Hey Silvermyst, I like most of the things you said, they pretty much match up with my game, which is really encouraging. What I meant about the quests question is that I might not have npc quests (maybe not even npc''s) and any interesting things would have to be set up by the players. For instance, a hidden cave with treasure at the end would mean that some player got treasure and hid it in the cave and hired his friends to guard it instead of having the quest already set up by me, the designer. I''m not totally sure how it will work, but I think I will have certain items that there is only one copy of in the world, meaning only one player can have it at a time. This would mean players trying to figure out who has it etc. Then again, I may not have much in the way of items, I''m just not sure.
About eating, it is an important part of my design, and I''m not sure how to implement it well. I want to make eating different foods important, not just this food gives 3 food points and this food gives 10 food points. I might have some other fluctuating stats like in the sims: overall hunger, sweets, spicy, protein, and taste. They would fluctuate as you eat different foods and you have to find the right balance to stay healthy. If someone attacks you when the food stats are unbalanced, and it would have different affects on your fighting. And I want to implement cravings as well, like: "Suddenly, you have a craving for sweets" and have some sort of timer in which the craving gets stronger and stronger and then passes. But how do I get the player to want to satisfy his/her cravings? Just because it says you have a craving on the screen, doesn''t mean the player will take the time to satisfy it. How do I affect the gameplay to encourage the player to satisfy it, without forcing him to or doing anything arbitrarily?
Player-killing is a tough one, and ti will always be a problem. Thare are so many mass-murderers who play that it''s hard to just say, let all players fight each other. I want it to be realistic, challenging, but most importantly, fun. I think I can make it work with safe-zones. Not much cool stuff to do in a safe zone, so you have to venture out sometime, but you can always stay there if you are afraid. Maybe I will have safe-zones change during gameplay, and only available at certain times. They should be big enough however, to allow someone to evade someone else who is out for them. And I wont have a built in follow command.
I want it to be large, but I think that interesting places is more important. I will have to balance that issue with effort,time,etc.

Anyone else have any other issues/comments/whatever?

You are very right, I know exactly what you mean. I definately don''t want it to be overcomplicated, and I want it to be simple and fun for anyone to just pick up and play. I am trying to think of ways to make eating a little more important than most games, but still fun. Eating is fun in the sims, and I recently thought of another game where eating is quite important: Nethack. And you have to be careful what you eat in that game too. I think I will do something similar to that, where you can get ill, poisoned, hallucinate, etc. but with less drastic consequences. None of the food should be fatal. I think it would be fun for players to find out what foods are especially beneficial to them, and what foods might have odd effects. I am really getting a clearer picture of my game now thanks to you guys. The key is fun.

Saluk

If the world was really, really big there would be no need for safe zones. You could just find a nice secluded spot (hide-out) and hope noone found you. I think that would be fun.