[trotsky]

I doubt there are too many, but from memory these guys pretty much did exactly that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_in_the_Desert

I am just talking out of my ass here, but I could see an argument for the "build big and go live" strategy being more an affectation of the single player focused studio system than a mmo best practice. at least for the traditional pc/3d style mmos it is much easier to find gross examples of pre-launch implosion, launching years late, launching alpha quality etc. than it is to find the opposite. Yet almost all of those games seem to enjoy a core fanbase often for years before they launch that would be all over an mvp. i can certainly see how launching with a small amount of content could be a big risk, but there are clearly a lot of problems with aaa title dev that a launch and iterate approach might be helpful for.