First of all, happy new year to everyone.
There were a couple of things I was wondering about with regards to the systems announced so far.
I am new on the forums, and I don't know if it is appropriate to post this here. If it is not, feel free to move my message anywhere else.
Disclaimer: I am not a hater

I like the vision of the game, I like Steven as a person, and oh boy can a relate to "there are no good MMO's left" problem. Most of the things Steven is saying, I've been saying for years to my friends, or in other close circles.
So no. I don't think the game will "suck". I just would like to look at the systems from the point of view of how they can be broken - by insane min-max performance-oriented omega-pro-gamer-cybersport culture, that I was amazed to observe in classic WoW, and some other games I've played, or in any other way. I am interested in the project, and would like for it to succeed. But here I would try to present worst-case scenarios, in case some of them can be avoided. In the interest of us all.
I included my ideas about what potential solutions might look like.
I understand that all of these things might've been already discussed 100 times over, by developers inside close doors, or here, on the forums, so I am posting it while keeping in mind that maybe I am not contributing at all to anything... But in hopes that I am... Here we go)
1) Instanced boss difficulty
From my understanding, instanced bosses difficulty and loot-tables on the last bosses are going to be scaled based on your party's performance on the first bosses.
My question is: what would be a good way to measure the performance, except for a raw DPS-check?
In case of a ladder, a problem of class-disbalance arises. We would like for every class to be needed in some way, to fill some niche. If the loot you are getting is determined by successful DPS-check at the beginning of the raid, I can see people taking 1 tank, 3 clerics and 829384 mages (or rangers), to get the max loot-table, thus making the high-dps classes way more desired in raids, guilds, and so forth.
Possible solution:
Alternative ways of performance-measuring. Make sure to include (somehow) every way, in which different classes contribute to the raid is useful into the measurement process.?? Maybe
2) Node-type "meta"
I am not sure if there even is a way to prevent this, except for just having the community that enjoys the game, instead of enjoying their "performance", but...
What if node-type "meta" is going to form over time? For example, part of what scientific node type offers to players, is information about the world, which will all be eventually available to players through wiki "wowhead"-like websites anyways. And if militaristic type node will have some actual +stat, or other combat bonuses, won't all players just want to be a citizens of militaristic nodes?
If the node-type will be determined by citizen's choice, eventually we will see the world filled by only militaristic-type nodes, which will destroy the fun and beauty of the whole system.
But even with the node-type randomized, the consequences of that kind of node-type "meta" can be quite unpleasant.
Your node levels up to stage 3. You are happy about that, you rush to player-houses to get yourself a house. You are now a proud house-owning citizen. But in a general chat everyone is upset for some reason. They say, that the "right" node-type didn't "proc". It's "divine" instead of "militaristic". Now we have to start all over. The siege is scheduled right away. Defenders surrender. The node is destroyed with no resistance. We start from the begging. Hopefully militaristic will "proc" next time. We all need these sweet +5% dmg bonuses. Instead of... a temple. Pff!
Possible solution:
One of the solutions, I suppose, could be not only randomising, but also locking certain number of node-types in the world. Just like there can only be 5 metropolises, maybe there should only be "n" scientific nodes, and "n" militaristic.
3) Real-estate click-competition
As far as I understand, there will be great benefits of owning a house on a village stage, to then see it progress to a mansion on a metropolis stage. We should expect to see an intense competition for who would get these village-stage houses first. But that competition is going to be a... clicking competition.
Whoever clicks first gets the house, right? And potentially, a mansion. Are you seeing what I am seeing?
Yes. Hose clicker-scripts. And no, if you don't have one, you are not getting a house. Or a mansion.
And yes, maybe you are going to have to pay real money to some dude to buy the script...
Possible solution:
Come up with some other way to decide who gets the house. But what could this way possibly be??