I worked on this game from 2000 to 2010 ... we went "pay to play" in 2006 and that essentially killed it. Earlier this month the server went down ... an IP change required us to dust the code off and get it compiling again in order to fix it. One thing led to another and now we are back in full swing!
Primarily a vehicles based game. You start on the surface in a car. There are no quests, you can do what you want really. Most people are here to get to the flagship vehicle, the E-10 Saint which can VTOL from the ground then fly up to orbit and back again.
There is an economy, NPC colonists, player alliances, player-deployed colonies, and maybe 3 classes of vehicles in each type (ground, air, space).