EVE online is more or less the closest to this so far, so it may be worth learning lessons from them (though I wouldn't suggest copying their approach: their st

EVE online is more or less the closest to this so far, so it may be worth learning lessons from them (though I wouldn't suggest copying their approach: their stackless python behemoth codebase appears to contain many a horror). It's certainly a hard problem though, especially when you have a concentration of large numbers of players (which is inevitable when you create such a game world).