Right, imagine I have essentially unlimited cash. I win the lottery or something, and then a crazy number of companies invest and give me startup cash.
And the maybe 3 servers around the world - Asia, Europe and North America. But only 3.
My idea, in essence, involves the community creating a lot of the content. For example, as a player, you might sign up to create something, and be assigned a texture to begin with. As you put in more hours, the company trusts you to create more advanced content, like towns and quests and stuff. Because this world is friggin huge and there's no way the staff can create it by themselves.
Then there would be various rewards for helping out, such as reduced fees for playing, exclusive or at least valuable in-game items, a note on your profile or a rank or something so others players can see the work you've put in, and the ability to see your created content in game.
And of course you could work together with other players and create whole new races, or spaceships (it would be sci-fi), or even new planets. I think it could be an incredible game! But of course, it requires millions of people on one server... is it possible?