Lately i have been studying the viability of an MMO project based on this distributed development model, in terms of financing i am considering an aproach to a couple of game investment funds that i have found, surprisingly including in my country, but MMOs are not exactly my genre of game, so i have been reading allot and studying the genre and it looks like there is still so much left to invent that i might just take the plunge and try to do yet another game studio, my previous experience in the mobile game market has taught me two things: Full understanding of the platform is important, and money is essential.
In terms of platform, the only option is really Multiverse, due to it's nature, the developer does not have to support the infrastructure cost, but he does get locked into a vendor and a not so flexible solution, so for a small studio with no money to outsource the infrastructure or to develop it on it's own, it is probably the only option in the market right now. Sun Darkstar platform like most stuff that come out from sun is an excellent idea on paper, with very poor execution in the real world, but what could you expect form a company full and run by academia people, that love thinking on the abstract and are mostly isolated from the real world ;)
Now lets talk money, the last time i created a game studio a was stupid enough to think that i could survive with the minimal, that i did not have to invest a dime, and that i could use the money i saved to work 100% on game development, men that was not only innocent and stupid on my part. Every company needs to sell itself before it is created, if no one is buying your project, then you probably have a problem, and money no matter how well managed has a tendency to run short, specially wend you have to waste time thinking about money instead of focusing on creating a game.
So this time i am taking my time, and getting a proper team and proper funding, before i decide to "waste" one more year of my life.