I must be a glutton for punishment, after reading he OP I didn't type my immediate visceral "NO" but instead read the whole ouroboros of a thread before trying to come up with a slightly more reasoned response..
Guilds/corps/clans/player factions... The lack of explicit support for these in the game is as much a matter of lore as it is of intentional design. For the design side, the deliberate omission of this (which is itself a radical decision, given how ingrained into multiplayer games they have become since the first doom clan appeared) is to avoid NOT the social aspects of them but the other long-term consequences, where eventually membership in one of them becomes pretty much mandatory if you're to get much enjoyment out of the game. From the standpoint of the lore, the various factions we see around are all stationers, we're spacers and proud of it. We can work for them, make alliances with them, support of oppose them but we're not part of them. Besides, we're all members of a faction that is arguably the equal of any of the major factions in the game, the pilots federation. Pilots forming allied wings is coming, but even these are envisioned as being more of an ad-hoc thing than a guild-like group, more like forming up into a party in your typical fantasy MMO. That's not to say I don't want to see improvements to the in-game social features such as better chat mechanics, improvements to matchmaking with friends etc. Just for the fear of Cthulhu PLEASE no galaxy-wide open chat.. EVER.
Player control of territory... This has been explicitly designed OUT from the start. It was on the "Won't Happen" list from before the KS campaign. You can't establish a choke point like a jump gate, you can't stop folks just switching modes so you'll never see them and you are all playing in the same universe. You may be swarming the system with your buddies but I can still jump in and eat your strawberries in solo or in a private group with my friends if I want to and that is quite intentional. Recently we have seen an explicit "No" from a senior member of FDs team on these forums when asking about whether this "single universe" setup is ever going to change so effectively controlling territory is dead in the water.
A more dynamic background simulation... On this one I can meet the OP halfway. I'm all in favor of the background economy and political landscape in ED becoming more completely simulated and dynamic. I wouldn't want to see it become player driven, though, I would prefer to remain with something more player influenced - like we have now but with the more complete underlying simulation adding the depth to how our play can impact it. As soon as I see a poster writing something like "I'd take over this station with my corp and do (whatever)..." that falls into the same realm as counting five while holding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch "Right out."
