I really don't think I'm explaining this correctly. I'm going to use how it worked in Horizons as an example and try to show why I don't think the "technically impractical" excuse doesn't work.
With the crafting schools in Horizons, you had to choose between if you could make leather structures, stone structures, or wooden structures. Most buildings required a combination of materials. The smaller the building, the fewer materials and the fewer types of materials were needed. So yes, a small group of people could build a couple of things for personal use. The big villages and main bridges/towers required many, many people working extremely diligently over time in order to repair those structures that did have a noticeable effect on the world, as in getting to the Satyrs - a race that was in the game, but not playable until the server freed the race. In order to free the race, you had to have both adventurers and crafters working together on it and it really did take just about the entire server to do it. The servers that didn't have people group together took the longest to release the subjugated races.
Unfortunately, there was no PvP in the tested and released version, but the NPCs did stage raids on the towns and if the majority of people didn't help defend, you effectively lost that town. Your personal property was still there, but you couldn't get to it by yourself.
My point is that the things that really, truly did affect the world were not limited to a small group of people. In fact, you had to have massive groups in order to defend towns or to push into the Withered Aegis territories and claim some new lands.
Questing wasn't setup like it is in WoW. You do small quests for your crafting and small little excursions against minor threats for your adventuring. The big world and story changing effects were always geared towards everyone, including the baby characters, doing some part to help. For the crafting parts, you didn't even have to be on at the same time as everyone else, just build when you could. The adventurers usually had to coordinate when they were attacking, but that's to be expected. If you tried to do the world changing events with only 5 people, it never happened. You couldn't even do it with just a hundred or so. You needed a massive, server-wide effort to do it. And that was good. Something that is that world changing needs to take effort, coordination, and teamwork in order to succeed. It means nothing if just a handful of people can do it.
Horizons had a lot of downfalls, but the way they implemented world and storyline changes was one of the few things they did correctly. It allowed players to affect the world, but it didn't do it by making the character the center of the world and that is why it wasn't completely impractical and completely not workable.
Edit: One more comment I wanted to make. So many MMORPGs claim to have living, breathing worlds, immersive worlds, but if nothing ever really changes in the world, is it really that much of a world? The game can still be good, but the world in a lot of these RPGs are just static with only hints and nods here and there to being believable as a world.
With the crafting schools in Horizons, you had to choose between if you could make leather structures, stone structures, or wooden structures. Most buildings required a combination of materials. The smaller the building, the fewer materials and the fewer types of materials were needed. So yes, a small group of people could build a couple of things for personal use. The big villages and main bridges/towers required many, many people working extremely diligently over time in order to repair those structures that did have a noticeable effect on the world, as in getting to the Satyrs - a race that was in the game, but not playable until the server freed the race. In order to free the race, you had to have both adventurers and crafters working together on it and it really did take just about the entire server to do it. The servers that didn't have people group together took the longest to release the subjugated races.
Unfortunately, there was no PvP in the tested and released version, but the NPCs did stage raids on the towns and if the majority of people didn't help defend, you effectively lost that town. Your personal property was still there, but you couldn't get to it by yourself.
My point is that the things that really, truly did affect the world were not limited to a small group of people. In fact, you had to have massive groups in order to defend towns or to push into the Withered Aegis territories and claim some new lands.
Questing wasn't setup like it is in WoW. You do small quests for your crafting and small little excursions against minor threats for your adventuring. The big world and story changing effects were always geared towards everyone, including the baby characters, doing some part to help. For the crafting parts, you didn't even have to be on at the same time as everyone else, just build when you could. The adventurers usually had to coordinate when they were attacking, but that's to be expected. If you tried to do the world changing events with only 5 people, it never happened. You couldn't even do it with just a hundred or so. You needed a massive, server-wide effort to do it. And that was good. Something that is that world changing needs to take effort, coordination, and teamwork in order to succeed. It means nothing if just a handful of people can do it.
Horizons had a lot of downfalls, but the way they implemented world and storyline changes was one of the few things they did correctly. It allowed players to affect the world, but it didn't do it by making the character the center of the world and that is why it wasn't completely impractical and completely not workable.
Edit: One more comment I wanted to make. So many MMORPGs claim to have living, breathing worlds, immersive worlds, but if nothing ever really changes in the world, is it really that much of a world? The game can still be good, but the world in a lot of these RPGs are just static with only hints and nods here and there to being believable as a world.
Intolerant monkey.