On the past maps I was trying to find a playstyle that would suit me, but failed, sadly. First I was playing completely alone, and got bored of it. Then I tried to team up, but sadly other team members tend to get on much less often, and I was left alone to most of the time, having doubts whether to build anything or wait for others. Also, I found that it is hard to combine everyone's wishes in one base unless you make a good plan beforehand, which we did not, and when you have mismatching build styles. Perhaps our team could not really become a team, but rather were players who trusted each other.

Upon consideration, I decided that if I will play on the next map, then I will make my resource base alone, and when have things set up, attempt to participate in various projects with other players elsewhere.

Well, with all the changes that have been announced some of my plans have been blown up.  I guess I'll mainly collect resources for myself and check out the Atlantis area.  More than likely that's where I'll live since I'm such an ocean guy.  I haven't decided if I'm going to make a sea temple farm this time around since there isn't going to be a shopping district to sell in and I don't care for announcing regularly that I have sea lanterns for sale.  For the most part I guess I'm going to play it by ear as far as what I'm going to do.  It's hard to really plan out anything considering all the changes. 

A little bit of nostalgie, a 2014th temp map, completely unprotected and player-maintained shopping district: 🙂

I recall it was griefed and robbed almost every day though.

Chumbleweasel said
I think a good idea for the new map could be a "nehther hub",in other words a room or collection of tunnels with different nether prtals all leading to different places.It would make traveling to different places easier,partcularly for those with only one home.For example if there was to be a community managed shopping district with no warp then a quick and easy way to get there through the nether would be very helpful.Although its not exactly an early game project it would be very helpful one people have started building community stuff such as xp grinders or farms.

Let me know what  you think about this!  

We did this on current map for our neighbourhood, and later got more hubs connected with roads and even 2000 blocks long railroad (through neither!) leading to another town on another side of the world.

This is a good idea, and may be fun to build, but two tips need to be kept in mind. You may already know this, but I think I'd mention just in case.

1. One has to be ready to explain how to manually unlink portals to the new players, if theirs got connected to someone elses. This will occur regularly, and in most cases may be solved, although sometimes will require moving them around a little bit. Our record was having distinct portals as close as 60 blocks in overworld (2 or 3 blocks in nether).

2. One has to respect player's wish to keep their portal private. It is hard to tell how that will work on the new map, with new land claim rules. On this map we just put locked doors or fence gates at the portal. On the other hand, there is a warning that some people ignore: do not completely block the portal with locked blocks, or if someone spawns in it they would not be able to go back (you have to exit portal and enter it again) and get stuck.