I'm playing in the same village/guild as Vibe and Leesin.
We have a friendly hunter as a neighbor, who we are trading with. He pays in furs, and we give him whatever we can provide him with. And we pretty much need all the furs we can get.
Basicly he is playing alone, but he has to trade or he'll be stuck with his stone-age equipment. But in the long run it's going to really difficult, because all the tools and equipment get worn out pretty fast. So maintanance is a problem. There are repair kits that everyone can use. But to make one repair kit you'd need to get to the end of one of the skill branches. And the materials needed for the repair kit are produced by other professions
IMO this game has been designed to be played in an organized group. Which is maybe why it takes 10 people to form a guild and set up a guild claim.
And so far I've noticed that THIS GAME IS NOT AN MMO YET. You can play on a continent with over 3000 players online simultaniously. But if over 300 players gather to one area, the lag will become unbearable, might even crash the server. So there is one huge thing to be fixed.
What really makes a difference between Your Own and the MMO version is the large scale politic. On Your Own one active guild could bully the entire servers with player cap of 64. On MMO one active guild can still bully the peasants nearby, but now the peasants have the option to ask for help from others guilds, and maybe become vassals for someone etc. There are already some huge alliances with dozens of guilds and hundreds of players in them. And there's also internal drama in those alliances