Well, not exactly a massively multiplayer, but more massively multiplayer than this, is the game Freelancer, which is still around since 2002, with a strong modding community. Its a single ship game which closely approximates the sins as single player ship idea..

Take a look here: http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?act=uportal for what is probably still the largest Freelancer community, with a few thousand actives on a server that can hold up to 200 people. I loved it for years.

Otherwise, you're describing Eve, and X2/X3 as well.

There is already such a MMORPG. Its called Eve online. And if u looks closely sins is based on eve a lot.

Its what i liked in this game at first. then i started to appreciate other things.

Ive always had this idea of 1v1 , but you have 5 players controlling each side.

It be really cool , because some people can concentrate on expansion and economy , others can uber-micro capital ships whereelse others can choose to work the smaller units.

Id come back to sins if they allowed this.

 The best thing is , if one guy drops , it wont make much of a difference.

It would be fun for noobs.

I think the op may have meant a MMO-RTS than a RPG. Although a MMO-RTS-RPG is possible, though when said out loud makes one sound special lol.

If there are any persistant servers operable then the possibilities for Soase can be endless. Imagine 3 or more players on a singular solar system, alliances may be forged and broken, trust gained or destroyed, one player may arise to be the dominant Emperor only to be crushed by a combined fleet of other players. Assuming the server can handle the load and more adequete defences/competant AI (when a player is offline his/her empire isnt buttraped) then such games will be amazing and knowing Soase each session/game will last hours on end. Think we can all say a little bit of backstabbing is nice.

Aethyr

Quar , Ive been bitten by the starcraft 2 bug.

I've played some Allegiance, it was a pretty incredible concept that I think wasn't quite friendly enough to the casual gamer -- definitely hardcore gamer territory.

Yeah, it has been one of the reasons I just can't play much.  I had a 2v2 degenerate into a 1v1 one time where neither one of us would surrender and we kept managing to rebuff the other and make offensives.  The game went over 5 hours before I finally had to concede (my ally left me in a shitty position, but the other guy played incredible too). 

I have had many 5v5's go into the 3+ hour territory, even though most are over in 1.5 hours.  It is hard to set aside that kind of time these days.

The old Starfleet Command starship simulators had a persistent universe mode that worked kind of like that....players would contest different sectors and destroy things like starbases or enemy patrols, sometimes fighting with each other.  Based on player actions, hexes would eventually flip to their empire.  They would also build up command and reputation from successful missions to get access to bigger and better starships.  With current technology, the whole process could be a lot more seamless.

Does anyone remember Star Fleet I: the War Begins?  It was a BASIC game with simple ASCII graphics, but it rocked back in the day (oh, say, 1985).  Maybe Frogboy grew up blasting Krellans and Zaldrons, too.

Dont think Infinity will ever be released. It is being developed by one guy, part-time.

infinity now has financial backing, a team, and a corporate identity.  I can see it being released, and once it does it'll hopefully knock our socks off.

I thought about games such as this.  Although in my case I thought the empires should be controlled by players.  There would not just be captains of ships, but players would also be governors and politicians and fighter pilots, and maybe even researchers and ground fighters.