Can we drop this now and just see if there is something to be learned from other MMOs? Let's keep it constructive (and sorry AGAIN for focusing on whether or not it is an MMO in the OP)
Sure.
In terms of what can be learned, I think a lot of it depends on what aspects of MMOness are deemed as desirable really. My personal opinion of what makes a worthwhile MMO is (leaving aside obvious stuff like "We need to be able to chat", "We need to be able to trade/give stuff", and "We need to be able to group")...
There's got to be a reason to group in the sense that there have got to be tasks that are sufficiently complex or difficult to make having other players around a necessity. If everything can be accomplished solo, or by solo players performing a common task without the need to co-ordinate (see "Community Goals" for oxymoronic details), then the presence of other players becomes pretty meaningless.
PvP is a must, as is a stick n' carrot method of making attacking same or higher strength players very attractive, and merely jobbing lowbies profoundly unattractive. There should also be areas that are as good as safe (or at least so dangerous for anyone initiating combat as to make it straight up suicide), and the mechanism for enforcing this can be as gamey as it likes. Likewise, areas where absolutely anything goes are obligatory.
The only two MMOs I've spent a decent amount of time in (as opposed to merely played for a bit) are Eve and WoW, and both did a pretty decent job on both counts. WoW veered a bit too much towards the forced co-operation side of things in the endgame, but I'd say both hit a reasonable balance of functionality.
ED's issues in the multiplayer stakes are, well, very numerous indeed.
For starters, all items are commodity items, and all can be purchased from the environment. Consequently, even if we had the ability to trade with each other there'd be no point in doing so as there'd be no means of making money, only losing money. Until items are available that can only be produced (either by looting or crafting) by players, no meaningful player trade activity can take place even if a system was created to support it.
Furthermore, there are no activities that scream "we need more players!". Even something as mundane as mining in Eve max security space in the early days (haven't played it for years so can't comment now) was designed such as to make it miles easier to accomplish and offer a higher per-player production rate if it was tackled mob handed. There's nothing that comes even close to resembling the WoW highly structured forced co-operation, and whilst admittedly that's harder to pull off in a space sim, the current mechanics of ED are such that not only are there no activities that genuinely need more players, but that players only really come in two varieties - those currently flying a trading ship, and those flying something else - and the two varieties can be interchanged either by just docking and getting into another ship, or by a few minutes of retail action. The lack of the need to specialise, either due to financial constraints or due to arbitrary game mechanics, means the best we can hope for within anything that looks like current ED mechanics is a system that needs merely an extra body, not a particular type of body.
If suddenly landed with the task of sorting it out, and assuming the underlying architecture would take it, I'd at very least* introduce non-commodity loot** plus a means of selling it and swapping it. That provides the building blocks for the whole MMO experience. Inter-player trade becomes viable as there are now things that can't just be bought cheaper from the environment, risk taking (and therefore the ability of the game designers to provide that risk, which don't currently have) changes from a credits per hour calculation to a more goal-based calculation***, and the extra element of danger that could be introduced as a result of making risk taking necessary would allow for a decent "no opportunity cost" reason to group. Said non-commodity loot would also introduce the prospect of generated mission chains that were sufficiently challenging as to require assistance from others - go kill Really Nasty Pirate Gang X, we'll give you some neat stuff... kill a few players aligned to faction X in combat zone Y, have this shiny thing, etc.
Thereafter it all gets pretty easy, but the first step has to be non-commodity loot.
(The next stop would be adding a load more slots to ships to hold module buff type items, thereby diversifying things even more and allowing for much more specialised ships, maybe in the form of "bound to player" ship software upgrades that could be used to create a degree of specialisation we don't currently have. But hey, it's all just conjecture really. Good fun though nonetheless.)
* Assuming obvious stuff like "make chat work" and "let us group" had happened.
** By which I mean any kind of stuff that comes from the environment, not just, say, weapon drops. It could just as easily be ultra-rare minerals that can only be mined either way, way out in deep space or in heavily guarded system (bring some mates to fight off the locals, or you ain't gettin' 'em).
*** As in, the mindset goes from "how do we maximise credits per hour, because ultimately everything is just credits" to "how do we acquire one of those missile launchers... at all".
