I predict that the second year will add far more players that the first as the game continues to develop.
Character ManagementWe have played enough Monopoly now - it's the time to move on to Civilization (city management == commoner character development, technology tree == skills system, Civ buildings == items). Intriguing mechanisms are being designed concerning how the player spends the steady stream of action points (1 AP comes every 8 hours, some can be held at storage).
The new players find themselves immediately in the middle of choices. Meeting girls costs both time and money, but will hopefully lead to marriage with many bonuses (though with continued time sink as well). Gardening, hunting and distilling your own mead increase self-sufficiency, but might it still be better to work part-time in a hard (but well-paid, considering no experience) job in a quarry, and learn to read in the spare time and become a town clerk instead.
Many items bring bonuses to your life, as do the various Personal, Academic, and Artesan skills in their several levels (in total, hundreds of skills will be there to be explored). Unbalanced gameplay brings health challenges. Going social and walking around the map, on the other hand, leads you to interesting buildings where bonuses to the skills-in-progress can be had without paying AP cost!
So there is the element of making the most of your "life" in the way of AP, and this is a bonanza for those who enjoy micromanagement as well.
But your success can be boosted directly by spending real playtime in exploring the environment, because that brings you upon both straight-on bonuses and interesting opportunities (+ play time yields you gold).
Indirectly you can boost your character by depositing, because while money cannot buy
everything, it is very hard to say
what exactly it cannot buy, indirectly at least...
Having enough money quickly frees up your time from the requirements of making a living, so both the AP and the playtime can be fully spent on interesting activities! Being young and having enough money to do what you want:
Yii-haa! 
Simulations are going on to determine the optimal conversion rate of "basic character economy" to RL monetary value. The concept of free-to-play + withdraw the gains, is quite difficult to balance. If the ingame money is too valuable, it turns the difficulty level up even more since there will be many farmers just hacking the game to withdraw a RL salary for themselves, and getting casual players will dry up: no matter deposit or not, they cannot even stay alive in the competitive world, and stay away. If the money is too unvaluable, even small deposits can make you a big lord and then the game is full of big lords playing from mom's basements, which makes the administration of the characters who are really-big-lords too tedious for the adults to do, and we lose the most valuable players. The AP earnings from a commoner, start=15yo, character in his lifetime are ~50 XMR, which is determined to be the sweet spot. In the lifetime simulations, about 40% goes to food and drink, 40% to clothes and rent, leaving some for discretionary spending. Here, micro-deposits of 1-5 XMR make a difference in the day-to-day challenges, and 25-50 XMR are already a sum to cause a social rise.
Tribe and GuildMany have wondered what is the real meaning of landed nobility; what does the countryside mean when it comes, and how can it function in practice with possibly millions (or even thousands) of players moving there to find better living conditions from the cramped CryptoTown. The answer will be: feudalism. The Dukes and higher will govern a duchy, which is composed of many counties. The levels Earl-Prince have one or more counties. Below this is the Manor, and then Farm.
Now comes the interesting part: We start from the county. It is up to the Earls (and higher, since also Dukes have counties) to gain the people to his county. Counties have their own economic pools, which means that they are shielded from the CryptoTown finances, and therefore sandboxes for all kinds of ideas how to make them function. While I admire my own capability in steering CryptoTown and the whole game as aside, I am again more than happy if someone does it better and gets more people and bigger buildings in their own city.
Since only nobles are direct subjects of the King, commoners can voluntarily submit themselves to feudal lords in return of favors and protection. Free land is something that the Earls have - each county can have one central city consisting of as many boroughs as needed + thousands of boroughs of rural land ready to be turned to farms! There might become quite a competition to get the best settlers, and they will be your subjects afterwards so you can tax them. But if famine, pestilence or enemy hits, they are also dependent on you. The organization of a county includes the possibility to appoint a Viscount (manager), although not a level rank, he is generally regarded as next to Earl himself in prestige. Earls have many ways to benefit their subjects.
Guild is a similar allegiance system where city-dwelling industrialists can enrol players (characters) to his businesses and ensure the development of appropriate skills for his business plans. The skills system is very wide, and reaching the top in even one skill corresponds to Wizard level. Clearly some help is needed, and setting up academies etc. helps the members gain skills (and levels) more quickly.
I just picked 2 of the modules that are coming
In the near term we see the release of API, and of course the game is back to play. But then many of the UI/visualization stuff will be given to contractors, allowing the core to proceed concurrently, so progress will soon be made in many fronts!
The possibility to steam on with the design is of course provided by the new testing coordinator Sir Noms, Naturalist Mooo, HE saddam and perhaps others. Thank you all!
