Actually, while players can’t directly communicate with one another, players can carve notes onto items and leave them for other players to find. If players set on a specific means of communication, it would be possible to create a BBS-like system using items to relay messages to and from one another while playing. It wouldn’t really be too much different from communicating on the forum, except of course for the character limit on what you can inscribe.
Example: Ten players get together and decide to play a shared world. Before they start they make it clear to one another that they’re going to communicate using skewers, since skewers don’t occur naturally and many can be made from one heavy stick. One player is going to find, say, a gas station for example, and mark it with say, a sign. Because the world starts out small, the players should start out close to one another if they all start playing at the same time. The player finds a nice gas station or whatever nearby, makes a sign outside, inscribes a note onto a skewer, and drops it in front of the sign. The other players come across the sign in their worlds and the note, and they inscribe their own notes on a skewer and leave them there for the others to read, detailing their plans, problems, requests, questions, etc.
Via such means it should be possible for players to coordinate and travel together from location to location in the game world and kinda do things together, even if they can’t see one another, without needing to coordinate outside of the game world beyond the initial agreement on means of communication. Afterwards, the details can be included in the MOTD along with the coordinates of the currently agreed upon hub for communication and exchanging of items among players.
Might be clunky, awkward, and it relies a fair bit on a honor system (like not burning all the skewers ‘for the lulz’ or stealing items left there that are marked for other players who are having trouble finding something due to a bunch of people sharing a finite world, etc). Still, it can work, and if that’s how this server mentioned is already set up, I apologize.
Something that would help the whole thing be a little less clunky is if players can read the notes without having to pick up the items, using (e)xamine. The description box of the highlighted item could show the item blurb along with the inscribed note. This would make it a little less exasperating to read and respond in kind.
Now I’m musing on starting a party of adventurers who communicate, travel together and specialize in different fields and roles. Maybe the archer doesn’t need a katana, but the melee guy would sure love to have it. Maybe those two rip apart some vehicles and leave the items in a spot for the team mechanic to cobble together some nice vehicles for the three of them. Could be fun times.