I'm, still not sure how this is going to work with theoretically 1000 human managers in one game world as you describe above. Will the vast majority of players be happy signing virtual or actual unkowns when there is only one Ronaldo or Kaka available per game world? LLM's will have no problem with this obviously but what about the glory hunters who are probably in the majority? Are you really going to get 1000 active managers when the vast majority will be managing teams of players no one has ever heard of? Also I'm not keen on this drip feed of the big names as you describe, seems a bit "pixel-cracky" to me. I'm not dismissing the idea of FM Live, just pointing out some things which would concern me if I was going to invest time in thegame. p.s. I'm not actually a glory hunter, I always start as a random non-league club when I start a FM08 game.
Everyone starts on a level playing field and people have just as much chance of obtaining superstars as the next person.
At the start of the game only players that will be affordable will be available, with only a 500,000 starting balance to build a squad of players its unlikely anyone will land a superstar. The best player I managed to obtain when I started in the gw was Mido and he cost £160,000.
Every player will be starting with a team of unknowns, unless you decide to spend the majority of your budget on a big name and the rest on mediocre players. There is no LLM format within FML.
The database of FM players runs into the 100,000's so it is unlikely that you will have a superstar squad and no-one else will. At the start if the game players are signed on a 1season or 2 season contract and every season a manager can auto renew 5 contracts (basically retain the player for another 1-2 seasons) and the rest who are up for renewal can be bid on by every manager in the game (wage auction) the highest bidder gets the player.
This is the same process for unowned players, and those players made available (drip fed) into the game when more people are involved. Also, I must point out the scouting skill. If you dont have scouting skills you dont have access certain players, making it necessary to learn those skills to unearth players and youth talent.
There is one guy in my gameworld who saved up £10m by just buying youth players then training them and selling them on for profit, this kept his wage bill down as well. He then blew £6m signing Eto'o to improve his performances.
The game is a lot more tactically demanding than FM08 and I know many people who have had lots of success on FM struggle on FML because they arent good at sorting tactics out.