I read in a previous post that aiming for the size and scale of World of Warcraft was not the goal. I would rethink this. The reason people play World of Warcraft is because 1) it is a massively open and real-world environment. Lessons from other MMO's like DDO should be something to think about. DDO was a closed environment that was very segmented i.e. content was compartmentalized into zones/instances. Moving around from one part of the "world" to another made it seem very un-open. WoW is one giant open environment. You can literally walk from one end of a continent to another without "zoning" in or out. People play WoW because 1) its huge and open, and 2) content content content. The mistake newer games make (SWTOR) launched and really had no captivating content. So, I very much believe if this game will be successful, it needs to be on a Gigantic scale from the very start! Better to take the time and get it right than rush to bring a product to market with the 'promise' of expanding. People will sigh up, get bored, and go back to WoW. Second, if you want to compete with WoW (which, I'm sorry, you need to know WoW rules the MMO world and if you want any chance of success you need to play at their level), you have to create something on a scale so amazing it will keep people interested. Third, I would TOTALLY model the play style after WoW. There are no two ways around it. There are thousands of people (like myself) that would LOVE to bail on WoW for something else. But if its not WoW-like, its not going to keep me interested. There's my 2 cents worth.