I don't know how this would work, but I have long thought that more realistic survival/realism elements are the next natural step for what MMORPGs were supposed to be. Having a family-line, permadeath, having to secure finite resources like food water iron etc... Elyrion, that MMO that seemed too good to be true and was turned out to be a huge money-racket of borderline illegal proportions, promised some of this stuff.

The trouble is that devs seem to either take the approach of going complete wild-west and it becomes impossible to accomplish... Something on rails with predetermined cities & pve elements that hurt inflation with the ultimate goal of creating a realistic feudal-like world might work though. Either way it would be a huge undertaking, and it's probably not going to happen any time soon. I think you'd also have to have the game setup so your main grind is just the wealth that your family(you, the player) have accumulated rather than raw exp & skills, so as to not make it unbearable when the family member you're currently playing dies of old age or in combat.