The scope of the game changed as soon as the kickstarter was generating far more than expected and there was a vote for the community to develop the game further.
I actually meant they have made 8-9 million a year just from tech and other sources nothing to do with backer money so tech and such is an important resource, many techs have to be advanced for a game such as this.
Vanilla WoW map (80 square miles) a fraction of EQ map, kinda tiny just seemed larger since it was slow to move around in, all the basics for wow was done before in EQ/other games and was backed by a fully establised company, took 7 years for blizz to make starcraft 2.
Currently they have a working star system and evolving it even further, once everything is in place it shouldnt be too hard to start completing the universe, we currently don't know how many star systems they are working on atm, there is likely going to be multiple within the SQ42 missions so they have to be ready by mid next year, the ships are what takes the longest to complete.