How much is the implementation of various gameplay loops hindered by the lack of server-side improvements, such as SSOCS, Server Meshing, and the like? Will we need to wait to get those systems implemented before we can expect to see more expansive gameplay?

Chad says there's not really any gameplay features that rely on SSOCS - it goes more the other way where SSOCS relies on the gameplay features being written in a way that works with it. Really it gives them a way to scale better so that they can put more content and more features in, but not so much that there's some added behaviour or feature that SSOCS adds in that now the feature can do something that it couldn't do before. The tech that they write to create SSOCS could enable, but it's not server streaming that does it, it's more that the foundational technologies that they make in order to create SSOCS could themselves lend to some interesting future development, which is especially true with Global Persistence. SSOCS requires this to work, because they have to stream out an area and store it out, but GP is something that they really want in the game and doesn't require server streaming and could technically have it without it (although the performance wouldn't be good), but it's something that they're making that could be thought of as a feature that they made along the way in support of SSOCS.
Todd adds that the only thing that the game teams will be responsible for will be making sure that their game code works with SSOCS, which means that if they're doing that then they're not doing feature development, which is unfortunate but also a necessary evil. Brian adds that they had a similar thing with CSOCS, where the unknowns were unknown so they just had to take a chance but they managed to get it sorted.