So since I decided to focus my game mainly on PVE with complex emergent based AI whereby as the dev I have no better idea how the AI enemies will act than a player I am planning to introduce a permission system to control item access and also building access. I am also planning to have that integrated with the social and political systems. Given the lack of pvp as a central mechanic I see no reason to allow a free for all of item stealing. Sorry thieves.
The system is based on lists, I guess similar to google+ or facebook.
Does anyone see an problems with this system? Is there something you would like to remove or add?
Lets start with guilds:
Guilds are formed by 2 players agreeing to form one. There is nothing a guild can do that a player can't a single person could create a whole town if they could put in the effort.
Two players create a chat list. This is done by one person sending a chat request and the other accepting. Pretty simple. That chat list essentially controls access to a chat channel for all people on the list.
However that chat list can also be used for many other things. You can assign permissions based on any chat list. Access to any building, town, guild hall, house, w/e.
Storage objects, which includes any building, and also chests boxes, bags, pretty much any container can have access restricted by a chat list.
You can assign permissions without a list, or using one or more lists and then individual names.
Players can join any number of chat lists with any storage/buildings etc. attached to them.
The way that I would suggest players form a guild is the following system:
1)
Chat list 1 which for simplicity will be named "Guild" Guild Chat:
This list is the default basic guild chat. All guild members have access. Any guild permissions will be set with this list.
2)
Chat list 2 which for simplicity will be named "Guild" Officers Chat:
This list is for any guild players with an office. Recruiter, Long Term Trusted Member, War Leader, Leader, Unit Leader, Supplies Officer, Construction Leader for City X, Construction Leader for City Y, basically anyone who isn't a rank and file member.
3)
Chat lists for every guild office that you think needs a chat.
4)
etc.
Basically you can set up a separate chat for anything you like. As complex and/or secure or as simple and/or naive as you like. Any group of players can set up chat lists for any purpose.
Guild leaders can set up a permanent chatlist for all the guild leaders in region 1 or 2 or anything.
Chat lists will exist in a chat menu which you can organize with tabs any way you like.
Players can join any number of guilds simply by being added to the chat list.
Creating a kingdom is as simple as guild leaders creating a guild leader chat and then another chat that is seeded by the guild leader list. Then each leader adds their complete member list. Bam, kingdom.
Guild leaders can create a separate chat for all guild officers in a similar fashion. Since permissions can be assigned for any list, there is almost no downtime. Similarly different guilds could make faction or alliance chats within a kingdom. Social interaction is only as complex as the players want it to be. Players have the option to hide chats they don't want to view.
Since the number of guilds you can be in is not capped, if players from many guilds or kingdoms want to form a guild to help newbies, they can do it without leaving their current guilds. A newbie council could be established within a guild or group of guilds by leadership also, as opposed to some players who just like helping newbies setting it up on their own.

You might want to auto-cull chats that haven't been used in a week or a month. Other than that it sounds nice to me, I'm just curious how the difficulty of the emergent AI is going to work.

You might want to auto-cull chats that haven't been used in a week or a month. Other than that it sounds nice to me, I'm just curious how the difficulty of the emergent AI is going to work.

Yeah chats that haven't been used in a month will be cut. Long enough that its likely that they will not be used again.

Can anyone figure out any sort of problems aside from that? I would rather not open the game and have some huge bug appear.

I think I made a thread about the AI here somewhere, although due to number of members are hitting the target audience I had a lot more threads at mmorpg.com than here.

I would say that the difficulty of the AI, barring my altering the values for some reason, depends entirely on the players. If they make effective decisions and cooperate well and when necessary, and there are enough players interested in spending many hours a week exploring and keeping tabs on monster activity, it shouldn't be overwhelming.
I will probably need some beta testing to calibrate the monster output of the dimensional rifts and to modulate the breeding programs.

The big worry is that rifts will form in a cluster far from players which will limit there crafting ability to natural resources, damage their ability to raise fighting skills, and prevent them from preemptive attacks on growing monster encampments.

Also due to the inherent nature of complex and massive systems, players may chug along merrily and suddenly variables relating to monster kingdoms far away could trigger massive raids and smash them. I could probably make some tools to query the database for any unusually large creature groups and use my god powers to disperse them before they become a problem. But I would rather not be constantly fiddling with the program.

In the end players will probably need ATITD or WF or DAoC level cooperation skills to prevail.