Characters

Age/Levels.

Characters should age. When you start out, your a young pup ( 15-16) as you level, you age. So the "newbie grounds" that are traditionally treated like daycare or kindergarten, REALY will be like that. It makes sense that older NPCs would be around to watch over the training youths. Special quest lines can be added as apprenticeships for the younglings to get them started in quest trees.

As you level, you age, you get older, you get stronger, faster, smarter, etc.. Up to a point. After a peak level, your physical stats begin a slow depredation. As a trade off you gain additional perks to pick from as compensation for the loss of some stats. These perks would all be based on the experiences learned in a characters adventuring career. Warriors would get increased critical ranges, having fought so many critters, they innately know where to hit them for example. Finesse over brute force. Casters would get access to spell line specializations and advanced research/spell combinations.

At the end of a characters level cycle ( level cap ) they would no longer age, but be given the opportunity to "retire" if they wanted. This would record them in the annals of the world, and allow them to turn over a portion of there worldly goods to there heir, a new character that is now a dependent of the main character. This new character would defectively be twinkled, and if the progenitor's faction was good enough, be able to be put through a "fast track" type of training to get the lower levels out of the way faster.

Death and Resurrections

Characters need to know they should not die.. Many games do this with minor punishment immediately after death. I can see reasons for this. I would prefer a more long term detriment. A characters number of available resurrections is inversely proportional to there level/age. Lower level characters can die lots. Higher level characters have limits. This lets the noobs learn the ropes, even if it kills them. Higher level characters will have to use strategy and skill to maximize there survivability. There should be quests/donations that can give a character additional reses if needed as to not "screw" someone over. It think this would make the end game a lot more fun, as it now becomes very much a team effort to minimize everyone's deaths ( as it should be ), as well as reinforcing the "be responsible for your actions" mentality that is missing from so many games, since they have gone past being a simple "game" for many at the high end levels (i.e. it's almost like second life/social networking at that point ).

If a character does suffer perma-death they should then be able to also define an heir the same as if they had retired ( perhaps at a lesser percentage of loot transfered down ). So that all is not lost and they can continue to enjoy the game, and get some replay value out of it ( maybe try to save more reses this time :) ).