Half the player base decided to quarantine. There was a route west, which involved a dangerous swamp and a climb up a mountain that most newbies couldn't make if they didn't have the right buffs. New citizens would be escorted to the mountain, quarantined for 4 days, then buffed so they could cross it.
The other group was the "gains" group. They figured out that sparring increased stats rapidly and they could buff stats to the point where the disease was no longer a problem.
So then there was a PvE war with the orcs, which hit an uneasy peace, where the player base decided to just give tribute of weapons and armor to them. A third faction spawned, the orc sympathisers, who snuck more steel weapons to the copper age orcs. A smith player unlocked the orc race this way and black market emerged trading iron to the orcs.
The gains faction were uneasy with this and broke the peace treaty. The rest of the game, unhappy with breaking a treaty, moved west.
The gains faction conquered the orcs. The orc god was impressed and there was a party involving player-crafted beer, and a brawl with a god that increased someone's dodge skills to superhuman levels. The orcs were assimilated and they created a warrior-murderhobo faction in the north. They took on small territory, near a rich mine and some rare leathers used in armour. By the end of the game, everyone up north including chicken farmers had the highest tier swords.
The isolationist faction had a larger block of land and established trading relations with the dwarves. They got access to many of the remaining dungeons and artifact zones.
Sadly the game died shortly after, because of tech debt, server costs, and a burnt out player base. After a year, it was rebuilt into what became Soulforged today.
This describe Soulforged perfectly: https://play.soulforged.net/
It's funny but if you drop by the Discord, we've been having lengthy conversations yesterday on why this might not be fun.
The short of it is that it hurts solo players and individualism. Communes are extremely powerful and necessary for progress. There are also certain professions that are popular (like mining) but gated because of the rarity of mining picks. So a lot of people give up on their mining dreams for the greater good. The mining problem was patched just this morning, but solo gameplay is still a problem - you need to be part of some group to get anywhere.
The other major problem with a sandbox is many have no idea where to continue. They chop wood poles and then chop higher level wood and making housing from that. And then don't really have much to aspire for other than hoarding wealth. So the dev is adding quest-like features: one classic MMO quest system and a player based system, where people can pay for say, ore, or a rare material found from certain beasts.
But the world is based a lot on the players, from settlements to the name of materials.
If you guys plan on joining, civilization is past the river. Head south outside the tutorial cave, then keep moving NE past the bridge. The roads are also player built but nobody got around to making roads for the newbies.