Omitting the shoulda woulda coulda, here it is:
Thinking there would be emergeant roleplay was the big mistake, the game lacks all sort of systems to encourage that. Or rather the stuff left to do was to high effort to be expected from the community: if someone bothers to make like a LUA lasertag minigame, it's understandable they'd want remuneration if everything about the game is so hardcore, and ressource management is the only real gamelooop there is... So awesome stuff got burried behind profit motives that never had any chance of profit.
What should have been done is NQ organising nationbuilding: if we earned quanta from aphelia by actually doing stuff that's "real" (immersive) most of our goodwill could have been salavaged: We could have spent our time filling the landscape with stuff that fits your vision of urbanism, be paid for it with quanta, fill the world with content that makes it more appealing to explore... Strangers would have found themselves working on a project together, and that might have created new bonds.
The nationbuilding was up to you NQ since you are the entity that is able to generate currency. And all those that wanted to know nothing of it could have played "against" the majority and aphelia.
We could have held votes on construction projects, scaffold projection of the winning entries and have everybody be busy, participate in something together, and feel like they play the same game in the same world, together.
Very very low investment that could have carried the game for years while you add systems. Would have taken the balls to commit to some sort of lore/flavor, instead we got total [s]freedom[/s] vacancy.