Genocides, civilisation collapses, all possible. Rating M. Why? Nudity and violence. Why? Because you start off as pre civilisation people. Clothes don't exist at start. Yes really. And if you want never invent them. Its up to you. But remember its not just tits you are going to end up looking at (wa wa waaah!)

That's my theory of the best online past time. It would need to be really innovative on the crafting as that's the point of the game but nothing beyond current tech. I doubt it would take any longer or more to make as even though the system would be very very robust  there would be no "plot" to worry about. Everything just sort of happens. Seasons change, years drawl on and tech creeps forward somewhere out there. Its simply a matter of getting all the innovators together to get things done.
 

I think it would be really cool. Anybody want to make the game so I can play it?

Why don't you make the game, so I can play it?

I like the concept of a community building a world into an invisible pre-design created by the developers.  That is an experience, beyond just being a game, and it'd be great to see and play.  Some of the ideas you hvae here, however, are a bit brutish and heavy handed.  Your design brief seems to rely on players being very unintelligent.  Cursing at each other and lamenting "the developer wouldn't have..." as opposed to "this game sucks, bye" and worse, only elite players thinking about building, while all the combat-fiends club each other like, no, AS neanderthals.  Really absurd.  If anything, the real life neanderthals will be the first grinding up the crafting tree, trying to get the most uber laser swords to "pwn puny civilization building carebears."