> The multiplayer side won't be interesting unless the world is persistent, so you have to split the world into several servers to not overload servers, because players need to cross the path of other players for the game to feel alive.
Honestly, you only need some shared towns to be persistent. Everything else being ephemeral could be made a feature through lore (i.e. reality destroying mists which eats the world whenever nobody is watching, player characters try to fight against the neverending destruction by venturing out into the world, temporarily reclaiming parts for harvesting etc.)
The biggest issue would be to actually generate towns, npc story etc on the fly. I think you're really underestimating the size of that challenge. Generating assets like that is generally the most expensive part of game development with multiple people working on each one. If you automate that away, you'll be able to make a ton of money just by providing modules for unreal engine and unity.
Honestly, you only need some shared towns to be persistent. Everything else being ephemeral could be made a feature through lore (i.e. reality destroying mists which eats the world whenever nobody is watching, player characters try to fight against the neverending destruction by venturing out into the world, temporarily reclaiming parts for harvesting etc.)
The biggest issue would be to actually generate towns, npc story etc on the fly. I think you're really underestimating the size of that challenge. Generating assets like that is generally the most expensive part of game development with multiple people working on each one. If you automate that away, you'll be able to make a ton of money just by providing modules for unreal engine and unity.