It didn't catch on because it was awful all the way around.

If you wanted to do anything in the game or follow any career quests it required REAL money. They started you with some gold bricks and you could earn some gold bricks in game, but it was a pittance of a reward (something like 0.14 gold bricks for completing a mission, but you needed 20 gold bricks to actually start a career path quest).

They basically locked everyone out of doing anything unless you paid exorbitant fees just to do basic career quests. It was pants-on-head retarded and the most jew-level wankerer one could imagine.

After realising that I would never be able to do any of the career quests without throwing a ton of real life cash at the game (or grinding incessantly), I just logged out. I tried one more time but then some hackers were in the game and they could steal what little gold you accrued -- so the barely one bar of gold I did acquire the previous time I played was stolen by hackers who were going around and killing people with lightning bolts at the campfires.

The whole thing was a mess.

But you're right, if it were just an open-world sandbox Wild west game where you could choose to be a criminal or a bounty hunter and emergently interact with other players with a dynamic economy, it would have been a huge hit. But Jew-Two Interactive decided it was better to fleece gamers at every single turn so there was nothing you could do that didn't require real world cash. Pretty much killed it on the spot.