I think full permadeath and the focus on pvp wouldn't be an issue if the playerbase was at least 10x bigger. As it is, to me it makes more sense to either remove permadeth so that more fights can happen, or leave it and make the game oriented toward survival and social stuff instead.
As for the game being a job and demanding a lot of time, the only major complaint I have is that frequent resets make all that work pointless in the mid-term.
In both cases, though, I suppose hiring NPCs for simple tasks like farming when you can't be online or basic combat could solve some of our issues.