I was interested in Boundless because it reminded me of the other open world voxel games that I loved to play (Cv, PK, MC, Tr, etc). I initially didn’t care much about the MMO part and tried to avoid it. In most games, even MMORPGs, I generally played solo. However, I almost instantly fell in love with the whole Boundless/Oort thing and the MMO aspect. It actually ruined the other games for me. It made them all seem like they were missing something that only Boundless had.
With that said, James has mentioned privately hosted planets for quite some time. For at least 2 years before the official release. Some OG players/backers have been waiting for this feature. Boundless has also rec’d a lot of flack on Steam for not offering the ability for players to host private/local worlds. A lot of people said they won’t buy Boundless without it. Private/local worlds also appeal to parents of younger children, for numerous reasons.
If you look at other games, some private server iterations have flourished and become quite popular. Roblox has/had a popular mining game/server & that was the only reason I played it. Hypixel was nothing but a popular custom/private MC server and look at it now. MC isn’t an MMO, but some of the private servers are. Players did that. It could happen here too.
For these reasons, I don’t see any problem with BL fulfilling their initial vision by adding the ability for players to host worlds on private servers. James has always wanted players to be able to play in as many ways as they want to. This is part of that. The sandbox.