From the perspective of a new player who has sunk some bulk hours into MineRealm over the last week, these are my thoughts:
1) Land is available. I happened to drop on the very edge of the map, right between OrigamiElephant and the sea. Being my first multiplayer server (and less than a week's exposure to Minecraft) I kinda just found a promising looking area and started work. I had no concept of what realms where at that point; how big they were; how to locate and define their edges; etc. I now own three or four adjacent realms though, and have a good 6-8 others around me that are available. There are some cobblestone monstrosities in the background but I've just hidden them as far as possible by terraforming up against them to the borders of my realms.
2) Resources can be scarce. There was one tree within a 5 minute walk in any direction from my chosen base. OrigamiElephant has heaps on his realms, but they're just that - private realms. I chopped that one tree, cultivated saplings and started re-greening the area. I now have all varieties through wandering further afield and trading. This was probably the major frustration I had in settling there ... I had difficulty finding the most basic of resources.
3) Travel is clumbsy. Yes it's a vanilla server and everything is built not spawned, but why not have 'government funded' assistance with resources for public projects like the subway system? There is a 10% tax applied to all trades so the logic is there that this 'revenue generated' should be fed back into MineRealm as government spending. Taxes aren't just banked; they are (supposed to be) used for the public good. Items don't need to be spawned in - just give the 'government' (Intelli; staff; designated individual; whoever it may be) the tax income from trades to spend in public trade acquiring supplies for public works.
It's the third point that I have probably found most frustrating. There are some brilliant creations in MineRealms, but it requires a bulk investment of time to get around and see them all. I haven't investigated Nether travel yet so will need to do that, but an extensive tax-revenue funded subway system would likely be the best answer - and is analogous to what would exist in a real-life equivalent of the MineRealm world.
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